Content Strategy That Converts: Lessons from Developer Marketing
Developer marketing is one of the most nuanced areas in B2B. Developers have highly sensitive BS detectors and can spot inauthentic content from a mile away. They want technical depth, practical examples, and honest assessments. Not marketing fluff.
What Developers Actually Want
When working with companies like DreamHost and Graphite, we focus on creating content that developers actually want to read. This means in-depth technical tutorials, honest product comparisons, and real-world use cases. The content needs to be so valuable that people would read it even if they never became customers.
Think about the blog posts you've bookmarked or shared. They probably weren't promotional. They were probably deep dives that solved a specific problem you were facing. Or thoughtful analyses that helped you understand a complex topic. That's the bar.
Technical Depth Without Gatekeeping
There's a balance to strike with technical content. You want depth, but not unnecessary complexity. You want to be thorough, but not exhausting. You want to show expertise, but not gatekeep.
The best developer content assumes intelligence but not knowledge. It explains concepts clearly without being condescending. It shows working code, not just pseudocode. It discusses tradeoffs honestly, including when your solution might not be the best fit.
Building Trust Through Transparency
This approach builds long-term trust and positions the company as a thought leader in their space. It's a marathon, not a sprint, but the results are worth it.
When you publish a detailed comparison that includes competitors, readers notice. When you write about the limitations of your approach, people respect that. When you share lessons from failures, not just successes, you build credibility that no amount of marketing copy can match.
Distribution Matters
Great content that nobody sees doesn't help anyone. But distribution for developer content is different from typical B2B marketing. It's less about paid promotion and more about being useful in the right places at the right time.
Answer questions on Stack Overflow. Participate genuinely in Reddit discussions. Contribute to GitHub issues. Share insights on Twitter and dev.to. The goal isn't to drop links. It's to be helpful and let your content speak for itself.
Measuring What Matters
Traditional marketing metrics don't tell the full story with developer content. Page views matter less than depth of engagement. Social shares matter less than GitHub stars or npm downloads. The real measure is whether you're creating content that developers find genuinely useful and recommend to their peers.
The developers who become your advocates are worth more than any paid campaign. They'll recommend you in Slack channels, mention you in team discussions, and defend you in comment threads. You can't buy that kind of credibility. You earn it through consistent, valuable content.