Path to success for DevRel

Scribble from Mary Thengvall's amazing blog "The DevRel Path To Success: Awareness, Enablement, Engagement", which talks about what are the key elements of a developer relations team.

Summary:

  • Foundational Categories- Awareness, Enablement and Engagement

  • Functions of DevRel - Developer Advocacy, Experience and Community Management

  • Understanding the balance b/w the three functional categories

Scribbles:

Foundational Categories-

  • Awareness

    • Making sure that developers know about the product, making them aware of the targetted product's existence.

  • Enablement

    • Documentations, guides, tutorials, existing libraries, use-cases, etc. to enable the developers to use your product.

    • Making developers understand that using your product solves their problems can be a huge plus point for them to adopt the product.

  • Engagement

    • Engaging with the community.

3 Functions of Developer Relations-

  • Developer Advocacy

  • Developer Experience

  • Community management

Developer Advocacy

  • Responsible for making sure the community is aware

  • Producing content like blog posts, live streaming, public speaking/talks, etc.

  • Building relations ships in the tech industry.

  • Making sure the team is aware of relevant feedback from the community.

Developer Experience

  • Responsible for standardization, accessibility of documentation for developers.

  • ^ allows the team to put a finishing touch after a fantastic talk from the developer advocate at a tech conference.

  • Gives people the confidence to know that the product can solve their problems with the help of fantastic guides and resources available.

Community Management

  • Working with the most engaged community members.

  • ^ those who run meetups, speak at events on the company's behalf.

  • Goal is to build a stronger community of people as well as connections.

Internal Community

Internally -> Co-workers

  • Awareness OF

    • team's existence

    • the feedback that the community is willing to provide

    • types of processes that can be provided

    • DevRel qualified leads

  • Enabling to

    • serve the community better

    • better communicate with customers

    • write, speak and code in public.

  • Engaging co-workers with the community with conferences, social media, forums, etc.

Externally ->

  • Awareness OF

    • existence of various products and projects

    • team and mission

    • resources

  • Enabling THEM

    • get up and running quickly and easily

    • successful in their role

    • try new things along with amplification of work

  • Engaging

    • using forums, slack, social media, conferences, meetups

    • contributing and collaborating to move members up the pyramid of engagement

How to find balance b/w the 3

  • Understand company goals

  • Find allies in your company

    • Awareness in the marketing dept.

    • Enablement in product and engineering.

    • Engagement in support and customer success team.

  • Prioritizing your task and working across teams to accomplish goals.

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