The days of prolific spending in the tech industry are long gone, but lately, budget pressure on marketing teams has been ratcheting up. With every dollar under scrutiny, you need content that delivers results. 

That’s no easy task. Developers are a discerning bunch who quickly detect and skip over content that doesn’t add value to their day-to-day work. If you’re not seeing clear results from your technical content marketing, it might be due to one (or more!) of these mistakes:

1. Making it all about you 
2. Using “high promotion, low value” statements
3. Not getting content into the right hands

Any of these sound familiar? Once we break down each of these common issues, we’ll show you how to achieve better results by adjusting your practices (with a bonus tip at the end!).

Mistake #1: Making It About You

When a developer finds their way to your blog or opens an email, what are they discovering? If the message is all about how great you are — your product, your company, your opinions — there’s no reason for them to stay. 

Developer audiences want solutions for everyday problems and practical guidance so they can learn how trends apply to their work. Too many companies fill their content marketing with promotional statements, competitive FUD, and general navel-gazing that keeps devs from getting to what they’re looking for.

If you want to engage developers, that’s who should be at the center of your content.  

A developer-first mindset highlights real devs solving real problems. You and your products play a supporting role.

Promo-Heavy Content Makes Devs Feel Disrespected

Think about the last time you met someone who monopolized the conversation to talk about themselves and their achievements. You probably felt bored and disengaged very quickly. 

If your content does any of the following, you might be making developers feel you’re that awkward person at the party:

• Highlighting your product or company name everywhere: Developers want to know what problems you can help them solve. If your supposedly educational content feels like advertising, you’ll push them away. 

• Focusing on your company’s kudos: If you intend to share achievements like product awards, customer reviews, or market share, do it only to illustrate why your solution matters. With no practical context, accolades sound like hollow boasting.

• Giving features all the attention: You might be really excited to share a new feature, but it takes more than a spec list to hold people’s attention. Keep the focus on solutions, outcomes, and developers.

• Ignoring that developers have other options: It’s rare that there’s truly only one solution to a problem. Suggesting that there are no alternatives rings false, and it’s a no-no in an industry that embraces flexible ecosystems and open-source tools.

• Tearing down your competition: Developers have choices, and if you fixate on the perceived shortcomings of competitors, you’ll lose their trust. Strong content focuses on what you can do for developers, not what you believe competitors aren’t doing. 

Developer Marketing Should Answer Real Questions

Developers find their way to your content by asking one of two general questions:

• Option 1: “I’ve heard about X company, but I don’t really get what their product does. What could I do with it?”

• Option 2: “I have Y problem. What tools are out there that might help me?”

Successful technical content starts with answering one of these questions. What’s the problem you can solve for developers? How does your product work with other technologies they might be using? How can your product help them rise to the challenge of new tech trends? 

Your answers to these questions should tackle problems developers actually face and in terms they actually use. Instead of sales-speak, your tone should be conversational and relaxed. Even better, incorporate real-life developer conversations (including those from social media and online forums) into your messaging. Your marketing should show that you know how to “speak developer”. 

Remember: If all someone talks about is themselves, who’s listening can become an afterthought. So look outward at developers’ problems and needs — you’ll gain their trust and hold their interest.

Mistake #2: “High Promotion, Low Value” Statements

Developers tend to be smart, analytical, and skeptical. They can sniff out empty claims and needless buzzwords, quickly losing interest in content that doesn’t give due credit to their intelligence.

As fast, easy, and intuitive as you claim your product is, if you don’t supply enough real-life examples and tangible proof, developers will turn around just as fast.

Do You Even Believe Your Own Claims?

Remember that kid in school who used to answer teachers’ questions with too many big words and philosophical-sounding ideas? You never believed they’d done the reading, and neither did the teacher. 

Too much developer content marketing seems to be channeling that kid. And guess what? Developers can tell! If you can’t explain your own product in plain language with concrete examples, relying instead on superlatives and buzzwords, you sound like you’re hiding something.

Some common claims that raise eyebrows and suspicions:

• Do you really have “unlimited scalability”? It’s rare for any technology to handle an ever-increasing workload without eventually needing significant foundational changes. 

• What exactly do you mean by “automation”? Be careful not to oversell your automation features. “Automated troubleshooting” sounds like it happens without human intervention; in reality, only detection is fully automated. People still need to oversee the process and decide what changes to implement. 

• How confident are you that “AI will handle everything”? From coding to QA to deployment, ambitious promises abound as to how AI speeds up software development. Just as with technical content creation, AI can be helpful, but it remains fairly error-prone and best used for specific tasks in the development process.

Cut the Hype

Speak plainly, use clear examples, define key terms, and focus on real-world solutions. If you make big claims, back them up! Don’t be that kid spouting nonsense –- it should be clear you’ve done the work.

