🍐 #68: Docs masterclass with ex-Stripe Head of Docs, fantastic Twitter video ad, and a new newsletter to follow

Hey,

Pear, pear, pear… peardon I have nothing this week. Or do I ;)? 🍐

This week on the agenda:

• How to create great docs with ex-Stripe Head of Docs Dave Nunes

• Newsletter from Etel Sverdlov (ex-Digital Ocean Head of Community)

• Raw "Timer" Twitter video ad from Kinde

• + a few bonus links at the end

Before we start, a word from this week’s sponsor:

Common Room combines signals from your site and product, job boards, social platforms, and communities to help you identify accounts ready to “talk to sales”.

And they just added website deanonymization to their already impressive signals lists.

Check out this post and video from Kevin White explaining it.

They have a free plan so you can just see if it works for you.

Developer marketing insights

1. Newsletter from Etel Sverdlov (ex Digital Ocean Head of Community)

Some time ago, when I shared my learnings from looking into Digitial Ocean content strategy and tagged some leaders from DO, someone reached out to me saying something like:

“Hey, I like the content, but you do know that the person who really made a difference there was Etel Sverdlow, right?”

And so when I saw Etel start a newsletter I got really excited.

So Etel’s Substack has just posts right now and they are bomb:

• ”We need to start marketing… Now what?”: Talks about dev marketing channels (YouTube, Events, Written, LinkedIn, Discord, Email) and gives tips and stories for each

• “What I wish I knew about PR that I know now”: Goes into why even do PR in dev tools, how to pick and work with agencies and outlets, and how to craft the story PR folks may pick up

I highly recommend checking it out. And I am excited for the future issues.

2. How to create great docs with ex-Stripe Head of Docs Dave Nunez

Had a chance to co-host an MLOps community podcast episode with Dave Nunez who ran docs at the GOAT of all docs Stripe.

Here are my top takeaways:

• The first impression matters a ton: Show diagrams, show code, and make it inviting. Whitespace signals that the docs will be approachable and easy to scan.

• The most impactful user research is to get a dev to complete a scenario and ask them to do things as they normally would and “think out loud”. That uncovers so much.

• If you cannot just ask your company devs to take a look at that doc and ask them “what are your takeaways”. See if they align with the goal of the doc

• Create escape hatches. People will land on the wrong pages. For example, when you google Stripe checkout you can end up on the dev-focused or no-code-focused page. Put a link/button at the top to help people go to the page they actually wanted.

• Docs MVP. Don’t think of any other docs before you nail the first quickstart experience where a dev understands what the product is, and accomplishes something in one 15-30min sitting.

• Later, align your docs with dev stages: getting started, design, build, deploy, manage. It will make it easier for devs to achieve more.

• How to measure docs: customer satisfaction on doc pages 60%+ is good and a north star of time to do X like time to first API call, or time to first dashboard created.

• Look at search results. It uncovers the language devs use and the features they want. Update your search internals to that. Also many folks search in google for “X {BRAND}” or “X {BRAND} docs” so you can treat those searches similarly.

Full episode:

• Watch the video on YouTube

• Listen on Apple podcast

• Listen on Spotify

3. Raw "Timer" Twitter video ad from Kinde

This is such a fantastic ad creative because it is just so different.

So basically what Kinde does is:

• It shows the timer, dev, and the screen nothing else.

• The dev adds authorization to the application in under 2 minutes

• The fact that the dev is sneezing while coding just makes it so real and human

• You see a how-to-add Kinde for authorization tutorial while rooting for the dev to complete ;)

• Bonus points for having that filename saying what it is, almost like an ad title: Authspeedrun.mp4

That timer is such a great way of catching attention and keeping it while landing your product message. It seems raw and "whatever" but I think it is very intentional in its dev-friendly delivery.

So if you have a dev tool that has awesome devex and can get people to that aha moment quickly then give it a go (and tell me how it went ;)).  

See more dev tool video examples ->

Need more developer marketing insights?

1. Work with me 🍐

Every week I have a few slots for Workshops (60-minute session on whatever you want), Teardowns (audit+suggestions for your homepage/messaging/ads etc), and longer-term Advising.

See how it works ->

2. Bonus links to check out

• 📜 List of dev tool YouTube Channels with stats 

• 👓️ How to write an effective conference talk abstract 

• 📺️ Selling to Developers Needs a Different Strategy - Sharing Our Tech Sales Tips - YouTube - Viktor from Sales 

3. Join our Slack community

1600+ dev tool CMOs, heads of growth, product marketers, and other practitioners talking shop.

Check out marketingto.dev ->