There are many marketing channels you can use to reach a technical audience. Authentic content flows through each of these areas, but your team will need different skills for each category. Review the channel descriptions and examples below, or use the links within the graphic to navigate to an area for additional information and context.
Informative Articles AKA “Your Blog”
The most likely location for your written content, you’ll want a steady stream of informative articles to attract and engage a technical audience. Remember, even though it’s “your blog,” most posts should be about your audience, not your product or company.
Further Reading
- Publish More Strategic Content with Concepts
- A Simple Pattern in Technical Content That Engages
- The Analytics-Driven Approach to Developer Content
Great Examples
Educational Property
Blog posts can only go so deep. An educational property can be its own site or a separate section of your existing site. It should provide deep coverage of a concept, often with multiple pages and its own navigation. You can support the property with global navigation links and frequent references within blog content.
Further Reading
- The Marketing Funnel for Technical Products
- The Developer Content Mind Trick for Signature Content (HeavyBit)
- Guide Devs to Build (5 min podcast)
Great Examples
- Enterprise Ready by Replicated
- Chaos Monkey Guide for Engineers by Gremlin
Guest Posting
Publishing your own content provides an opportunity to attract relevant, evergreen traffic to your site. However, you can manufacture links, referral traffic, and greater awareness through targeted guest posting opportunities. Find an appropriate audience and bring the same educational approach to the content you publish elsewhere.
Republication
A flavor of guest posting, republication deserves separate consideration. Here you take existing content and publish it elsewhere with little to no updates. That makes it one of the easiest methods in our technical content reuse framework. There are several places where you can republish content to a broad audience without editorial oversight or SEO drawbacks.
Further Reading
Social
The first of the community content channels, your own social presence, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, should be included in your plan. Some republication could also be considered social, though it’s separated out because, for most social channels, you must be active in the community to be most successful. Without engaging yourself, you’re unlikely to see maximum engagement with your social content.
Further Reading
Forums
While most social channels focus on following accounts, developer forums follow specific technologies or topics. As with other community content channels, you’ll want to be engaged in these communities, which can include sub-Reddits, StackOverflow, and Hacker News.
Video
Video is a popular format for showing technical products and ideas in action. With YouTube often cited as the second-largest search engine (after its parent Google), it’s also a viable traffic acquisition method. In addition, you can build a community that anticipates new videos via YouTube’s built-in subscription. Further, video embeds can get you in more search results and may receive more clicks with thumbnails.
Streaming
Another flavor of video popular with technical audiences is Twitch and other streaming services. Here, you create content live (and provide replays) to show technical topics in action. This format can be very authentic, as you’ll show what it really takes to use technical products together. Though part of the social category, good streaming requires the presentation skills of the next few channels.
Events
In-person events, such as conferences and meetups, can be a great way to meet your technical audience. This is an often expensive, but extremely high-fidelity and authentic way to endear developers to your company via its people. While you don’t need to present at events, this often provides the best exposure and interaction, compared to even sponsorship or mere attendance.
Further Reading
- “Puzzillas from Mansilla” inspiration for events (5 min podcast)
Great Examples
- Major League Hacking student education events
Webinars
Virtual events became a necessity during the COVID pandemic, but have been options before and since. Whether called webinars, webcasts, or other names, these are typically a presentation format that also invites audience participation. With many platforms, including a more traditional video conference call, the experience is flexible. By partnering with or inviting other experts, you can increase your audience.
Podcast Guesting
Podcast tours are the new media equivalent of yesteryear’s blitz of morning news shows. The advantages of this channel over the traditional method are fewer gatekeepers and more niche audiences. You’ll want guests to be experts or at least able to communicate authentically with your technical audience. While this often requires time that is hard to get, the advantage is you don’t need much—typically the 30-60 minutes it takes to prepare and record the podcast.
Podcast Hosting
It’s worth separating the podcast channel into hosting because it’s very different from a guesting tour. You’ll need to identify an audience, concept, or likely both for your podcast. You’ll also have production considerations that are very different from other channels. And it will take more of your team’s effort to promote your own podcast, especially in the early days. The benefits could be a channel with less competition for technical listeners.
Great Examples
- API Intersection, the podcast from Stoplight
Sponsorship
Some, myself included, have advised against unrestrained advertising to technical audiences. The first of these paid channels makes the most sense. Sponsorships are ongoing, relational, and often collaborative. Developers will appreciate those who support their favorite creators in an authentic way, which makes sponsorship worth trying for your product.
Further Reading
- Bypass Developer Ad Blockers with Sponsorships (4 min podcast)
Advertising
All the things developers dislike about marketing are present in your typical advertisement. Yet, you can still bring an authentic message to banners, pre-roll, keyword ads, and more. Unless there’s a really compelling reason, you’re unlikely to see a lot of signups from this channel. That shouldn’t keep you from looking for ways to engage your technical audience with authentic, educational content.
Newsletters
Email newsletters can certainly be your own channel, but they’re in the paid content section for a reason: to have any success with this channel requires intense editorial and research that you’re unlikely to have on staff. Instead, look to support others who have built the skills and following. You can—and should—still maintain a list yourself, but don’t count on it as a primary channel.
Great Examples
- Last Week in AWS newsletter and podcasts
- Cooper Press dev-focused newsletters