Marketing for Developers

1. marketing for devs @craigkerstiens
2. About me @heroku postgresguide.com postgresweekly.com craigkerstiens.com
4. Marketing is communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service.
5. Great products win when
6. Great projects win when • They communicate their values • They communicate what they do • They have a good user experience • The communicate with users
7. Communicate values
8. Communicate what
9. Good UX MySQL vs. Postgres
10. Communicate w/ users
11. Communicate w/ users
12. In order for your projects
13. Projects success • Not an accident • Succesful ones have at least some of the following: • Solve a problem • Documentation • marketing • Quality
14. It’s not all projects
15. Blogging
16. Beginner trumps all You only have beginner mindset once There’s a lot more beginners than experts in the world
17. Rules of the road Personal blog: Establish a habit/pattern Blog at least once a month Be yourself/authentic
18. Be you • Use your voice • Don’t try to be too authoritative • Talk to people just like you would
19. Growing it • Regularity • Email • RSS -> Email via mailchimp • Tweet • Ask for reviews
20. Create a community
23. Postgresguide Over two years • 150k unique users • 400k impressions Investment • 16 hours initial effort • Occasionally checking PRs
24. Speaking
25. Speaking • Start small -> build up • At your office • Meetups • Regional conferences • PyCon • Ask for input/reviews
26. Focus on the talk • Find your routine • Your priority is on a good talk, not on meeting people
27. What to propose • Catchy title • Inflammatory abstract • Rinse and repeat
28. Evangelism
29. Why • To help others? • Economies of scale • If you help them succeed, they’ll want to help you
30. How • Teach • Mentor • Make them successful • Give them a line to you
31. Distribution
32. - Every developer launching something ever “Can you help get this on Hacker News?”
33. Options Difficulty Easy Hard Reach A lot A little HN Reddit Email lobste.rs DZone Pycoders/python weekly Press
34. If you do want on HN • Engage in the community • Heavybit talk - Iris shoor
35. Timing
36. - Every marketing department ever “Every launch is huge” “Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are all good days for launches”
37. Think outside • I still hate Monday • Friday is great for small things • Weekends!
38. What’s in it for “the man”
39. If developer/technical company
40. For non-developer focused • Learning, speaking requires you master something • Well versed topic takes 10 hrs to prepare • 5 of that is on slides • Lesser versed topic takes 20+ hrs to prepare • Recruiting
41. There’s more • Public speaking helps in a variety of contexts • A conference is cheaper than training
42. - Every marketing department ever “How do I get my engineers to create content”
43. Your engineers are better at marketing than your marketing team
44. Sourcing content • Support tickets • Emails • Show and tells
45. Recap • Contribute to open source - document your projects and actively engage • Blog about everything you learn for the first time • Talk about the things you learn, it helps you master them and helps others • marketing your projects is about communicating both the why and the what
46. Fin. @craigkerstiens