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The 11 types of content that work for developers

The 11 types of content that work for developers

I write a lot about content. I've provided a few tips on how to create content, a process for producing content within your Developer Relations team (hint: it's not just Developer Advocates writing stuff and throwing it over the wall!), and how to assemble everything into a consistent go-to-market plan. It's not a coincidence that I've spent so many posts talking about content: content marketing works. It's the best bang for your buck in terms of developer marketing, and if you build a reputation for producing excellent technical content for developers, you will largely solve your brand, awareness, and growth woes.

In this post, I want to talk about the types of developer content you may be tempted to produce, and how best to use it. I would never tell you that something will never work. For example, many Developer Relations leaders believe webinars are a waste of time, but many a developer-focused company has built a very strong webinar-based growth engine.

The truth is, if you decide as an organization to put your energy behind and commit fully to any one of these types of content, you will probably find at least some modicum of success.

Rather, the biggest piece of advice I'd give is to measure everything, and use the data to recognize when it's time to cycle off one form of content and onto another. What got you here may not be what gets you to the next stage.

Here are the types of developer content that work:

  1. Blog posts
  2. Benchmarks and side-by-side comparisons
  3. Tutorials and how-to content
  4. Video
  5. Infographics and interactive content
  6. Checklists and listicles
  7. Case studies, case study videos, and customer interviews
  8. Whitepapers
  9. EBooks
  10. Webinars
  11. Podcasts and streaming "shows"

Let's dive into each of these.

Blog posts

Blog posts are amazing when they're written for developers. What I mean by this is that it's easy to churn out content that is optimized for search engines. Just put keywords everywhere. But Google does not like this and will, in fact, penalize your post if it reads like clickbait.

Instead, Google prefers content that provides a unique perspective and educates and informs the developer. You could spend your days freaking out about what will Google like and what will Google not like.

Let's try a different approach: write for an audience, especially an audience you've made substantial efforts to understand in its fullest. Try to teach the audience something new. Maybe illuminate a topic that has vexed or confounded that audiences for years. Highlight things or ideas that the audience will appreciate. In short: Help First.

At the same time that you're focused on teaching the audience something new, you can also pepper your post with targeted keywords. But the first and most important consideration is to inform and entertain your audience. Do that, and the Google Juice will flow.

Benchmarks and side-by-side comparisons

Developers LOVE benchmarks. Love them.

But be careful: developers to NOT love benchmarketing.

What do I mean by this? Your benchmarks must be truthful. They must come from a place of high integrity. In your benchmarks, explain how you win and also explain how your competitors win and provide context for why.

For example, suppose you're a database vendor and your competitor beats you in benchmarks when the amount of data being stored is low. You can explain how, yes, your competitor is better in this regard, and then use the opportunity to position them as a "great database for getting started," but when you need a serious database for serious workloads, developers should choose you.

Be truthful. But don't fail to provide context.

As for the benchmark post itself, the form it takes is irrelevant. You can publish it as a blog post, a microsite, or as a contributed article to a third-party website. I've done all three and found the most luck with blog posts, but there's a great opportunity to build interactive explainers in microsites.

Tutorials and how-to content

These are my favorite pieces of content to produce. Tutorials, how-to content, and samples can be fun and informative, and the call-to-action embedded in this content is easy: sign up to complete the tutorial.

But inherent in tutorials is a distinct trap: off-topic content or datasets. Let's say you have a product aimed at developers of highly scalable systems. These are developers building enterprise-grade applications. You wouldn't create a tutorial that uses a tiny dataset and solves a simple problem. The leap from a toy dataset to "this product can handle the workload I'm considering on the job" is pretty big.

Even if the topic of the tutorial is a little more fun than a boring corporate scenario, make sure the bones of the tutorial are representative of the types of applications your customers are actually building.

A quick side word on vocabulary:

- Tutorial: an end-to-end explainer of how your product can be used in a specific scenario.
- Sample: a full application that can be git-cloned, along with documentation on how to use it.
- How-to: a short application that solves one tiny sliver of a problem.

