What the Movie Mean Girls Taught us About Building Developer Communities 💁🏽

Create content that people can count on

Comprehensive content calendars

Ah, the elusive content calendar. We all know we need one, so why don’t we all have one? Humans, that’s why. It can be difficult to get entire teams on board with adding another step to their workflow — and trust me, I hate it too. However, outlining how an effective content calendar will benefit the entire department will help ease the tension of getting people on board. So, what are those benefits? Cue bullet points ☝🏽

• When you have multiple teams trying to send out information to the community all at once, it creates redundancy that can overwhelm your audience. Knowing what has previously been sent out and what is already in the pipeline helps create a cohesive (and totally not spammy) content story.
• Segmentation. Content calendars are a great way to know if you’re segmenting your content in the right way, and for the right people.
• Reliable content cadences. Creating a dedicated cadence helps overlapping segments know when they’re going to hear about certain news. For example: product updates vs. community announcements etc.

At the end of the day, all of these benefits are lost without engaging content.

And if we’re being totally honest, the people that we’re interacting with are bullshit detectors who have ad blocker for their ad blocker, hate being sold to, and know when it’s happening no matter how smooth we think we are. So, what it all boils down to is this — write about what you’d want to read about and be authentic. Your community will thank you.

Be data driven and know your audience

Tracking

• Know who, what and where your community is. Be creepy. GDPR compliant creepy
• General information is great, but individual tracking of community members is better
• Know who on your team has talked to who, and about what, so that you can always pick up where someone left off
• Knowing whose written posts, or given talks about your product. — Who are your key community players?

Intrigue

• Know what topics resonate with your community
• Pop culture and relevant news are a great way to engage and maybe even breakthrough to people who haven’t heard about you yet

Ask for feedback

• Feedback is a critical piece of growth.
• Analytics are great tools. They help track the what, where and when. Surveys and feedback sessions get down to the why. The why is what’s important. Iteration comes from the why.

Awesome support = happy community

Speaking of feedback, you probably already have a wealth of it waiting for you in the form of support tickets. Tracking your support requests can paint a detailed picture of where you can improve your product for your (soon-to-be happier) developers.

Alternatively, it’s a great way to find out what type of content (blog posts, docs, tutorials etc.) you might want to create to help people navigate the more complex parts of your product.

Take time to celebrate your community

Highlight community projects

Who doesn’t love being appreciated? A very simple and cost effective (i.e. free) way to show love to your community is by simply showcasing their projects on your blogs or social channels. Let them know that all their hard work didn’t just get lost in the infinite void.

Plus, they’ll end up sharing that post on their social channels, encouraging new potential community members to land right on your website. +10 karma points.

Say it with swag

It’s simple, everyone loves free stuff. Small thoughtful gifts are a great way to say thank you to community members who are working hard inspiring others about your product.

Facilitate connections

Sometimes, bringing people together is the greatest gift we can give back to our community. Community management or Developer Relations doesn’t have to stop at creating relationships between company and developer. At the end of the day, building a community is a labor of love.

Build and encourage a diverse community

Core values

Building a community is hard, but it’s even harder when you don’t know the type of community you want to create. Knowing what your company’s core values are, helps everyone better represent them. Also, highlighting your core values publicly will attract the types of people that will allow your community to flourish.

Address unconscious bias

Even though we try to make conscious efforts to encourage diversity, unconscious bias is bound to slip through the cracks. I encourage you to take a moment to do an audit of your product pages, tutorials, blog posts, docs etc. Are you favoring one pronoun over another? Do the pictures on your site emulate the type of diverse and inclusive community you want to build?

Give back to the community around you

Working in tech allows us a certain level of visibility, reach and capital that others might not have. Use these privileges to give back and bring more awareness to the underrepresented groups in your communities. Encourage your company to volunteer time and resources to organizations in your area. This could be in the form of coding classes, mentoring, or even a simple donation. If we all give a little, it can add up to a whole lot.

Be inclusive & create a safe space for collaboration

Educational content for all levels

When creating content, remember that you’re the expert and not everyone has the same level of product knowledge than you. Taking the time to create entry level blog posts and tutorials will lower the barrier to entry for new users and encourage deeper exploration of your product without frustration.

Enlist moderators

Let’s face it, no matter how hard we try to fight it with cucumber vs. cat videos or pop culture gifs, the internet can be a cruel place. Enlisting moderators will help maintain the health of your online communities. Think of them as your own digital neighborhood watch.

Be conscious of different lifestyles

It can be easy to fall into a routine — especially one that fits your own lifestyle. When creating community events, consider all of the different lifestyles inside of your community. This might mean holding an occasional lunch and learn so parents can attend, or making sure your international community always has access to your local event content after the event is over.

Clear code of conduct

Have your code of conduct clearly documented and easily accessible. Your community needs to know that you care enough to create a safe space for collaboration.This will also make it easier for moderators to know what behaviors to, well, moderate.