Unicorns Metrics and Hotsauce - Lessons about Evangelism from the Yahoo! Developer Network

Unicorns, Metrics and Hot Sauce Tom Hughes-Croucher 2010 Developer Relations Conference

Yahoo! Developer Network
2 years
Technical Evangelist
Speaking
May/June 3 continents 4 countries
Spoke at least 3 times/month in 2009
Who

Meeting developers on their home turf

Short YDN Update
Unicorns
Metrics
Hot Sauces
Key Take Aways
Overview

A Very tiny YDN Update

Yahoo Developer Network (YDN)
Open Source
Developer Tools
Data Services
Yahoo! Open Strategy (YOS)
Open Strategy :: Applied

YUI
Hadoop
Traffic Server
Apache
PHP
Perl
MySQL
YDN :: Open Source

YSlow
Pipes
Blueprint Mobile Widgets
YDN :: Developer Tools

YQL
Address Book
Flickr
YDN :: Data Services

YOS :: Technology Stack

SQL-like syntax
Allows you to query (SELECT), filter (WHERE) and join (IN) data across WebServices.
Self Describing - SHOW, DESC table
Public / Private Data
Bindings for many YDN APIs
Can query external structured data (USE)
http://developer.yahoo.com/yql
Yahoo! Query Language (YQL) - SELECT * FROM internet

Unicorns

Developer Mindset
Developers have their own sub-culture
This doesn’t mean you have associate your brand with it
Understanding “memes” allows you to communicate better

Pitch what people are interested in
Do I sell:
“ An overview of Yahoo YQL Javascript” or
“ Apps from Space!!!11!”
Not all memes are funny
In 2009 anything related to HTML5 was hot
iPad v. Adobe makes HTML5 hotter
Cloud Computing, Mobile, etc

Most talked about slide in “Apps from Space!!!11!!!”

Task List for Unicorns
Is this a topic developer care about directly?
If not, can I align it with a topic developers care about?
Have I communicated this in a way developers can get excited about it?

Developers Are Smart
They certainly think they are smarter than Joe Six-pack (and probably are)
They might think they are smarter than you (if they aren’t don’t let it show)
Developers pride themselves on their smarts
That means they are trying to catch you out

Developers can smell a rat
Ego-less is important
Sell your message authentically
Do stuff yourself
Don’t pitch things “made by my colleague” if you can’t talk about them
Don’t be afraid that you are selling
Don’t be confused about your gift of value

Metrics

Measurement Myths
“ You can’t measure Developer Evangelism it’s not a science”
“ You can’t measure the impact of marketing”
“ We don’t know how developers feel about us”

Choose the right proxies
Developer sentiment
Social networks
Developers talk to their friends
They talk in public
Online stuff is fairly easy to measure
Page Views
SDK Downloads
API Usage

Social Networks

Which social networks?
Thought leadership
Proggit (Reddit Programming)
Hacker News
Broad sweep
Twitter
Digg
Facebook

Pitfalls
Not all developers are created equal
Web developers more social
Application/Backend developers less social
“ Neutral” metrics are better
Metrics you can affect leads to ‘chasing KPIs’
Your only affect on social networks is your out-reach

Continuous Improvement
Use metrics to
Identify your best engagement topics
Best external partners
Best times of day/week to post content
Best places to meet your audience
Effectiveness on bottom line of outreach
E.g. 100 tweets = 3 API signups

Hot Sauce

Par it down

Yahoo is HUGE
You can sell the kitchen sink, or:
You can sell to needs
Even if you have the kitchen sink
Once people buy your brand then you can quit selling and just supply
Selling against needs is a clearer message which builds brand

Find your Hot Sauce

YQL allows access to all of my APIs
YQL integrates with my interface toolkit YUI
YQL integrates with everyone else’s interface toolkits
jQuery, Dojo, Ruby on Rails, etc
YQL has an amazing demo
“ If YQL is so great maybe YDN have other great stuff”
Use your hot sauce to start cross selling
Use it to build your brand
YQL is my hot sauce

YQL is my hot sauce Brand Build Cross sell

Don’t sell everything sell what’s important
Pick your top hand full of products
Create a name for those
Make sure they are critical to developers
Make it easy for developers to self-serve other 2 nd -tier products

Key Take Aways

Developers have their own culture. Respect that.
Measure everything. Keep only what works.
Identify your best products and make your own hot sauce
Take Aways Thank You Questions? [email_address]

Unicorns Metrics and Hotsauce - Lessons about Evangelism from the Yahoo! Developer Network

by Tom Hughes-Croucher on Mar 17, 2010

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