That's just my stab at it.

Video

Producing video is some of the most fun and rewarding work most Developer Advocates do. Video is obviously far more immersive than long blog posts like this one, and people are conditioned to watch and listen to video, especially for informative topics like this. Code-focused topics, where people are expected to copy/paste and work alongside you, is probably still best-served through the written word (or, perhaps a combination of the two).

If you're not familiar with the world of YouTube videos for developers, start watching and fall into your own YouTube hole. You'll notice a few things:

  • Video where the talent is on screen and explaining things is far more interesting than just watching a screencast. And it will generate far more views, too.
  • Put production value into your video. Getting a good YouTube setup isn't actually that expensive these days, so invest in the camera, ring lights, microphone, backlighting, and software to produce great video content.
  • Experiment with your video descriptions and thumbnails. You can't re-upload your video later without losing your view count and likes. But you can change your thumbnails and descriptions as much as you'd like. Blatantly copy successful videos and look for the formula and look and feel that works best for you.
  • The line between technical developer content and general content is fairly blurry. Developers tend to have varied interests, so don't hesitate to copy the technical aspects of some of your favorite non-developer content.

One other comment about video content, and especially the topics you choose. A common mistake many companies make is to publish "inside-out" video content: content about their own product or service. While this may be necessary (for example, you may want to embed video into your docs), this alone will likely not generate the view count you're looking for.

Instead, look for content that drafts off a more successful product. For example, if you have a new feature in your JavaScript framework, maybe show how developers can use that feature to make it easier to use Sequelize or another popular ORM. Think about how to worm your way as a guest star onto someone else's bigger stage.

Infographics and interactive content

Infographics are awesome ways to highlight important concepts in your blog posts and videos.

Be sure to excerpt them and use them in other areas, including social media. Think about ways to make them interactive and embed them in microsites or your homepage. Turn your infographics into star attractions in the landing pages of your paid ad campaigns.

If you've done a ton of hard work (for example, running benchmarks), be sure to reuse that work in as many places as possible. Infographics can often be very easy ways to encapsulate tons of work into one bite-sized nugget.

After all, a picture is worth a thousand lines of code.

Checklists and listicles

People love checklists, and no matter what they say, the data clearly shows that people love listicles too. Arranging complex topics into an easy to follow narrative that doesn't require a significant time investment is always a winner ("7 JavaScript tips from power-users").

Take your common keywords and think about ways you can build listicles around them.

Case studies and interviews

You want your customers to speak on your behalf about how awesome you are. Case studies are a pillar of every team's marketing mix.

I like to think about two different types of case studies:

  • What I call the "A Side": this is the glossy case study you're probably most familiar with. They're great for your website with awesome graphics, logos, and screenshots. They're also awesome when turned into PDFs for your sales team.
  • And what I call the "B Side": this is a technical Q&A with a lead developer at your customer. I love to post these on the blog along with a link to the "A Side" case study.

One other thing I love is video case studies. If you're able to record your customer reiterating the points made in your case studies, you'll have an asset that can be reused in multiple places. The actual YouTube video may not get many views, but when the video is chopped down to 15- and 30-second soundbites, they're awesome for social media.

I wouldn't invest in video case studies until you're slightly later stage, but nevertheless, keep the idea in the back of your mind.

Whitepapers

Whitepapers are a special form of blog posts, but they tend to be more polished and formal. Often, they are offered as PDF downloads. These days, I prefer interactive microsites to PDF downloads. I feel like this improves SEO performance while providing a more immersive reading experience for developers.

Many marketing teams like to put white papers behind lead acquisition forms (a customer is required to provide contact information before downloading.) I personally loathe having to obtain content by first obtaining a lead. If I like what I read, I'll sign up for the product, and that makes me a much higher quality lead than if I just provided contact information. Have mercy on your sales team and only send them quality leads.

