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Marketing for Developers

Marketing for Developers

Craig Kerstiens

June 22, 2015
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  1. marketing for devs
    @craigkerstiens

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  2. About me
    @heroku
    postgresguide.com
    postgresweekly.com
    craigkerstiens.com

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  4. Marketing is communicating the value of a
    product or service to customers, for the
    purpose of selling that product or service.

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  5. Great products win when

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  6. Great projects win when
    • They communicate their values
    • They communicate what they do
    • They have a good user experience
    • The communicate with users

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  7. Communicate values

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  8. Communicate what

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  9. Good UX
    MySQL vs. Postgres

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  10. Communicate w/ users

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  11. Communicate w/ users

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  12. In order for your projects

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  13. Projects success
    • Not an accident
    • Succesful ones have at least some of the following:
    • Solve a problem
    • Documentation
    • marketing
    • Quality

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  14. It’s not all projects

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  15. Blogging

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  16. Beginner trumps all
    You only have beginner mindset once
    There’s a lot more beginners than experts in the world

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  17. Rules of the road
    Personal blog:
    Establish a habit/pattern
    Blog at least once a month
    Be yourself/authentic

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  18. Be you
    • Use your voice
    • Don’t try to be too authoritative
    • Talk to people just like you would

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  19. Growing it
    • Regularity
    • Email
    • RSS -> Email via mailchimp
    • Tweet
    • Ask for reviews

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  20. Create a community

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  23. Postgresguide
    Over two years
    • 150k unique users
    • 400k impressions
    Investment
    • 16 hours initial effort
    • Occasionally checking PRs

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  24. Speaking

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  25. Speaking
    • Start small -> build up
    • At your office
    • Meetups
    • Regional conferences
    • PyCon
    • Ask for input/reviews

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  26. Focus on the talk
    • Find your routine
    • Your priority is on a good talk, not on meeting
    people

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  27. What to propose
    • Catchy title
    • Inflammatory abstract
    • Rinse and repeat

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  28. Evangelism

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  29. Why
    • To help others?
    • Economies of scale
    • If you help them succeed, they’ll want to help you

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  30. How
    • Teach
    • Mentor
    • Make them successful
    • Give them a line to you

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  31. Distribution

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  32. - Every developer launching something ever
    “Can you help get
    this on Hacker News?”

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  33. Options
    Difficulty Easy
    Hard
    Reach A lot
    A little
    HN
    Reddit
    Email
    lobste.rs
    DZone
    Pycoders/python weekly
    Press

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  34. If you do want on HN
    • Engage in the community
    • Heavybit talk - Iris shoor

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  35. Timing

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  36. - Every marketing department ever
    “Every launch is huge”
    “Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
    are all good days for launches”

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  37. Think outside
    • I still hate Monday
    • Friday is great for small things
    • Weekends!

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  38. What’s in it for “the man”

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  39. If developer/technical
    company

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  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

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  41. There’s more
    • Public speaking helps in a variety of contexts
    • A conference is cheaper than training

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  42. - Every marketing department ever
    “How do I get my
    engineers to create
    content”

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  43. Your engineers are better at
    marketing than your marketing
    team

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  44. Sourcing content
    • Support tickets
    • Emails
    • Show and tells

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  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

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  46. Fin.
    @craigkerstiens

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