Category DevRel

4 Baby Steps to getting started with metrics

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

I find getting started on things is one of the hardest things to do. When I started into looking at metrics, there were a lot of great examples of end results and amazing dashboards, but nobody yet mapping out how to get there. This quick primer gives you a background of my journey to getting started with doing DevRel metrics, and hopefully it can help you!

HELP! I have no metrics!

A few years back, I was added to a growing team at Sitecore that up until then was just a few people trying to do everything. I had never had DevRel as my job role before. Or product marketing. I took charge of our enablement program and started trying to build out some ways of reporting on what we were doing.

Ultimately, I wanted to capture what we did accurately, but also make it clear that the investment in our team was worth it.

We had nothing.

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DevRel metrics – Counting things is terrible. Do it!

Jason St-Cyr 1 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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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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Building Trust – Is Honesty Always the Best Policy?

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

When we were little kids, we were taught that we should always tell the truth. Never lie, that’s not the right thing to do! Nobody will trust what you say.

Always telling the truth sounds great on the surface, but as we grow up we learn that things are not always so black and white. Brutal, raw, honesty can hurt feelings. It can expose others to criticisms. It can burn relationships. It can share information that we weren’t allowed to share. So is honesty really the best policy?

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Glasses on top of laptop keyboard

Tiny tips for speakers

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

 

With our Sitecore Virtual Developer Day just wrapped, and more speaking events around the corner, I was thinking back to some tips I provided for speakers right before Sitecore Symposium 2018.

Here they are, in one place, for you to find if you ever need them!

Glasses on top of laptop keyboard

Evangelist Year One – a Retrospective

Jason St-Cyr Leave a comment

Just over one year ago, I wrote about a big change in my career as I joined the Sitecore Technical Marketing team to work as the North American Technical Evangelist. Over the last 12 months, a lot has happened, and in typical agile fashion I’m looking back at what has been happening, what worked well, and what didn’t!

FAIR WARNING: This is a long read, there is no TL;DR, this is mostly for me. Read at your own risk!

TL;DR: I lied. The short version is I had a blast all year and am way too excited about more big things this year!

Continue reading “Evangelist Year One – a Retrospective” →