Issue 23  July 9th 2018

What About a Community Department?

Perhaps marketing, support, social, events, and communications should all be under a community department. All the ways you interact with your people. All community.

-David Spinks

This tweet led to a fascinating series of conversations, one of which ended with David saying the following:

Community is still perceived as a lower level position than marketing. That will change when marketing becomes a part of community.

I love the direction that he's heading in and can't wait to see what happens next. I think it's going to take some time before everything community-related is reorganized under a community team, but it would sure help a lot of the confusing conversations that occur around whether DevRel is Product, Marketing, Engineering, Sales, or Biz Dev.

PJ Hagerty, Jason Hand, and I continued this conversation in our recent "After Pulse" episode of Community Pulse -- be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting app and take a listen!

What do you think? Do all of these departments belong under a Community department? Or is there one place where Community and DevRel function best? Hit reply and let me know your opinion!

twitter.com  

Why Your Community Manager Needs A Seat At The Crisis Planning Table

Even if we aren’t in our own department with a dedicated Chief Community Officer, we still need a seat at the table. As CEO of Quiip, Alison Michalk says,

When it comes to C-suite decision making, the community manager is increasingly noticeable by their absence... Put bluntly, community management demands a level of seniority it’s not yet been granted… No one in the organisation has a better finger on the pulse of your audience and how they need to be engaged with than your community management team. They must be empowered as to how best respond — and listened to when it comes to how customers needs can be met.

When we aren’t included in ongoing conversations about decision-making and planning, we aren’t able to advocate for our community members effectively, which not only impacts our community but has negative implications for the company as well.

Alison closes with this:

Next time your brand is facing an issue or crisis, call in your community manager and ask. I can guarantee they’ll have an informed opinion on how your brand can best manage your communication on social media.

I would take this one step further — have your community manager involved from the start and you might avoid the Public Relations issue or crisis altogether.

bandt.com.au  

Using Airtable to Manage Conference Submissions

One of the common questions in DevRel is how to keep track of CFPs and speaking engagements. For people who are on the road often (sometimes more often than not), there’s an art to keeping track of their speaking engagements in a way that is functional as well as relatively lightweight, which is difficult given all of the moving pieces.

Heidi Waterhouse shared her solution in this detailed blogpost and I’m both amazed at the simplicity and in awe of the power that Airtable provides. I’m not traveling frequently enough this days to take full advantage of it, but for those of you who are… enjoy!

medium.com  

Keep Your Eye On Community — Not On Influence

As the face of a company, DevRel professionals often feel like we need to be thought leaders and influencers in our space, but what does this actually mean? As J. Kelly Hoey points out, it's not a title we can bestow upon ourselves, and it doesn't happen overnight. I appreciated this wisdom from her recent blogpost:

You don’t set out to be an “influencer”. You set out to add value. And if what you share online is valuable to 1 person (YOU!) then great. What more do YOU need? If others find what you post useful or helpful, then terrific. Keep being generous, kind, helpful. And if you wake up one day with an army of people who are hanging on your every post, be extremely grateful, as you’ve discovered your voice and a way to connect with others.

buildyourdreamnetwork.com  

Innersource: A Guide to the What, Why, and How

What happens when the tool your company most needs isn’t something that they can buy, but is something that they must learn? This is yet another role where the skills of Developer Relations professionals can come in handy. Jono Bacon explains:

Innersource is not a product or service that you buy and install on your network. It is instead a term that refers to the overall workflow, methodology, community, and culture that optimizes an organization for open source style collaboration… It is very important to note that innersource is not merely about optimizing how people write code. Sure, workflow is a key component, but innersource is fundamentally cultural in focus.

Read more about what inner source is and the benefit it can have for your organization.

jonobacon.com  

How to Socialize Your Brand

Starting a new social media profile can feel overwhelming at times, whether your brand is well-known and you’re creating an off-shoot or you’re starting a brand-new startup’s first account. But we start with the same question that we should always be using when it comes to our community work: Why? Why are we spending time doing this? And also, why would our community want to meet us here?

As Corina Manea, founder of NutsPR, points out in a recent article, showing the people inside your company is a good place to start.

By involving your employees, those who become your internal brand ambassadors, you show the human side of your brand. You show that you care. Because a brand that takes care of its employees takes care of its customers.

On the other hand, Barry W. Enderwick brings up a fair point in a "what not to do" article about brand advocacy.

medium.com  

#GoSwagless — An Open Source Campaign to Encourage Charitable Giving

Swag is an ever-present conversation in DevRel circles — what’s the best swag these days, who are the best distributors, what’s the best pricing, how should you ship things overseas -- the list goes on and on. But there’s been a #GoSwagless movement recently — companies that are opting instead to give money to a charity of your choice (usually allowing you to choose one from a pre-selected group) instead of you taking home the latest chotches. Read more about companies that are investing in this swagless movement and find out how you can join them today!

medium.com  

Summer reading list for building your community 📚

Looking for good business books to dive into this summer? Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré has posted a summer reading list for community builders, and it includes many of the top books in the industry! There's plenty to keep you busy here until The Business Value of Developer Relations is released in a few months 😉

medium.com  

Managing without a Manager

Many DevRel teams don't have a team manager (e.g. you report directly to the CTO or CMO) or there's a temporary gap while you're waiting to hire a DevRel Manager, which can sometimes take a little while. So what do you do in the meantime? Leslie & Laura have a few suggestions.

medium.com  

Do you need to be a developer to work in DevRel?

In my experience, this is one of the most commonly asked questions about Developer Relations. The folks over at DevRel.net tackle this question around Developer Advocates specifically.

What's my opinion, you ask? I think it depends on the role. Developer Relations is an umbrella term for everything that falls under building (and supporting) a technical audience, which includes technical (e.g. Developer Advocate) as well as non-technical roles (e.g. Technical Community Manager, Technical Content Manager, etc.). DJ Adams touches on this a bit in his recent blogpost about his experiences at SAP as a Developer Advocate.

I think it's important that everyone in Developer Relations has a working understanding of the product and can at the very least connect customers and community members to others in the company who can answer more technical questions. But do I believe that everyone in DevRel needs to be able to sit down and code competently? Nope.

What's your opinion? Hit reply and let me know!

devrel.net  

How Practitioner Marketing Can Help Developer Relations

I've spent some time lately chatting with folks about what department DevRel belongs in and what we can learn from the departments that already exist. Specifically, there's been a lot of controversy around the Marketing department, and from a quick glance at typical practices, it makes sense!

As Emmy & Naomi of Redefining Communities say,

What we saw happening was not community building, it was captive audience creation. Bringing people together with the primary intention of being able to sell what you do to them.

But this blogpost from Fixate brings an interesting perspective, pointing out what DevRel can learn from "practitioner marketing." It's full of great ideas and suggestions that everyone should read, whether or not your department falls under Marketing!

fixate.io  

Is your online community like a picnic?

Art Gelwicks argues that instead of building an empire, we should be equating community building to hosting a picnic:

As community leaders and builders, our job is to host the picnic. We supply some of the goodies, make sure there’s plenty of napkins and plates, keep the ice bucket filled, and remind people to bring the things they promised to bring. At the end of the day though the success or failure of the picnic is on the shoulders of the planner, not the attendees.

medium.com  

Orchestrating Compelling Engagement

With almost a decade of experience, The Community Roundtable has learned a lot about what sets great engagement strategies apart. In this blogpost, they share the four most important elements:

• Shared Purpose
• Shared Value
• Key Behaviors
• Value Add Inputs and Value Gained Outputs

communityroundtable.com