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Four pillars of DevRel
To devise a DevRel strategy, one must understand their company's needs and the tactics that can be used to meet them. Let's take a look at the four pillars to understand all of this in a better way.
The four pillars of developer relations
DeveloperRelations.com
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Summary
- DevRel programme usually/arguably revolves around fours pillars.
- Outreach
- Community
- Product
- Education and support
- Pillar define what exactly is done in the programme.
- Pillar can be further divide based on the tasks performed by DevRel and Dev Experience.
- Offers a handy way to think about tactics to pursue a DevRel strategy.
Scribbles
Four Pillars
- Outreach
- Community
- Product
- Education and support
What are the pillars for?
- Pillars are about what you will do in your DevRel programme.
- The strategic initiatives to meet the program's initiative are usually chosen from one or more of the given pillars
DevRel vs Developer Experience
- Once you take a close look at the four pillars, it's visible there are two halves -- outreach and community which is usually covered by developer relations, then we have product and education/support which is covered by developer experience.
- DevRel programme needs to consider all four.
- A mix of tactics chosen will depend on the broader strategy. This brings us to the AAARRRP funnel, which you can take a deeper look at in the scribble linked below.
[link the scribble]
Example of why the divide b/w DevRel and Dev Experience isn't always clear.
- One can have a great outreach program, arguably DevRel, to drive people from awareness to acquisition -- a better approach would be to have high-quality documentation, which arguably falls under developer experience.
Outreach
- Broadly, covered in two ways
- Online
- In-person
- Activities are done in order to drive customers.
- Makes people aware of the products and helps them get a better overall understanding.
- Helps people to overcome initial objections and push through to some commitment to using it.
Community
- Community is about creating a framework that enables developers to be successful with your product.
- Having an active community around the product is 🔑 for many developers.
- Provides the evidence that people, other than the organization selling it are using it for various use-cases.
- Helps in amplifying efforts of DevRel programme.
Community has a role to play in each stage but it’s most focused on moving developers from the acquisition through to the product stages. The social proof, additional support, and supplemental activities that a community delivers are all crucial in helping developers to feel comfortable about committing to your product.
Product
- DevRel teams can find themselves in marketing, engineering or anywhere based on the organization's goals.
- Now, DevRel in the product might sound a little unconventional for beginners as to what role can they have in shaping the product -- right?
- Developer advocacy is more talked about than developer evangelism, partly because advocacy is a two-way thing.
- Dev advocates, advocate the products to developers but also advocate on the behalf of developers in product discussions and ensure that developer needs are heard.
- DevRel teams should focus on ensuring that developer needs are hears and should represent the voice of developers in product discussions.
- In terms of dev funnel - DevRel's role in the product should focus on moving someone from activation to becoming a committed user.
Education and support
- This domain can likely be covered by several different teams.
- Dedicated support team
- Developer success team
- Developer education team
- DevRel itself.
- Whether or not DevRel is directly involved in it, they should take account of activities necessary to educate developers and support them outside of the company's formal/dedicated channels
- DevRel team's role should be to support developers who aren't yet customers, to provide them with educational materials that the company's tech writes wouldn't cover.
- To ensure that developers are more productive -- strong education and support is a must.
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