Sometimes the exact words aren’t as important as the message. That may be a strange thing for a writer to admit.

My older sister and her boyfriend took me to a restaurant. I was maybe 10 or 11. When the food came, they gently let me know I had a bad habit.

Embarrassing as it is to admit… nobody had ever told me I chewed with my mouth open! Pretty sure I haven’t done it since.

As someone in developer engagement, I pride myself on good habits—like using education over promotion.

That’s why I bristled at this tweet a few years back. And its message stuck with me like a basic etiquette lesson.

Here’s a developer that got a lot out of a technical post. Enough to tweet about it. Enough to write “This. This so much.”

Yet, the short bit about the Zapier platform at the end was enough to count as “marketing spiel.”

You can read it for yourself… it’s barely there. One small call to action in the closing section got a mention in an otherwise glowing tweet about a 2,000-word post.

I’m not sure I’d change anything about this post. You certainly can’t please every developer.

Yet, it shows you’re probably more promotional than you think. It takes effort to maintain developer authenticity. When you’re working with a team, the effort compounds as you try to keep everybody on the same page.

So, this is the part where I tell you I can help. Some might even call this a spiel:

I created the D.E.V. Content Framework to help marketing teams confidently engage with developers. Last year we worked with dozens of dev-focused companies to create and improve their content strategies.

Let me help you reach more of the right developers.