You’re speaking to real developers, so the words of other developers are especially valuable. If you have a way to show your product at work in a real application, do it! Use cases make great guest blog posts. Video clips from demos can be reused in written content. For smaller marketing teams, peer-review sites such as G2, PeerSpot, and TrustRadius can bolster the ability to collect testimonials and social proof.

In short, focus on the practical ways your product is unique, and discuss the areas where it makes the biggest difference to devs. And do it in language that cuts the fluff.

Mistake #3: Failing to Put Content In The Right Hands

Once you’ve crafted a content campaign with multiple assets, you can sit back and wait for the engagement to happen, right? 

Seasoned content marketing vets know this is not the case. If no one sees your content, it is a waste of effort. Whether you’re a one-person team or working in a large marketing organization, there are simple things you can do to avoid your content getting lost in the void.

Don’t Get Locked In, Don’t Lock People Out

Do you have a script for releasing new content? Post blog article, send email, post social media blurbs, tag some trending topics, and check it off. 

Sounds like a job well done?

Probably not. 

Different content needs different channels. You wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t!) handle a thought-leadership article aimed at C-level executives the same as a use case aimed at the open-source community. If you do, there’s a good chance you’re excluding potential customers.

Good content marketing should welcome technical audiences from different backgrounds, whether they’re current customers or not. Unfortunately, some common content marketing practices aren’t welcoming at all:

• Gating is a turnoff: Don’t require people to provide their email address and employer details just to obtain basic information about your product. No one wants emails from sales reps before they’ve even had a chance to read the docs.

• Optimizing for robots isn’t a people-pleaser: People don’t want to read content that’s obviously written to cater to SEO and LLM algorithms. It feels icky, it’s a slog to get through, and half the time, it’s incomplete info. SEO is a starting place, not a destination.

• Talking to everybody means talking to nobody: If you’re trying to cover all your bases with one piece of content, you’ll wind up with something that doesn’t meet anyone’s needs. Target your content at people who need it — in what you say, how you say it, and where you say it. Let key audiences know you’re ready to help them by speaking in terms they’ll appreciate.

Of course, no one has unlimited budget, so how do you lay out the welcome mat without spending too much on content that doesn’t get consumed?

Aim Your Tech Marketing Content Effectively

You have at least one product, possibly more, and likely a range of different service levels and pricing plans. Your consumers will use your product in various ways and possess different levels of expertise, so you need to reach them in different ways. 

The challenge is knowing what the right topics and channels actually are. A few tips can help you sort it out:

• SEO isn’t dead: Search engines are still the most effective way of reaching potential customers who don’t know about your solution. Search engine optimization (SEO) maximizes impact by ensuring your content ranks highly for the questions your audiences are asking.

• SEO isn’t everything: Focusing too much on keywords can result in content with buzzword overload and no clear narrative. Prioritize concepts based on keywords, but develop narratives that speak to developers’ needs and interests.

• Be data-driven: Use digital marketing engagement metrics, such as impressions, click-through rate, shares, and downloads. These shouldn’t be limited to traditional advertising — they can be helpful barometers to shape your content marketing, whether it’s a blog article, newsletter, social media post, or video. Find out what’s working, and do more of it.

• Seek qualitative input: Marketing channels with comment functionality can provide qualitative insight into how your content is landing with different audiences. The combination of quantitative and qualitative data will help you identify your best investments.

• Experiment with channels: Finding the right content distribution channel mix may take a few tries. This may look like testing industry and subject matter forums, partnerships with third-party content distributors, and collaborations with analysts and influencers. 

• Follow your audience: Set up in places where current and potential customers are already gathering and talking, but remember mistake #1 — focus on how you can listen, share, and help others. Don’t forget that your own community page is a great place to start!

Following these guidelines helps you focus your energy on the content that’s most valuable to your audience and gets it positioned where they’ll see it. It’s a little more complex than a single script, but the results will pay off.

Mistake #4: Going It Alone

This mistake isn’t quite like the others — it’s not about what to say or where to share it, but it might be just as important.

One of the most critical ingredients in successful technical content marketing is collaboration. That can take different forms:

• Learn about best practices from industry experts and fellow practitioners through social media and online communities. 
• Get a second (and third, and fourth) opinion on your content by sharing it with preferred customers and trusted peers in other parts of your company before publication.
• Read books like Developer Marketing Does Not Exist and Technical Content Strategy Decoded to get ideas and reflect on your practices.
• Reach out to EveryDeveloper to find a partner who can help you develop and execute on a winning strategy. 

Your technical content is meant to be a form of outreach — so it doesn’t make sense to plan and create it in an echo chamber. Seeking other perspectives helps you create work that’s more purposeful and appealing. We’re here to support you along the way — so reach out to us with your questions any time!

Note: Our thanks to Nolan Greene for editorial assistance.