Community

Scaling Trust with DevRel, Pt. 5

The only way to really scale trust, however, is to scale the number of people involved in your trust network.

The final tool in the DevRel tool belt for building trust at scale is the hardest yet most rewarding: Ambassadors. Put simply, an ambassador is someone with whom you’ve created an especially deep and meaningful relationship, that you have deputized to go out and act on your behalf. They are your lieutenants, the future leaders of a community. Their networks become (by proxy) your networks, their reach your reach.

Earning the loyalty of anyone, let alone developers, is enormously hard work and requires not just dedication, but genuine affection and authenticity on your part. (Also, it requires a kickass product, and other things besides, but that is a topic for another time.) If you can’t form bonds with other humans, you have no hope of building a community.

And better yet if your ambassadors are not actually employees — when their love for your product springs from something other than a paycheck (or at least is not encumbered by the complications of a paycheck), that love is (rightly) perceived as having greater authenticity. You will even find that your ambassadors end up being a lot more effective at building meaningful relationships than you are. That’s great!

The point is that when you have help, you can escape the psychological bounds of social network size, and begin to really scale the relationships of trust you can build. This is the point where you have a community — and is the first real step towards making your product the obvious choice of developers everywhere.

Welcome to DevRel Level 1.

That’s a wrap. But, well, that was maybe a little cynical. Let’s talk about that in the conclusion, shall we?

If you’re just joining us, however, you’ll want to head back to the intro and find your way from there 🤗

• Introduction: DevRel is about scaling trust
• Part 1: Convincing people to trust you
• Part 2: Lots of people, all at once
• Part 3: Selling pizza for favors
• Part 4: Surrogates, because this shit is too hard
• Part 5: Ambassadors and Community (you are here)
• Conclusion: Wherein I dispel my apparent cynicism

Who am I? Hi! I’m @DEGoodmanWilson, and I’m the head of developer relations at Sqreen. We give your web application the ability to defend itself against attacks. You should try it out.