I described in my last post what makes and defines a developer community. If you are a developer wanting to run a developer community, or you work in developer relations (DevRel) and you are managing a developer community, what do you need to do in order for that community to thrive? Whilst the topic of this article is "building" a developer community, many of the principles outlined here apply whether you are building a community from scratch, or you're taking over an existing community and looking to maintain and grow that community.
Building a developer community or managing a DevRel program requires a fundamental mindset shift from the usual marketing terminology that you might see when it comes to Sales and Marketing. TL;DR, developers don't want to be marketed to. They want tools and environments that help them build better, faster, and safer. Because of this, there are a few things to keep in mind when building and managing a developer community:
Ditch the fluff
Developers reject abstract, pie-in-the-sky promises. Speak directly to the specific technical pain points they face when shipping software. When you empower developers to solve hard problems without compromise, they don't just use your product. They'll become advocates for the ideas behind it.
