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  • #8: Repo design, Youtube shorts and devmar on social media

#8: Repo design, Youtube shorts and devmar on social media

October 05, 2022

Hey, how was your month?

Mine looked like this:

  • Our marketingto.dev community crossed 250 people! And the level of discussions and engagement has been amazing. So happy to be a part of this.

  • Started writing two articles but got really worn out and couldn't finish. Taking a proper vacation to recharge.

Here are my insights this month.

10 developer marketing insights

1. GitHub Repository Readme.md design from Prisma

I like how it has a proper "website hero section" feel to it but it adds a developer-focused twist:

  • Explains in simple words what the tool is

  • Adds a lot of navigational links (website, docs, examples, blog)

  • Then it goes on to detail about what it does

The rest of the Readme is great as well but the hero section is gold imho.

2. On showing value of community

Patrick Woods CEO of Orbit talks about biz value of building a community.

Something I took from it was this.

It is very hard to do a real MVP of the community.

Because of that most companies never get to the moment when it starts delivering.

But those that do get an unfair advantage in engagement, trust, feedback etc.

3. Resources from Ronak Ganantra

Recently someone asked about good docs designs in our slack community.

Ronak shared his amazing list of marketing resources that I somehow missed. Pure gold.

4. Great article in-text CTA from DigitalOcean

Adding CTA in dev-focused articles is hard.

You don't want to be too pushy, but you do want to get conversions.

DigitalOcean strikes a great balance with their in-text article CTA design.

  • They make this CTA look like an info box that you'd typically see in the documentation.

  • It is clear that it is a Digital Ocean CTA but it doesn't feel pushy.

  • It feels like a piece of potentially useful information.

Love it.

5. Tool for Twitter creators

Came across this new tool suite called blackmagic.so.

Seems like a complete solution for folks using Twitter for biz.

People like Justin Welsh and Daniel Vasallo, and Simon Hoiberg say this is a game changer.So yeah, planning to take the free plan for a spin soon.

6. YouTube shorts ad from Digital Ocean

Digital Ocean went for an ad for the Hactoberfest in a tricky place.

To keep it in the medium that fits YouTube shorts they:

  • made it into an actual short vid

  • used a comic book story

I think doing YouTube shorts is an interesting opportunity in a yet unsaturated market (as of 2022).

And doing ads that fit that medium so nicely is an art.

Good job DO!

7. Reaching devs on social media

This is one of the best articles I read on the subject (thanks for the share Paolo!).

Two quick learnings:

  • "What is more successful is a general post on a subject of interest to the community which includes vendor examples that support my claim. Even neutral or negative treatment is generally a win as it contributes to brand recognition."

  • “Software engineers are [...] eager to engage on subjects about which they are experts. [...] The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

8. Hacker news analytics tool

My recent find.

It shows you the history of Hacker News posts.Could help learn/optimize your campaigns there.

9. Explaining why your tool is free

Devs are skeptics. And although they do expect free plans, they are wondering what is the catch.

I liked how Tailscale explained it in a blog post.

+ it can be almost copy-pasted ;)

10. Marketing to devs with video

As we are dipping into this I am starting to research the subject more.

3 cool resources I found recently:

1 Pear Fact 🍐

Let's talk about wine pearing this time.

According to this article, pears can go well with classics like Chardonnay, Prosecco but also Gewürztraminer, and even Chenin Blanc (heard this one for the first time).

Whatever you choose to drink, pears to you!

Thanks for reading, pears!Want more developer marketing insights?

Want to support?

  • Share it with your developer marketing friends. If you do that on socials tag me pls.

  • You can ☕ buy me a coffee and I do love coffee ;)

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