Have you ever wondered what marketing people think of developers? As it turns out, it’s very positive, at least according to Anna Redbond, CMO of Flagsmith. Anna joins us to talk about the world of marketing in a technical space. As someone who works with words, how does she market towards people who work with numbers? Anna and Flagsmith find ways to bridge the divide with their work helping companies eliminate risk and increase efficiency in their development process.
The first thing to say about Flagsmith is that it's obvious they know how to market. Just have a look at their website. Jargon-free, easy to follow, and clear about what they offer. This is Anna's magic recipe when it comes to developer-first marketing.
Speak to people in the language that they themselves use: this may seem obvious, but it’s a key factor in how Anna delivers marketing to coders as someone who’s not from a technical background. She speaks about how she draws inspiration from the very conversations she has with developers about what they do. The reason for this? It’s the simple truth that no-one wants a stack of flashy adverts dropped in their inbox - spam folders were invented for a reason!
So Flagsmith avoids speaking down to developers, instead it simply gets on their level. It’s a thin line to walk. Avoid jargon, but don’t simplify your language to the point of vagueness. Be specific, but keep things accessible to someone just glancing at your materials. If you’ve ever seen an advert or a piece of marketing that made you physically cringe, you’ll know that it’s a challenging task.
Lastly, Richard broaches that awkward preconceived notion held by us all; if a product is good, I’ll hear about it! Why does it even need marketing? Well Anna has the perfect response to that idea - it keeps a fire lit under her.
At the end of the day, Anna believes marketing is just about talking to another human being. We were certainly glad she spoke to us.
Interview Intro
Richard Rodger: [0:00:00] Welcome to the Voxgig Podcast. We talk to people in the developer community about developer relations, public speaking and community events. For more details, visit voxgig.com/podcast. All right, let's get started.
Today I’m speaking to Anna Redbond, who is the CMO of Flagsmith.com, an archetypal developer tool company. Flagsmith, as you can almost guess from the great name, is a feature flag service that lets you, via an API, turn on and off feature flags in your system. I’m not sure that you can find a better company that lives or dies on its execution of developer relations. In our discussion, Anna provides great advice for non-technical marketing executives that need to know how to win in a developer tools company. Okay, let us talk to Anna. [0:00:53[
Main Interview
Anna Redbond
Richard Rodger: [0:00:54]Anna, welcome to the Voxgig Fireside Podcast; it’s great to have you on today. We’re going to talk about Flagsmith.com, which is your company. Tell us all about it. [0:01:04]
Anna Redbond: [0:01:05] Great. Firstly, happy to be here, thanks so much for having me on. Really excited to get started with this. I work for Flagsmith; we are an open-source feature flagging software. Our whole goal is to make feature flags easy to create and manage, whether it’s web, mobile, server-side applications.
Where we come in often is when people are looking at their developer experience, and they’re looking to change it, whether that be modernizing it, pushing code with lower risk, decoupling, deploy and release. We often speak to teams that are coming in, and they are looking at their development process; they’re looking at how they’re pushing code. And they’re looking to change it up; make it feel less risky, more confident, and free up that development process to feel a little bit easier. [0:01:55]
Richard Rodger: [0:01:56] I have to compliment you on your website that I’m looking at right now. For those who are listening, if you get a chance, go to Flagsmith.com, because what I’m looking at is a very simple problem/solution statement at the top. It’s feature flags; developers know what that is.
You then have code, right there on screen; it’s fabulous. And then underneath that, you have a whole bunch of really nice logos, so tier one companies. And then you have your – a couple of quotes, that type of thing. So, it’s really nice. It’s an archetypal homepage in terms of getting to the point straight away. Now the interesting thing for me is, you’re not a developer advocate. You’re a marketing person. [0:02:47]
Anna Redbond: [00.02.48] Correct, yes.
Richard Rodger: [0:02:49] And I think the – but you’re marketing/selling to developers. Did you – when you came in, did you sit down and decide what the – how you were going to structure the website? Take us through your thinking around how you were going to present Flagsmith.com. [0:03:09]
Anna Redbond: [0:03:14] As you said, I’m not from a technical background. I come from marketing; I come from content. Words are my everything, so it’s been an interesting dilemma coming into the spot as someone who can’t create the code. I’m not in the product all day every day, but I am marketing to the people that are using it.
And so, one of our big goals with the website, with the content, with just about everything that we put out, is to make it simple and clear and so that it actually resonates with the people using the tool. My big thing with messaging is not to make it too complex, not to fill it with jargon and to instead put in front of people the words that they would actually use.
Lots of our content will come from customers directly. It will come from me sitting down and having a conversation with a customer and saying, “What’s the problem you’re coming up against? How do you look at it?” and then translating that in their own words and making it very clear.
