Learn how to target the right developers, avoid generic content, and create technical posts that attract potential users.
I’ve been doing developer marketing for the past 10 years, when it wasn’t even recognized as an industry term. This is why I have so many opinions about the tech industry, marketing, and B2B in general. In this post, I’ll try to show you how to think about developers as a target market.
I live for the day when tech marketers would stop saying “we’re targeting developers.” That means nothing.
There are millions of developers out there, using different languages, building different things, and working at completely different types of companies. If you’re not clear on which developers you want, you’ll end up writing generic content and wondering why nothing works.
Technically, a developer is a person who can write code. But that’s just a huge umbrella term.
Start with the basics:
That’s how you stop writing for “developers” and start writing for the people who can actually use your product.
At Literally, we help our clients go through this process with our help, and set the content foundations right from the start.
I always say this: go niche.
People think writing broad content will help them reach more developers. It won’t. You just end up with traffic from people who will never use your product.
If you’re targeting frontend developers, talk to frontend developers on your team. Write about their specific challenges. Share that content in the places they actually hang out.
Most people just go with content that is good enough for juniors. But if juniors aren’t your target audience, then why are you writing those posts?
I once had a very successful post on my company website that I had to exclude from my reports. Why? Because it ranked amazingly well, but didn’t spark any interests in our tool.
When starting your company blog, you need to make sure to create content around the problems your tool is solving. Otherwise, you’re just spiking up those visits and telling fairytales to your founders. Creating content for people who can’t use your tool won’t do good for you!
If a non-technical marketer can write something without a developer fact-checking it, it’s probably useless.
Developer content needs to be technically correct. If you’re not a developer, you can’t just “wing it.” You have to work on it with developers acting as technical editors. Get the technical stuff right, then add the structure and story around it.
And don’t write fluff. Developers don’t care about “brand awareness.” They care about solving problems.
You’re not going to figure this out by yourself. Make friends with your product team, support, and customer success. They already know who’s using the product and why.
Ask your coworkers questions like:
Do this 15–20 times and you’ll start seeing clear patterns about who your product is a perfect fit for and who it’s not.
Impressions is a vanity metric. Someone scrolling past your post counts as an impression. That means nothing!
What matters is what happens after someone reads your content:
Being honest about who your users are and who they aren’t makes every piece of marketing you do more effective.
Stop trying to write for everyone. Find the developers who will actually use your product. Solve their real problems.
If you’re struggling on how to do this right, Literally is there to help! We’ve been in this business for over a decade, and we have the right authors and the right editors for you and your stack.
Let’s discuss how we can turn your technical expertise into clear and engaging content. Book a call and start leveling up today.
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