Marketing for Developers

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marketing for devs @craigkerstiens

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

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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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Great products win when

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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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Communicate values

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Communicate what

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Good UX MySQL vs. Postgres

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Communicate w/ users

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Communicate w/ users

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In order for your projects

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

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It’s not all projects

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Blogging

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

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

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

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

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Create a community

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

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Speaking

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

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

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

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Evangelism

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

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

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Distribution

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

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

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

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Timing

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

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

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What’s in it for “the man”

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If developer/technical company

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

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

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Your engineers are better at marketing than your marketing team

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Sourcing content • Support tickets • Emails • Show and tells

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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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Fin. @craigkerstiens