Because a lot of these technical websites can come across just like that, as highly technical, with a lot of jargon and a lot of confusion. Our goal is to be very simple. We do feature flags. We’re built by developers; we’re for developers. So, that’s the message we want to ring through- [0:04:33]
Richard Rodger: [0:04:33] And it is-
Anna Redbond: [0:04:33] all of the content. [0:04:35]
Richard Rodger: [0:04:36] It is really clear on the website. Would you say – I don’t know if you’ve heard these terms. There’s a lot of companies that have a technical product. Their route to market is either developer first, where the developer is the person who decides to buy or makes the recommendation to buy, or developer enabled, where it’s more classic sales process. But then the developer’s like a gatekeeper, that validates technically whether the product is suitable. And it seems like Flagsmith is more on the developer first end of things, but take me through how you make a sale. How does that happen? [0:05:10]
Anna Redbond: [0:05:12] There are a few different avenues that can happen. I would agree with you; we mainly developer first, and a lot of that is because we’re built as an open-source tool. Often what will happen is that a developer will come in from the company that they’re working in, they’ll get straight to the code. They’ll go to our repos on GitHub; they’ll play around with it. They’ll test it and they might use it for a few months and see is this something that’s working for me. Then they might invite in a team member.
From there, it happens quite organically, if it’s something that works for them. That’s often when we’ll get the message to say saying, “We’ve been using this for a while. It works for us. We’d love to use some of the features that are behind the enterprise plan” or whatever it might be for management.
We often have developers that straight have been using it and pulled the code and it works for them. It’s often a pretty organic process, which is great to see, because then we know that it’s been working for them already. They’re already using it; they have it set up and then we could just connect the dots for them. [0:06:14]
Richard Rodger: [0:06:14] And is there some sort of inflection point where they need to get it working in a proper configuration, deployment process and then it needs more team members or whatever? [0:06:25]
Anna Redbond: [0:06:26] Yeah, exactly. They’ve been playing around with it; they make sure it ticks the boxes for what they need and then it’ll be brought into our sales process and it will go through things like procurement for them. And they’ll ask then questions about how they can configure it, deploy it, all of that. [0:06:40]
Richard Rodger: [0:06:42] I really like your pricing page as well, because you – a lot of people would have inwardly focused titles for their pricing tiers, but you go Free, Startup, Scaleup, Enterprise. It’s really easy to say, “That’s is what I am. This is what it should be.” [0:06:57]
Anna Redbond: [0:06:57] Yeah. I think – again, the whole theme here is make it simple; put it in jargon free language that developers actually use. The goal is to make it something that’s valuable. And if people want to stick in the free plan or use the open-source tool, great. Our goal is to make it something that’s valuable for people to use. [0:07:18]
Richard Rodger: [0:07:19] Here’s a tricky question. This is a central paradox of marketing to developers, which people do discuss openly. I’m a developer. My innate feeling when I see marketing is that that must be rubbish because you have to market it. If it was any good, I’d know about it already and it would have been discussed on Hacker News or somewhere like that. Is that in your mind when you create marketing, or how do you overcome that sort of credibility gap? [0:07:55]
Anna Redbond: [0:07:57] Yes, it’s definitely top of mind, and other marketers I’ve spoken to that are in the developer space have it in their mind as well. And I think that’s a really healthy thing. It keeps the fire under me because it reminds me I’m not a developer and developers don’t want marketing. The people, the engineers that I work with, they don’t want marketing landing on their desk. They want things that are going to make their day better; they want to be able to do their job and they don’t want marketing.
And I think that that is a really good thing, because it keeps me honest, and it means that my focus always is on making sure that the content that I’m creating is valuable, relevant, is in the customers’ words. And honestly, knowing that I’m not that person that built the tool means that I have to find creative ways to create content that is valuable, whether it’s speaking to customers, getting that point of view of the people using the tool. Or it’s speaking to partners and creating content with them. So, it’s building credibility in creative ways knowing that it can’t innately come just from me. [0:09:08]
Richard Rodger: [0:09:09] But it is still marketing; it’s just you have to do it in a different way. [0:09:13]
Anna Redbond: [0:09:14] Yeah, exactly. [0:09:15]
Richard Rodger: [0:09:15] But the basic principles are still the same. I did a Start Your Own Business Course and there was – it was three Ps at the time: Price, Place and Position or something like that. There’s a few more Ps now that people have to use. Do you still use those basic principles that – the basic bedrock of marketing? Do they still apply? [0:09:36]
Anna Redbond: [0:09:37] Yes. They do, and just like every industry, marketing is filled with acronyms, so there are so many that we can pick and choose at any given moment. The basic principles of marketing will always apply, but I think that what runs a little bit deeper than that is remembering that at the end of the day, marketing is speaking to another human as a human. It’s about relationships and it’s about thinking about what people really need.
