DevRel Weekly - Issue 144 - Prioritizing Your Work and Fostering Engagement

Welcome! 👋

This week's issue has something for everyone -- whether you need help prioritizing your work or engaging with community members who don't seem to want to engage with you, or a reminder of how to focus on the end result of your work. Find something that you like in particular? Be sure to share it on social media with the hashtag #DevRelWeekly so others can benefit as well!

If you have 2 minutes before you go back to work today, check out this survey from the folks at Hoopy. They're collecting information about DevRel tooling -- what tools exist that you're already using, and what gaps still exist that you're hoping to fill?

Best,
Mary (@mary_grace)
DevRel Weekly Patreon

p.s. Special shoutout to this week's sponsor, SlashData, the organizers of the upcoming Future Developer Summit. If you're a Director, VP, or CXO and you're interested in attending this event, I have a free pass to give away! Claim your complimentary full-access pass on us -- just drop a message to our friends at [email protected].

Tidbits 🕔

Our Roles Include Social-Emotional Work

We don’t talk enough about the social-emotional work community professionals do.

It requires building, maintaining, and managing conflict in many interpersonal relationships every single day.

Often it can involve being personally attacked.

It's emotionally exhausting work.

-David Spinks

Ways to Engage

Looking for new ways to get your community to respond to your messages? Check out the suggestions in this community thread started by ModSquad for some inspiration.

Focus on the Outcome

We need to change how we talk about our products. 🤔

Anova makes a Sous Vide cooker. It is a water pump.

They don't talk about their water pump. They talk about the great food you can make with it.

Focus on the outcome...the changed future. Your product is an enabler for it. ⚡️

-Jono Bacon

What Makes a Community Valuable?

Community value ≠ Members posting daily
Community value = Members getting the support whenever needed.

Be OK with the fact that your members are not coming back daily, but whenever they do, make sure they get what they are looking for.

That's what makes a community valuable!

-Rashmi rana

Which Community Role(s) Do You Fill?

The 7 Kinds of Community Roles:

Community Engagement - directly engages w/ the cmty

Community Programs - runs scaled cmty leadership/moderator/chapter programs

Community Operations - runs tooling, systems, processes, data, and reporting

Community Designer - designs cmty products, platforms, and experiences

Community Events - runs live experiences (salons, meetups, conferences)

Community Education - develops training and educational content for the cmty

Community Marketing - grows the community

-David Spinks

Tangibles 🤓

Prioritizing Community Management Tasks

Any time I participate in an AMA-style conversation, the question of prioritization comes up.

How do you balance everything? How do you push back when it's too much to do? How do you know what to focus on first?

This article from Jenn Bridges helps you sort through your outstanding tasks and reiterates why it's so important to understand the expectations of your role.

At Risk Member Alert! What to do when your members are on Red Alert

What happens when a previously engaged member of your community seems to be on their way out? As Nick Dijkstra points out in this article, how you respond could bring them back into the community, but the more important question to ask is whether they are still a good fit for the community you're trying to build.

7 Ways to Repurpose Content and Grow Your Customer Base

If you've heard me talk about content, you've likely heard my soap box about making sure you repurpose content -- never present something only once. If it's a blogpost, turn it into a talk. A live stream where you're building an integration? Publicize the GitHub repo you've created. Nadya Khoja agrees with me in this article, urging people to repurpose content in order to lighten the content creation workload. Bonus: as Nadya says, "It’s also a good way to get your content in front of more people in formats they might prefer better." In other words, it helps you reach more of your community members! Win win.

Storytime 📚

Draft.dev

"When getting content produced externally, predictability and reliability are key. The team at Draft.dev is extremely proactive and reliable throughout the whole process." - Manuel Weiss, Founder at Codeship

Storytime 📚

DevRel Podcasts and Videos

DevRel Around the World - Community Pulse
Given Millions of Dollars we Would Invest in Content for our Community - Peers Over Beers
Let's Discuss: Developer Relations with host Angie Jones (video)
Becoming a Developer Advocate with Tim Benniks - CodingCat.dev (video or podcast)
The 'Skill' in Developing Communities with Rich Millington (video)
Developer Relations: A Complete Guide to What it is, How it Works, and Whether You Need It by Jono Bacon (video)
Integrating Community Across Your Org with Scott K. Wilder - Masters of Community

Events 📆

Developer-led Business Growth | Episode 2 | June 9 @8am PT

This year’s Future Developer Summit explores "What does the future of DevRel hold?" Enjoy the benefits of this remote event and be part of the industry discussion together with thought leaders. The event’s agenda is tailored for everyone, from CXO Pioneers and program leaders to professionals and enthusiasts in DevRel, Advocacy and Evangelism.

Events 📆

DevRel Events

Have you checked out our event collection recently? There might just be something new on the horizon!

Jobs 👩‍💻

Dremio: Reshape the World of Analytics

Dremio is the Data Lake Engine company. Our mission is to reshape the world of analytics to deliver on the promise of data with a fundamentally Open Architecture, purpose-built for the exploding trend towards cloud data lake storage such as AWS S3 and Microsoft ADLS. If you, like us, say “bring it on” to exciting challenges that really do change the world, we have endless opportunities where you can make your mark.

Technical Community Manager / Developer Relations

CoScreen makes engineering collaboration fun and productive. Help our community of developers and agile teams build software together faster than ever. Introduce a whole new way of getting things done together by telling their stories.

Jobs 👩‍💻

Developer Relations Jobs

Are you looking for a new job? There are so many opportunities right now! Come and see what you can find in our collection!.

p.s. If you're a hiring manager looking for a Community Manager, be sure to check out this article from Jamie Langskov. It's full of great tips on how to write a concrete job description and conduct an interview process for this classically misunderstood role.