A recent CodeProject survey showed that the biggest impediment to learning a new technology was poor documentation.  When Evans Data Corp asked an even wider audience of developers why they had rejected proposed and even purchased tools in the last year, as many developers cited a lack of adequate documentation as did cite poor integration with their existing environment (28%). When the modern developer, IT professional, or DevOps engineer is trying to learn or evaluate a new technology or tool, public documentation is among the content they use to inform themselves. They also use public documentation to help them [...]

Tutorials are by far and away the most popular technical content for developers to consume and share. So, clearly, if you are marketing to developers with any hope of success, tutorials are on your content marketing playlist. But they are also on your competitors’. So what does it take to make a popular developer tutorial? Thanks to Evans Data Corporation and their Developer Marketing 2019 report, we have 3 (ok, maybe 4) hot, hot tips. Lights, Camera, ACTION! So it helps if it’s a video, not too long, and with information that’s easy to find. Their survey indicates that developers [...]

You are a consummate professional. You can create a content marketing strategy for all occasions — go to market, incremental growth, you name it.  And you know how to get it done. You are getting it done, but it is taking more of your time than you thought, and resources can be scarce or unreliable. Particularly the human kind — the writers. Because your market is a skeptical technical audience, well, you can’t get away with faking technical expertise. But, technical experts with time to write are hard to come by — in or out of your organization. Practitioner [...]

C’mon. You know it. You’ve heard it. You’ve snickered at it, maybe even blushed. If you take pride in your job, you’ve even taken umbrage at it. And for technical marketing, it’s bandied about even more freely. “Lies” You’ve got it. “Lies.” The dirty word. “Marketing is a lie.” “Marketing lies to you.” Say it however you like. You can use a ten-dollar world like “manipulate” or try to dress it up to “persuade.” But like it or not, distrust is the underlying objection to marketing in general and technical content marketing in particular. With public trust in social [...]