For many, making a wishlist for an upcoming birthday or the holiday season marked a favorite part of childhood. As adults, wishlists are harder to make. The things you want rarely make it onto a list.
To help you get started on a wishlist, we’re recommending five books every developer marketer needs:
- Developer Relations
- The Business Value of Developer Relations
- Ask Your Developer
- Developer Marketing and Relations
- Docs for Developers
1. Developer Relations
The first book we recommend you get your hands on is Caroline Lewko and James Parton’s Developer Relations: How to Build and Grow a Successful Developer Program.
With combined 30+ years of developer relations experience, Lewko and Parton advise what’s needed to create a dev relation program and the steps to take in order to improve an existing one in this exciting 2021 release. Both the eBook and paperback versions are out now.
2. The Business Value of Developer Relations
The second dev book you should be pining over is the 2018 The Business Value of Developer Relations: How and Why Technical Communities Are Key To Your Success by Mary Thengvall.
The book focuses on the power of positive relationships with developer communities and includes interviews with Developer Relations professionals from Google, Mozilla, Twilio, and many more.
3. Ask Your Developer
If you’re keen on learning how to better utilize the developers at your company, this next recommendation is for you.
Twilio CEO ​​Jeff Lawson wrote Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century. While the paperback hit shelves in early 2021, we highly recommend the audiobook version narrated by Lawson himself.
4. Developer Marketing and Relations
Book #4 on our list is Developer Marketing and Relations: The Essential Guide by Andreas Constantinou of SlashData and Nicolas Sauvage.
It reveals developer relations best practices that the top companies typically keep secret. Developer Relations author Caroline Lewko (our #1 rec) edited the third and most recent edition of this essential guide.
5. Docs for Developers
You won’t want to skip this fifth book.
Docs for Developers: An Engineer’s Field Guide to Technical Writing by Jared Bhatti is a must-have addition to your bookshelf. The guide contains everything you need to know about creating the best documentation from draft to publish.
6. Developer Marketing Does Not Exist
For a bonus book, add Developer Marketing Does Not Exist: The Authentic Guide to Reach a Technical Audience to your wishlist.
The recent release from Adam DuVander will help you understand why typical marketing tactics fall flat on an audience of developers that sniff out anything promotional.
You’ll learn:
- What’s it mean to reach “the right developers?”
- What types of content should you create?
- How should you approach sponsorships?
Add Developer Marketing Does Not Exist to your wishlist now.