By focusing on educational content, you provide value first, without a sales agenda, and that in turn builds goodwill and familiarity with your platform. Developers are lifelong learners – if you help them level up, they’ll remember you (and often adopt the tools used in the learning process). Investing in high-quality content is non-negotiable. Here’s how to do it:
Focus on Value and Depth: Throw away the “Ultimate Guide to XYZ” clickbait approach – that doesn’t fly with devs. Your content must be detailed, technically accurate, and problem-focused. As the PostHog team (a devtool company) put it, “Your content needs to be detailed, thoughtful, and relevant to [developers’] problems.” Generic fluff won’t cut it. If you’re writing a tutorial, include code and clear instructions; if it’s a case study, show real results with examples. Essentially, ask yourself: will a developer reading this learn something useful they can apply? If not, start over.
Adopt a Problem-Solution Narrative: One effective formula is: pick a common problem your target devs face, then write “How to solve <problem> using <your tool or technique>.” This naturally showcases your tool in action. For example, if your devtool helps automate testing, write a post like “Flaky Tests in CI? Here’s How I Eliminated Them with an Open Source Tool”. In the post, walk through the debugging process and how your tool fits in. This way, even if readers don’t adopt your tool immediately, they gained some insight – you’ve built goodwill and credibility. I often used this approach, sharing war stories of community management problems and subtly introducing how crowd.dev could help, without making it a sales pitch.
Keep Education Vendor-Neutral (Mostly): While your ultimate goal is to get people using your product, if you present your educational content as overly product-centric, devs might tune out. Instead, focus on the technology or problem area and only use your product as part of the solution. This establishes you as an expert in the field, not just an expert in your own tool. Devs will trust you more. For example, if your product is a testing framework, do a workshop on “Effective Testing Strategies in Microservices” – that covers theory and practice broadly, and your framework is used in the demo for one part, with maybe a mention of why you built it that way.
Share Content Where Devs Gather: Publishing on your own blog alone is not enough – especially for new companies with low domain traffic. You need to distribute content actively. This means posting links (with context!) to forums, communities, and newsletters that devs follow. Which channels work best? Developer communities and forums are a gold mine if used properly. The mistake many make is just dropping a link and leaving. Instead, share with context: summarize the key insight or solution from your post, and tailor the message to that community.
Diversify Content Formats: Developers learn in different ways – some prefer blog articles or documentation, others like videos or even interactive tutorials. Create a mix of blog posts, how-to guides, code examples, short videos, maybe even a webinar or live-coding session. You could publish a written tutorial on your blog, then record a YouTube video walking through the same example. The more formats you offer, the wider your reach. As one content expert noted, “Some devs love a good read, while others prefer snazzy videos, and others want to learn by doing with an interactive tutorial. By providing a variety of educational materials (blogs, guides, videos, interactive demos), you cater to a wider range of learning preferences.” In practice, this could mean hosting an interactive challenge that accompanies your written docs.
Leverage Existing Developer Platforms: Consider publishing or syndicating your content on platforms that already have developer audiences. Sites like Dev.to, Hashnode, and Hackernoon have high domain authority and built-in communities. In fact, your own blog might not be the best place to maximize reach initially. One playbook is to publish on a platform like Dev.to (which gives you instant SEO “juice” and an audience) and use a canonical link to your site. As one article advises: “Platforms like Dev.to, Hashnode, etc. have greater SEO ranking, so publishing your content there makes it more likely to rank high for keywords. These platforms also come with devoted communities – leverage that.
Interactive Tutorials & Sandboxes: Developers learn best by doing. If possible, create an interactive environment (browser-based or a guided CLI tutorial) where devs can try your tool with real input/output, without having to set everything up themselves. Platforms like Instruqt, Katacoda, or your own sandbox instances can facilitate this. For example, a Kubernetes tool might have an interactive tutorial that spins up a dummy cluster in the browser and guides the user through using the tool to deploy an app. This hands-on experience can be far more convincing than any marketing copy. It’s akin to a test drive for a car.
Workshops & Webinars: Host live or recorded workshops. Choose a topic that’s attractive (e.g., “Intro to Machine Learning Deployment” if you have a MLOps tool) and incorporate your tool as part of the workshop exercise. Live workshops allow Q&A and interaction, which can convert interested attendees into active users. Webinars with an educational angle (not just a product demo) tend to get more signups. For example, we did a webinar on “Best Practices in Community Metrics” – we taught general principles and used our platform for examples. Attendees learned things whether or not they ended up using our product, but many did try it out since it was demonstrated in action.
Tap Into Newsletters and Aggregators: Developer newsletters (e.g. JavaScript Weekly, DevOps Weekly) and aggregators (Hacker News, Reddit programming, Lobsters, etc.) can drive enormous bursts of traffic if your content is truly high-quality. To increase your odds, write something novel or very specific – devs on HN love deep dives and fresh perspectives. When one of our posts got to #1 on Hacker News, we saw a huge spike in signups. But even smaller wins, like getting a link in a relevant newsletter, can steadily bring in new curious users each week. Pitch your content to newsletter curators (many are happy to feature good community content), and share on aggregators with an honest, concise title/description.
Office Hours & Labs: Host regular “office hours” (maybe weekly on Zoom or Discord) where devs can drop in to ask questions or get help with building something on your platform. Even if turnout is small, the quality of engagement can be high – and one engaged user can turn into a champion. You can theme some sessions (“This week: integration help session, bring your questions about integrating X with Y”). These sessions build trust: you’re not just a vendor, you’re a mentor.
Action plan
- Identify key topics that developers in your target segment want to learn (and that you have expertise in).
- Aim to publish a high-quality piece of content at least once a week in the early days. Write the content (don’t outsource this entirely – your authenticity and expertise needs to shine through), have your engineers or dev advocates contribute if possible for breadth.
- Create a content calendar of topics that address key pain points your tool solves.
- Once a piece is live, spend equal effort distributing it: post to 2-3 communities (with custom messaging for each), tweet about it, share on LinkedIn, send it to any friendly newsletter contacts.
- Track engagement – which channels brought the most readers, did the post spark discussions or comments? Use that feedback to iterate on both topics and distribution.
Over time, your blog or knowledge hub becomes a magnet for developers searching solutions (many will find you via Google because your posts answer their query – more on SEO in the next chapter). High-quality content is a long game, but it builds compounding awareness and positions you as a helpful expert rather than a pushy vendor.
Learn more about content for developers
- Developer Content Marketing Strategy: Digital Ocean Case Study – Deep dive into how DigitalOcean’s 6,000+ tutorials drove ~5 million monthly visits.
- Content marketing strategy for devtool companies - Guide by Posthog on how they run their own marketing for developers.
- Reaching Developers with Content Marketing – Karl Hughes outlines challenges and tactics for dev content.
- Great Technical Tutorials Address the “Why” – Argues that the best dev tutorials go beyond step-by-step how-to’s to explain reasoning and context.
- “Developer Marketing Does Not Exist” – Book by Adam DuVander (2021). Advocates for educating instead of selling to developers. Shares examples of companies succeeding through content that helps developers solve problems, thus marketing “by doing, not by pitching.”
My tool recommendations
- Plausible Analytics: Website analytics (open source)
- Instruqt: Code sandbox for interactive tutorials