How Tech Firms Can Create Developer Communities

When launching into tech, creating developer communities could be one of the fastest ways to grow your business and scale. It opens up windows of opportunities for both companies and developers, alongside creating an open, collaborative, and inclusive environment for developers across various experience levels to network and geek about their interests. Most importantly, it brings developers/users closer to the brand/platform/product and vice versa.

Some notable developer communities include Stack Overflow, GitHub, Hackernoon, CodeProject, Google Developers Group, Kotlin User Group, Digital Ocean, and Facebook Developer Circle. As per the latest survey, over 82 per cent of respondents visit Stack Overflow at least a few times per week, with over 59 per cent visiting every day. 

Further, around 60 per cent of respondents said that Stack Overflow is the only online developer community they are a member of, and the remaining 41 per cent indicated they are members of other online developer communities – 15,000 respondents provided at least one other community they participate in. 

For example, GitHub has over 73+ million developers and 200+ million repositories. On the other hand, the question and answer website for programmers, Stack Overflow, had about 14 million registered users and had received over 21 million questions and 31 million answers as of March 2021. That is the power of community platforms. 

According to Statista, the global developer population is expected to reach 28.7 million people by 2024, increasing 3.2 million from the number of developers in 2020. 

As new platforms and developers continue to mushroom, building community in shaping the future of tech becomes quintessential. In this article, we will discuss practical steps/tips which will help tech companies to create their own developer communities from scratch. 

Create Content Everyday 

When it comes to driving community engagement, content is one of the most powerful tools. Regularly publishing a steady stream of content that inspires, informs, and challenges readers/listeners is the most reliable way to draw developers into a dialogue about your product/solutions. 

The best way to generate content – instead of doing it all by yourself – is to invite people to create content. This is one of the excellent ways to build a community. In other words, when people are given the platform to showcase what they know, they will happily write content for you. It can include customer stories, case studies, tutorials, product comparisons, and event highlights, etc., which can be a valuable resource for developers. 

Note: Make sure to develop content around your product/services, along with allied domains and advancements, and let the audience/developers connect the dots. Find your niche. 

Interact with others – Build A Community 

Creating content is just the initial step. Once this is in motion, the next step is to keep the communication/engagement open on social media and online forums like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Discord, etc. Here, make sure to involve people, making them feel like they are valued. But, again, creating content alone doesn’t help – you need to involve the community to be a part of the conversation.

For tech companies with smaller teams (<10 people), this role usually sits with founders and developers as they are most well-versed on the relevant topics and best suited to addressing incoming questions. However, once the team grows (>50 members), it becomes necessary to involve individual teams or advocates to take care of the community, content engagement, designers, social media, events, influencers, etc. 

At this stage, engagement becomes critical. So, it becomes important to converse with your community regularly, answering questions, creating polls and quizzes, etc. It also becomes crucial to acknowledge posts that talk about your platform or work and start building meaningful connections with your audience. 

Note: Newsletters could be an interesting medium to keep your community engaged weekly or monthly, which ensures to keep them updated/in check with all the latest developments, insights, etc. 

Identify Champions – Keep them close 

You will know once you find them. Champions are users who love your product/platform and regularly interact with your posts/content. These are the people who are not just passionate about your technology but what they can do with it. They can usually be found in your client companies, incubators, startups, and vendors who sell your products or experts who write/produce content about them. 

Once you have identified your champions, let them know that you see them and recognise their contribution/impact to the community. Then, once in a while, send a private message, send them goodies like t-shirts, accessories, gadgets, and other merchandise, and thank them for their support and engagement. 

Note: Giving your champions early access to your products and platforms, or inviting them to special events, alongside some perks (VIP access, passes, etc.), can also help your business go a long way and scale your product. 

Always be where your people are -- Explore The Power of Community

While the pandemic has disrupted in-person meetings, when it opens up, things should be back to normal. The physical event or in-person has more brand/product impact than virtual. Also, compared to a large event, a small event organised for developers can be a great place for driving conversation, ideas and collaborations. 

It becomes important for tech firms with smaller teams (<10 members) to involve their community instead of taking all the responsibilities in choosing topics and format options. Sometimes, small get-together events or meetups, alongside a developer advisory board, around the subgroup interest areas/topics can go a long way as a community. 

Wrapping up 

People like to be heard, and they want to contribute. So, as a creator of a developer community, it becomes important to give them that space across channels/mediums to express their excitement about the platform/product freely.

Unfortunately, most tech companies embark on this endeavour, assuming that they have all the answers. That is where it fails. The whole idea of building a developer community is to keep an open dialogue and not keep information to yourself. Therefore, it becomes important to be transparent and open about everything, from sharing your roadmap, faults, asking for feedback, developing expert/advisory boards, actively organising events, podcasts, etc. 

Update: October 28 | 16:20 | The article has been updated to reflect GitHub's latest figures. Previously, the article had mentioned: As of January 2021, Github had over 40 million users and more than 190 million repositories (including 28 million public repositories).