Developer Marketing Protips

I’ve been in Developer Marketing since 2005, so I have some thoughts (shared via tweets):

If your developer product strategy is based on surveys, I have some survey data you need to see: pic.twitter.com/F9481WR1eU

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) August 9, 2021

Dev Marketing Protip: If watching your virtual developer event requires registration so you can "collect leads," you are doing it all wrong.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) June 8, 2021

The primary call-to-action for every developer marketing activity should be: get developers' hands onto your stuff.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) May 21, 2021

Things that will not fix your product adoption issues:
🚫 Re-org
🚫 Re-brand
Things that might fix your product adoption issues:
☑️ Invest in your getting started / learning experiences
☑️ Align values around what your users need (both technically & personally), not what you need

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) May 7, 2021

Dev products have gravity. Ideally the gravity is strong enough to pull lots of developers in. But lots of gravity comes from being lots better and likely your product isn't. So instead of pulling into your gravitational field, get into the orbit of others and use their gravity.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) May 11, 2021

Dev Marketing Protip: One of the best ways to get enterprise developer adoption is to help developers use your stuff for their side projects. If they love it, they'll want to bring it into work.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) April 26, 2021

I don’t know who needs to hear this but developers are not sales leads. Unless you are selling free software for free.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) December 18, 2020

Developer Marketing How-To:
Step 1) Build something developers really want
Step 2) Make it easy to learn & use
That’s it. And if the adoption is not what you hoped for, spend more time on step 1.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) July 10, 2020

Most annoying thing when trying a cloud service:

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) October 14, 2020

Here is the secret to great developer marketing... Build stuff that developers really want.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) July 12, 2019

If a new product isn't gaining significant market share, either:
a) its value is lower than the cost of adoption
b) its value is not being expressed correctly

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) March 4, 2020

Dev Marketing Pro Tip #327
Almost no one wants to switch app hosting infra, programming language, database, CI system, application architecture, CSS library version, app framework, DNS provider, cloud, build tool, shell, editor, or their own teeth. (Unless teeth are falling out)

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) February 10, 2021

Developer Marketing Protip: Developer conference keynotes should convey vision & passion while being authentic. For a perfect example see @gwenshap's Kafka Summit Keynote: https://t.co/13maYAJykr

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) August 27, 2020

Dear Developer Marketing, The kinds of developers you most want to reach, do not fill out your surveys.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) July 8, 2020

DevMarketing Pro Tip: The technology has to work. The solution has to matter.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) April 1, 2021

Developer Marketing Protip: Don’t use stock photos.

— James Ward (@_JamesWard) April 20, 2020