I’ve been creating technical content for quite some time now. Initially it was just a hobby - I just liked learning new things and talking about it. Then I started doing it as part of my work as well. When I joined my current company we were still a pretty early stage startup so a lot of our focus was mostly on execution. We would brainstorm ideas and areas we wanted to talk about and then I would write technical blogs, record tutorials and create other content around them. The main goal was just putting our name out there.
As we started to grow and scale, this ad hoc approach wasn’t going to cut it. We began being more strategic about the areas of content we wanted to focus on and what value we were expecting to get out of it. Over time, I developed a framework of sorts to help me think about different types of content which is relevant for a dev tools company. In this blog, I’m going to share that with you!
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The Three Buckets
If you’re a company selling to developers, in my opinion, there are three buckets for content which you need to fill. Obviously there are other kinds of content but these are three areas which I feel are really MUST HAVES. And I’m not talking about the form of content, that is, blogs or videos or talks, etc. I’m talking more about “themes of content” here.
Here are the three buckets and I’ll go into more details about each bucket next:
- Feature Education
- Integrations
- Thought Leadership
Feature Education
This one seems really obvious at first and this is the one most companies end up doing whether intentionally or unintentionally when getting started. What I want to shed light on in this section is a very important thing which people often miss when doing this kind of content.
When it is your product, every feature can seem intuitive and easy to understand to you. However, for a developer encountering your product for the first time, your tool and its features can be overwhelming. When creating feature content you need to let go of all your existing knowledge and try to approach things like a first time user would. That means try to introduce features in the order the user would encounter them in as well.
And please please don’t feel you need to educate them about every “cool” feature your product has, some things are meant to be picked up later from docs or intuitively. Trying to explain too much often doesn’t impress the reader as much as we’d like to think but instead has the negative effect of just confusing them or leaving them overwhelmed!
Videos and product tours are usually the best medium for this type of content. Lastly, remember that feature education is primarily about showing day-to-day usage of your project and connecting features to the users’ daily challenges!
Integrations
Dev tools never live in isolation. Go read the previous sentence one more time before proceeding. If your product is meant for developers, you need to figure out other tools which your users will also be using along with your product. And I can’t stress this enough but you HAVE to build content around this. There are two main reasons for this.
The first is that developers will not stop using all the other things they already use no matter how much they love your product. So you need to educate them on how your solution fits in with their existing toolbox. This doesn’t have to be an official integration or a feature in your product. Simply educating on how the usage of the two tools together could look like is tremendously valuable! And if you’re starting out, these are discussions you will have to lead because the other tools your users might be using have no incentive to create content about your product.
The second reason to do this is that it’s just really good publicity! What better way of getting eyes on your product than by showcasing how it can fit right in and enhance existing workflows? By creating content that demonstrates the integration or compatibility of your product with other popular tools, you are essentially advertising to a wider audience who may not have heard of your product otherwise. Plus, this type of content has high potential for sharing and reaching new users through word-of-mouth recommendations. Cherry on top of that is that you also get to build relations with other companies operating in the same space as you.
My personal learning has been that webinars are great for this, especially if you can get someone from the other company to join as a guest speaker. This not only adds credibility to your content but also allows for cross-promotion and potential collaborations in the future. But the way to get the attention of the other companies almost always starts with a blog post :)
Thought Leadership
The third and the last bucket that I feel is really important is thought leadership. Unless your product is present in a very well-established space and ecosystem, you will have to do this type of content to build your category. This type of content helps establish your company as a prominent and recognized voice in the space you’re in.
By sharing insights, best practices, and future trends, you don’t only inform; you guide. This content serves a dual purpose: it educates your users and provides your sales team with a narrative that resonates with leaders and decision-makers.
For instance, at my current company we started a platform engineering newsletter and a blog series to help with exactly these kinds of efforts. This content not only gathers attention from developers but also sparks conversations with CXOs and engineering leads (our target persona). This recognition as an expert in your field is invaluable for any company’s sales strategy. Blogs, case studies, and short eBooks are usually the best medium for this!
Conclusion
These are three key areas I feel dev tools companies really need to invest their content efforts in order to be successful. Certain content formats (blogs, videos, etc.) do well for certain categories. But blogs I feel are evergreen so if you’re strapped on resources or bandwidth, would definitely recommend starting with those!
I hope this article was useful and you were able to learn something from my experience. I’m going to be much more active in sharing useful things I learn, so if you’re interested in more of this content I would recommend signing up for my newly launched newsletter! https://buttondown.email/arsh
Thanks for reading!