Developer Marketing and Relations: The Essential Guide

by Jo Stichbury (Editor), SlashData, Nicolas Sauvage (Editor)

Software developers are gaining increasing influence within every company they work for and work with. Engaging at C-level is no longer sufficient: the software developer is now a powerful force in decision-making.

This book is intended to be the “textbook” for those working - or starting - in developer marketing. It will teach you how to engage with developers to build a two-way relationship that is informative and empowering. The book is a timely guide to essential best practices in developer marketing, which is a nascent industry and quite unlike other areas of B2B marketing.

All profits are donated to a worthy cause, details of which can be found on the website for the book at https://sdata.me/dev-marketing-guide.

Topics covered include: running successful developer events, building and maintaining a solid community of developers, how to get the most out of email marketing, how to nurture IoT / hardware developers, how to encourage experts in your community to advocate for you and how to generate a mindset for content marketing in your organization.

This book, the first of its kind, is from leading developer marketing practitioners in some of today’s largest technology companies. It collects the insight of a generation of thought leaders within the field, sharing them to the benefit of all who are working, or planning to work, in the industry as it finally takes off. The goal is to accelerate best-in-class developer marketing, which ultimately benefits users and customers.

The authors of this book reflect a diversity of experience from those working at some of the world’s most auspicious software companies. It includes chapters by developer marketing thought leaders at Accenture, Arm, Atlassian, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Qualcomm, SalesForce, SAP, Unity and VMWare, and a foreword by the Head of Worldwide Developer Marketing for Amazon Web Services. The book was produced by SlashData, the company behind The Future Developer Summit, where the most prestigious technical companies in software development come together to share their insights and best practices on developer marketing. SlashData are also the the leading analyst firm in the developer economy, tracking global software developer trends via the largest, most comprehensive developer surveys worldwide. Their research helps the top technology firms understand who developers are, what tools they are using and where they’re going next.

You will find this book essential if you’re working in developer marketing and want to learn how to build your ecosystem to attract, support, and grow your developer base. You will learn the fundamentals if you are a new hire entering this domain. You will pick up new and deep insights if you are already working in developer marketing and want to advance your career. It isn’t a step-by-step guide to writing a developer marketing strategy, but instead a toolbox for you to gain the knowledge and practical understanding needed to work with your audience.

Whatever your experience, you know, or soon will know, that the developer audience is a tough one to market to, because they dislike aggressive or repetitive messaging and prefer to gain early, hands on experience with a product, making up their own minds by experimenting and talking to existing users. If you take away the insights of our contributors, and absorb their tips and best practices you will be well on the way to handling any B2B marketing role!

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

392 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 15, 2019

Reviews

[Steve Fenton]

This is a DNF. When books are assembled with an author per chapter lack of flow can be a problem and, in this case, jarring. You need a book to draw you in and build chapter by chapter into a current picture.

I read the first few chapters and pivoted to reading chapters that I thought would interest me in particular, but I couldn't get this over the finish line.

[Keith Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some repetition but overall a good read if you have no idea about dev mkting or relations. Some interesting side info on hardware as well as how to help your evangelists and experts, and how to bring in new ones.

[Priyanshu · Rating 1 out of 5]

A lot of words that are neither educational nor actionable.