DevRel Weekly - Issue 137 - Your Business Is Your Community

Welcome! 👋

Hey DevRel family! I hope you're all doing well and taking care of yourselves. I know it's been a rough week for a lot of people. If it's been a difficult one for you, I hope you've been able to take a step back and spend time doing things that give you energy and strength.

Don't forget that in order to take care of others, in addition to your community, you need to take care of yourself as well. If you need a few reminders of how to do this, I'd encourage you to go back to the "Best Of: Burnout" issue that I put together two years ago. There may be tools that are helpful for you, whether you're dealing with temporary fatigue or full-blown burnout symptoms.

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

Tidbits 🕔

Your Business is Your Community

You think your business is your product.

But it isn’t.

Your business is your community.

Your product is something you’re building for your community.

-David Spinks

Are They Getting Value?

How do you measure the value each of your members get from your community? Some thoughts:

If this is a paid community: track revenue, increase in sales per account, referrals. Track changes to these over time along with how your members are interacting in the community

If this is an unpaid community: ask your members via polls. Consider the NPS and the CES but most importantly use questions that are relevant and gather their feedback. How many times are your members returning to the community (check out DAU/MAU)?

The key is to truly know WHY your members have joined the community, and then you work backwards to determine how to effectively measure your ability to meet their WHY. Don't be scared to collect feedback, this will help your members get the most out of their community!

-Community Coach Carmen

Prioritize Activity over Followers

Focus more on growing an active community than growing followers. With thoughtful engagement and conversation, the right people will show up in droves.

-ModSquad

What's the Main Focus? (Survey)

What should be the main focus of Developer Relations in your opinion?

Share your thoughts in the comments below if feeling adventurous

Content Creation

Community Building

Developer Experience

Sales

-Gerard Sans

Tangibles 🤓

Six Tips for building a global Meetup Organizers Program

If you're interested in building a meetup program at your company, you'll want to read this article from Luca Buchholz. She shares tips and tricks from the meetup program she's built out over the past few years, from staring small to putting relationships first, no matter what.

How to Influence People to Prioritize the Developer Experience

Successful feedback loops are one of the most important pieces of Developer Relations, but figuring out how to deliver that feedback in a way that it's correctly heard, understood, and implemented can be difficult. This piece from Sean Falconer walks through what not to do as well as how to effectively advocate for your community members.

Super Fan or Adrift? Why and How you Should be Segmenting Your DevRel Community

As a consultant, one of the first questions I always asked my clients (second only to "why do you want a community?") was "How much do you know about who's in your community?" The more that you know about your community members -- Who's engaged? Who's interested? What are their needs? Where are the gaps in the resources you're providing? -- the more supportive you can be of the projects they're involved in. This article from Nick Dijkstra breaks down the importance of truly understanding and segmenting your community appropriately. Bonus: he references a (free) Community Grid at the end of the article where you can find out your number of unique members, your retention rate, and more!

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

Developer Relations Stories: Lais Carvalho
The Business Value of a Community Manager with Jamie Cantrell Langskov - The Communities Show (video)
The 3 Models for Building an Amazing Community with Jono Bacon (video)
Developer Advocate Marketing with Christine and Dom of Twilio - Hello Blink Show

Events 📆

DevRel Events

Planning on attending a professional development conference sometime this year? Take a peek at our list of upcoming events and see if anything jumps out at you. Don’t worry if you don’t see one that sparks your interest right now, we’re constantly adding to the list so check back frequently!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Senior Manager, Developer Support

Okta is looking for an intellectually curious, customer-centric, hands-on Developer Support Manager to lead a team of developer support engineers in assisting customers and the wider Okta developer community in debugging and integrating Okta solutions into their infrastructure.

Chief Community Officer

The Chief Community Officer will define and lead all community-building efforts for Port and our other growth initiatives. This role encompasses community strategy, community building, marketing and partnership outreach efforts and is responsible for growing, engaging and retaining our members. You would be one of the key public faces of the Port. You’ll be given a lot of control and the ability to contribute to the direction of the company.

Content Manager

LogDNA is looking for a collaborative Content Manager to write and edit content about logging, DevOps, Kubernetes, and more. Not looking for a full-time gig but want to contribute content? Reach out, we’d love to work with you!

Jobs 👩‍💻

DevRel Jobs

Battling burnout at your current job? Maybe it’s time to look for something new. Our collection of open positions is always growing so if you don’t find the perfect position this week keep checking back! But remember to take care of yourself. If possible, take some time off between jobs so you can relax, recenter, and return to work with a refreshed mind eager to get out there again.