EBooks

Ebooks are a packaged booklet of your best content. Take your high-performing blog posts and website content and reuse it in a glossy PDF (or physical printed and bound) for distribution to customers at events and meetings.

For years, I thought Ebooks were wastes of time, but having spoken to many salespeople and conference attendees, I've come to the conclusion that if you are talking to someone you know has the potential to be a high quality lead, offering them a leave-behind book with tons of excellent technical content serves as a helpful reminder to follow-up with you for more information about your product.

Not every business will benefit from EBooks. If you are building a long-tail developer product, you will likely skip this tactics. But if your product is aimed at enterprise audiences, you may find this immensely helpful. It's worth experimenting.

Webinars

There's a belief among some people in Developer Relations that "developers will never attend webinars." I think this statement is a bit overblown...most developers won't attend something called a "webinar." For the purposes of this post, I will standardize on the term "webinar," but you should consider branding your live videos as "live coding streams," "live workshops," and so on.

What's most important is that if your webinar is technical, offers great information from well-known sources, and provides an opportunity for developers to learn something new, they will, in fact, sign up to attend.

Needless to say, your first and most important task is to find something interesting to say. Remember my emphasis on "outside-in"...your topic should be something of instant appeal and interest to developers already. It should be less about you, and more about a topic developers are curious about.

There are multiple ways to run webinars, and I won't belabor them here. I will describe for you what I love to do, as it's low friction and feels less "enterprisey" and more modern.

  1. First, I put up a landing page that describes the webinar, includes important information (date, time, speaker bios), and offers a form for people to sign up to be reminded.
  2. I setup three nurture emails. The first is immediately after signing up. The second is a reminder 24 hours before the webinar that, again, includes the pertinent information as well as the link to join and an "add to Calendar" link. And the third is a follow-up summary 24 hours after the webinar with links to resources, white papers, EBooks, videos, and anything else you may have referenced during the webinar itself.
  3. I promote the webinar across my ad channels using my keywords. The call to action for these ads leads to the landing page.
  4. I put a banner on the top of my website encouraging people to click and sign up to attend.
  5. I've experimented with Zoom Webinar (which I love) but I've come to really, really depend on Restream. I think Restream is fabulous. You are able to go live and then broadcast across all your social media accounts. By using Restream, I am able to both capture potential attendees' contact information before the event AND appeal to those who may be browsing social media and are inspired to simply join in. Restream also enables you to run a very professional-looking webinar.
  6. On the day of the event, I modify the landing page to embed the live video. I then continue to promote the modified landing page on my ad channels.
  7. After the event, I embed the recorded video and include links to all the same resources in my post-event nurture email.
  8. Also, after the event, I run retargeting campaigns (assuming I have sufficient audience size) for everyone who visited the landing page using some of the key messages from the webinar itself.

I think these steps really give you a professional webinar, the ability to capture leads beforehand, and the serendipitous ability to capture audience during your stream itself.

Podcasts and streaming "shows"

We all love podcasts, but having attempted (as a startup) to start a podcast, a streaming show, and a user group, I can tell you this: it is a lot of work.

On top of the demand generation motion you already need to run to drive awareness of your product, you're also now running a demand generation motion for your podcast. It is hard enough to break through noise with one thing, so why bother trying to do it with two things?

Your best bet is to identify interesting podcasts in your space and obtain guest spots and/or sponsorships.

A final word on content repurposing

No content is an island. When you put a ton of energy into building a piece of content, you need to think about all the many ways you will reuse it.

Turn your blog post into a series of infographics for social media. Turn your tutorials into an interactive landing page that guides customers through a scenario and immerses them in the value of your product. Turn your content into webinars or guest stints on podcasts. Don't forget to take your best blog posts and convert them into conference talks and submit CFPs.

All of your content needs to be repurposed in multiple ways. the rule of thumb I ask my Content Program Managers to follow is that every piece of content needs to be reused in at least three ways.