DevRel metrics – Counting things is terrible. Do it!

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

Upon seeing some activity numbers from a recent quarter, a leader I respect told me “I know everybody is busy.” They wanted to know what the impact of our activity was, not how much we did.

Of course! Anybody talking to you about metrics tells you that counting things is a terrible metric. We’ve all heard the horror stories of developer productivity being measured by lines of code. It doesn’t measure the right thing! But here’s the tricky part…

How do you get there? Where do you start? The ultimate metrics dashboard you saw in that webinar one time doesn’t just appear magically out of thin air.

You need to start somewhere.

My suggestion: Count. Things. Measure something. ANYTHING!

We’re going to go through 4 lessons you can use with the content marketing that your team is already doing.

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So you work from home now…

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

With the current pandemic a lot of people are now working from home full-time and we all need to adjust to a new way of balancing work and life. Not only that, we are not having a normal “work-from-home” situation. This is a “work-from-home-while-living-through-a-pandemic-that-can-potentially-wipe-out-the-family” situation.

So there are a few challenges to face, but those of us who have been doing DevRel as remote workers for a while can at least help with some tips for working from home over a prolonged period of time, and some for dealing with all of this mess right now with COVID-19. Here are some things I’ve found work for me, hopefully they work for you!

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DevRel metrics – Which video in a series is the best performer?

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

When working with a technical audience, we create a lot of content in a variety of ways: documentation, blogs, presentations, and videos. Some people learn best by watching somebody else do something, or explain a concept with visuals. As we create this type of content, we need to be able to measure what is working well so we can learn from our experiences. This is where video analytics comes into play (specifically on YouTube for this post).

Our team likes to create playlists with short videos that break up a topic. Playlists are helpful to guide the audience through the series of videos so they get all the content in the right order. Eventually, you want to know how each video in the series is doing, but when you go to look at the playlist analytics, the view counts don’t seem to add up. What’s going on? How do you figure out the actual views on this series of videos?

Why don’t the playlist views add up?

YouTube playlist analytics are helpful to see the effectiveness of a playlist specifically. The video views shown are specific to the views of that video from within the playlist, not overall views of the video.

This is not usually what you need to know, though.

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Should we host Sitecore on IaaS or PaaS? (Jan 2020)

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

This started as a question on the community forums, and my answer got so long I decided to capture it here as well.

In general, when you are choosing an infrastructure model the first question you need to ask is what your team is comfortable having responsibility over, and what your organization is willing to pay to have somebody else worry about. You could do it in-house, pay a managed services group or Sitecore partner, or have Sitecore do things for you. Figure out what your team wants to have responsibility for and then that will guide you towards the best hosting model for your production environment.

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Building Trust – Have you been kind today?

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

Bringing kindness to marketing and developer relations sounds like something that couldn’t possibly work in a hyper-competitive business world, where we value “crushing the competition” and “winning at all costs”. However, consumers are tired of that, they are tired of the shouting, the constant pushing. They want it to be easier.

Being kind with your audience is about saying “You can work with me, I respect you, and it will be a nice experience for us to work together”.

This is a long-game approach. You are looking to have lasting relationships for long-term benefits instead of short-term satisfaction. You are looking to create a connection, create something that is more than a campaign ad. You want somebody to feel comfortable when they hear from you, and also feel good about reaching out to you for help.

Jill Lublin, an international speaker and expert on influence, wrote:

“By practicing kindness in your business, you can increase your income, generate new clients, stimulate repeat customers to buy, and much more” wrote Lublin. “What is desperately needed at this time is a global attitudinal adjustment in which we, as individuals, business owners, and leaders, commit to implementing kindness strategies into our lives, businesses, and everyday affairs in order to facilitate a return to societal balance — as well as to increase our individual success.”

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