Why should Developer Advocates make derivative content?
This is part of my series of “The State of DevRel Report”. We’ll add the link to the full list later.
Derivative content, also referred to as repurposed content or content transformation, is when new pieces of content are created from old pieces. Often times, it’ll be from one medium to another like Blog → Twitter Thread or Video → Blog.
Pros
- Your audience can choose the best medium for their learning styles to digest your content
- Different platforms have different discovery mechanisms, so you’ll get overall broader reach by creating derivative content
- It’s faster to make derivative pieces than to start from scratch every time
Cons
- Different content mediums require different sets of skills (think video presence vs writing)
- It’s time consuming to transform certain pieces of content like a Twitch stream to multiple blog posts
A lot of developer advocacy orgs will hire contractors to help create derivative content. Finding the right person to help you do this can be difficult, depending on your product. For example, if you’re building a Layer 1 crypto chain, you need someone who has deep technical knowledge and domain experience. In these cases, companies will rely on their community to create content. Sometimes they’ll also incentivize them with bounties or grants.
If you’re trying to consistently create derivative content or get your org to start doing it, be prepared to dedicate A LOT of time. Most orgs hire a content marketing manager (also seen as “technical social media manager”, “technical content manager”, “product marketing manager”) to spend over 50% of their time writing and posting derivative content.
It’s only worth hiring someone to specifically do this if you’re regularly creating enough original content. The typical ratio I’ve seen at companies is around 4:1. This means for every ~4 developer advocates making content, they need 1 person full time working on derivative content.
