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- 🍐 #57: Reddit -> HN trick, Kubernetes blog PRs, feature tabs header pattern, and an (almost) free website redesign campaign
🍐 #57: Reddit -> HN trick, Kubernetes blog PRs, feature tabs header pattern, and an (almost) free website redesign campaign
Jakub Czakon
March 17, 2024
Hey,
Why do two identical pears look different? It’s a matter of pearception 🍐 ;)
This week on the agenda:
Open-source project landing page redesigns (almost) for free
Reddit -> HackerNews trick and Kubernetes blog PRs
Feature tabs header pattern from PostHog
+ a few bonus links at the end
Before we start, this week’s sponsor is:
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Developer marketing insights
1. Reddit -> HackerNews trick and Kubernetes blog PRs
Gitroom is a newsletter/blog/resource by Nevo David where he talks about marketing early-stage open-source projects/products. I always find something interesting in there.
Recently came across this interview.
Two learnings/tactics to try out:
Post your highly technical articles in subreddits first, hoping to get picked up by a high-karma HN user and posted there. Worked for them multiple times.
Submit an article via PR to the Kubernetes blog. That is an 89 DR, 2.5M backlinks domain according to Ahrefs that you can get a backlink from.
2. Open-source project landing page redesigns (almost) for free
Gonto shared an interesting play that they tried at Auth0 when he was running growth there.
They wanted to increase brand awareness of Auth0.
They found influencers who were maintainers of open-source frameworks that had landing pages.
They went to them and offered to redesign these landing pages for free.
The trick is they redesigned it with the same branding (colors, patterns, layout) as the product (Auth0).
That made people think those are related (even though they weren't) which increased the brand perception of Auth0.
They also asked the influencers/maintainers if they could add retargeting pixel to the redesigned site.
Which helped them serve relevant ads to visitors of those open-source frameworks.
I think that doing just the sponsorship for the retargeting pixel could work.
But when you add that branding consistency between the sponsored site and the product the CTR is better.
Interesting one for sure.
3. Feature tabs header pattern from PostHog
Which feature/product to show in the header?
How about all?
Many dev tool products are feature-rich. And you want to show those awesome features.
But it is easy to overwhelm the reader when showing so much info.
That is why I really like the header tabs pattern that PostHog uses:
You have clickable tabs with product names + descriptive icons
Copy + Supporting visual (UI, code etc) and a call to action in each tab
Supporting visuals are in vastly different colors to make it obvious you switch tabs.
This pattern is especially powerful when you want to communicate completeness.
Posthog definitely wants to do that. If you are on that train I'd strongly suggest considering/testing it.
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.
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