- newslepear
- Posts
- ๐ #55: Dev influencer ad playbook, big LEGO set giveaway, and a powerful Hacker News content strategy
๐ #55: Dev influencer ad playbook, big LEGO set giveaway, and a powerful Hacker News content strategy
Jakub Czakon
March 03, 2024
Hey,
How did a pear convince an apple to jump on the cutting board? Idk but it was very pearsuasive ๐ ;)
This week on the agenda:
Developer influencer ad playbook
Early CockroachDB articles on Hacker News
Big Lego set giveaway from Sigma Computing
+ a few bonus links at the end
Letโs go!
๐ชง Promo
As I got a bunch of requests for homepage/blog/website/messaging teardowns. And they didnโt fit the 1-hour workshop or the longer-term advising plan.
Figured Iโd create a Teardown plan:
You request a teardown of your homepage, website, blog, messaging, ads, socials etc
I run a ~90min audit and record a ~30min video with my thoughts/suggestions
I send you the audit doc and the video
Developer marketing insights
1. Developer influencer ad playbook
This is a simple strategy that can deliver results really quickly.
Basically, you:
Borrow the trust (ok buy) of the respected dev in the community.
Get them to present the product in a way the influencer thinks would work for their audience (which is often a solid proxy for your audience).
Distribute that to your target audience at the largest scale you can afford.
You can run that playbook with your tutorials too. You donโt get the borrowed trust part but you can more control over the product presentation. Has itโs perks too.
2. Big Lego set giveaway from Sigma Computing
Instead of giving away hundreds of small things that people will forget give away one thing that leaves an impression.
And a huge LEGO set is a great candidate for that one big thing.
There is a big overlap between devs and folks who love LEGOs. They are both builders after in their hearts.
Now, some important considerations:
Create a giveaway so that you can still get all your KPIs like badge scanned, social mentions, GitHub stars
Make the prize visible to conference participants. Put it out there. Make it obvious.
Make participating relatively easy to complete.
You need to commit to it too.
Don't do 3 different things like that at a conference.
Focus on one play like this at a time and try other cool ideas at another conference.
Folks from Sigma Computing ticked all these boxes. Love it!
Btw you may want to read this amazing article on dev conferences from DX Tips.
3. Early CockroachDB articles on Hacker News
How to create good technical content that the HN audience likes?
The general tip is simple. Create content that the HN audience finds interesting.
๐ง๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐๐ฝ๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น๐น๐ ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ป๐:
Something that feeds curiosity (how does X work, why did Y happen, what is it like to do Z)
Something real, transparent, and written in first person (real stories)
Something technical and focused on the dev or founder crowd
But how do you actually do that? Here is a lesson from CockroachDB
๐ข๐ป๐ฒ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฝ๐น๐ฎ๐๐ฏ๐ผ๐ผ๐ธ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ผ๐บ๐ฒ ๐๐ฒ๐ฐ๐ต๐ป๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น ๐ณ๐ผ๐๐ป๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ฝ๐น๐ผ๐๐ฒ๐ฑ ๐๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ต๐ถ๐:
Get your technical founder or core developers to write articles
Those articles are focused on the technical challenges of building your product
Again, don't write what your product does but rather how you build it. Mistakes you made, ideas you tried, technical challenges you had to overcome.
Share real value with that dev audience. And to give people real value, you need to have folks who actually understand their problems. Those are typically senior devs/founders.
You will inevitably hint that you are building a product and the folks who are interested in your product and you will go deeper.
That was exactly what folks from CockroachDB did at the beginning. Heard about it on one of the episodes of the Unusual Ventures podcast with Peter Mattis from Cockroach Labs.
๐๐ ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฝ๐น๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ฝ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐๐ก:
โข "CockroachDB Stability Post-Mortem: From 1 Node to 100 Nodes"
โข "Serializable, lockless, distributed: Isolation in CockroachDB"
โข "How CockroachDB Does Distributed, Atomic Transactions"
Kudos Cockroach Labs team and thanks for sharing!
Need more developer marketing insights?
1. Work with me
Every week I have a few slots for:
Workshops: Whatever you can squeeze in 60 minutes.
We can talk strategy/tactics, do brainstorms/live roasts, or debug your challenges together.
Teardowns: I run a ~90min audit of your homepage/messaging/blog/ads/socials. And send you a ~30min video with my thoughts/suggestions and the audit doc.
Advising: Weekly/biweekly coaching sessions and/or async work like reviews, audits, research, or planning.
2. Join our Slack community
1400+ dev tool CMOs, heads of growth, product marketers, and other practitioners talking about things like this:
Reply