23 Content Bits you should Connect to each of your Developer Relations Assets

Most active developer relations programs create a lot of content. I’ll call this content your developer relations assets (DRA). Developer evangelists, most valuable professionals, engineering team members, developer support staff, product managers and product marketing managers create their own focused content that is related to a specific topic. This cornucopia of DRAs is placed somewhere on your developer program site and on other Internet properties including YouTube, GitHub, Slideshare, etc. What is a best practice for making it easy for developers to navigate from one digital asset to another? This blog post takes a look at a few developer relations program sites and how they provide links to additional documents, videos, source code, etc. from another digital asset.

Examples of Quick Access to Developer Relations Assets

Last night I attended an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Office Hours at the Cruzio / Santa Cruz Works meeting in downtown Santa Cruz California. Two of Amazon’s local employees talked about the the recent AWS re:Invent developer conference in Las Vegas. During the presentation Drew Meyer and Tom “Elvis” Jones highlighted some of the new APIs and services that were rolled out during the conference (130 announcements and new bits). One of the new services that was announced is Amazon Athena. Athena, from the AWS page is “Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage, and you pay only for the queries that you run.”

This DevRelate blog post is not a plug for AWS or Athena. I am using this example to highlight some tips for how you can help developers quickly navigate to the related developer relations assets for any piece of content or topic that you place on your site. Going to the AWS re:Invent 2016 announcements page, you’ll find an entry for Athena along with iconography with links to additional related developer information. I’ve grabbed a bitmap of the entry and included it below.

For the new service you see a short description of the Product and links to a blog post, the press release, a video and a link to additional information. There could have easily been any number of additional icons/links to more resources for developers to get quickly what you need instead of having to go to “Learn More” and then navigate from there.

The Intel’s Software Developer Zone received a new face lift last month to provide new links to additional developer relations assets and quick navigation. On Intel’s older developer site there was a menu structure that let you choose which development topics, types of tools, and additional resources start your navigation. Now you can choose the Intel DRAs at the top level

or choose a specific development area and see the DRAs for that topic near the top of the landing page.

One final example is the DRA links on each of Apple’s 2016 WWDC video replay pages. On most of the technical session pages you can watch the video, read an overview of the topic, see a list of additional resources containing links to the presentation slides, reference documentation, product information, download the videos and more. The video page also includes a link to show the transcript of the session.

23 Top Content Bits to Connect to Each of your Developer Relations Assets

Here is my list of 23 content bits that you should be able to link to any developer related asset you place on your site. The actual number may be higher or lower depending on what the asset actually is. But, for any major piece of content you put on your developer site, you should be able to provide iconography and links to most of the following assets. If you can only place a few, it might be an indication of areas where you need additional developer content. I’ll leave the iconography designing to the graphic designers.

1. Download the Sample Code
2. Follow the Tutorials
3. Browse the Documentation
4. Scan the Developer Use Cases
5. Read the Newsgroup
6. Look Up Recent Stack Overflow questions (filter using a tag)
7. Attend an upcoming Event
8. Surf the Web (search using related keywords)
9. Read the White Papers
10. Check Developer Success Stories
11. Peruse the DocWiki
12. Get the Slides
13. Download the Video
14. Play in the Sandbox
15. Try the Product
16. Buy the Product
17. Get Started
18. Look at the FAQs
19. Download the Product Sheet
20. Share with other Developers on Social Media
21. Contact Us for Additional Information
22. See “Also/Related” (developer site search using tags)
23. Rate the Content

Does your Developer Relations Program Link other Bits to your Developer Program Assets?

Let me know how you provide quick access to all of your important technical content for most (if not all) of your developer relations assets.

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99