It’s about thinking about what is the thing that triggers someone to buy. It’s not just coming on someone’s website. What are the things that make someone tick and what are the things that will make someone’s work day better. Basic principles will always apply and so will basic human psychology, and if you can keep those things in mind, that’s always going to be a good thing. [0:10:29]
Richard Rodger: [0:10:31] It does – it comes out very clearly from your pricing page, which is from the perspective of the customer, not your perspective, which is a big takeaway that I would take from your site. What I also find interesting is your personal journey into this role, where you are doing marketing for a developer first company. And there’s more and more of those now, but how on earth did you end up in this particular line of marketing? [0:11:04]
Anna Redbond: [0:11:07] Like a lot of people, my journey has not been linear. It’s come from me keeping two things at the core of my journey, and that’s been staying in a role that’s to do with content and writing and following people that I love working with. And I started in non-profit marketing; I loved that. I worked in an agency to wear as many hats as I could and do all things all at once and gain a lot of experience very fast.
I then jumped into an AI startup with someone who I had worked at that agency with, who I to this day consider one of my strongest working mentors. And again, stayed in content; learned a lot. Learned a lot about working in a technical space and then realized that that was my sweet spot, was working in-house with technical content and finding creative ways to make that resonate with people using the tool.
And then from there, I got into Flagsmith, and again, it came down to me knowing that it was something that I love. I love writing; I love taking technical concepts and making them relevant. And honestly, following two great people that I loved working with, who said, “We’re working in this startup and it’s really exciting. It’s doing a lot of cool things. We’re working with great people. The customers are awesome. This could be a really interesting thing.” And it’s been a great move; I love it. [0:12:38]
Richard Rodger: [0:12:39] Yeah, and in terms of the basic business model, the feature flags thing is absolutely one of those things that you definitely need, especially at scale. I guess your core skill was as a writer, bringing the ability to write in different registers. Would you say that’s one of the most important enabling skills that you have for this? [0:13:03]
Anna Redbond: [0:13:04] I think so, yeah. And one of the things that has worked for Flagsmith and continues to work is content. Being able to take content that’s already working and scale it and create repeatable processes around it was one of the main things I was taken on to do. So, all of that comes down to writing and being able to take the technical concepts and apply them. That’s the thing that I’ve brought to the table here. [0:13:31]
Richard Rodger: [0:13:32] Let’s get onto content strategy, but just before we do, just going back to the basics of marketing. And you said there’s loads of acronyms, that marketing has its – it’s its own world but it has a whole bunch of different models or anything like that. For anybody who’s listening who’s coming into this from the marketing world, is there any specific types of things that you’re using, classical marketing strategies or models or any of that sort of stuff? Or have you had to adapt and invent your own approach? [0:14:08]
Anna Redbond: [0:14:11] I think that we – I came into this role knowing a few things that were working really well; one of those things was content. And it’s been a lot of – knowing that I’m going to be jumping into a startup and that we’re going to be trying different things. And our goal is to fail quickly if we’re going to fail. So, it’s doing the things that are working. We know that content is working really well; we know that partnering with companies and creating content together works really well. We know that publishing content with third parties works really well.
And it's taking that bedrock and then thinking, okay, what else could we do and how could we see whether those things are working? Whether it’s events, whether it’s speaking to influencers, whether it’s newsletters, whatever it might be. So, it’s having that foundation of basic good content and marketing and then experimenting around it. [0:15:04]
Richard Rodger: [0:15:06] Okay. And I’m still going to slag yon you a little bit, because the other thing that comes to my mind is, there’s this trope of there being three pillars of developer relations: code, content and community. Flagsmith is – you’re open source or considerably open source, so that covers the code end of things. The content stuff, that’s clearly a core strength. Do you do much community stuff, running meetups, that type of thing?
Anna Redbond: Yes, and that’s the great thing about open-source. I think that – and I would say as well, credit to our founder, Ben. He, I would say, is a big part of the open-source community and makes sure that that community element and the honesty of open source runs through the whole company. And that plays out for us in a bunch of different ways.
We have a podcast where we’ll speak to other people that are in the open-source space, and it’s very honest conversations about how are you building? What are the problems that you’ve come across? And it’s going to meetups; it’s going to the open-source events and speaking about things like the mistakes that we’ve made along the way.
And I would say that we try to be a big part of the open-source community and to be fostering that community. And a lot of that for us is through being really honest. I truly respect the way that Ben’s ethos is that if someone makes a mistake in the open-source community, it only has to happen once, because we can all learn together.
So, he’s really honest about – let’s talk about the things that haven’t gone well; let’s talk about the things that are sticky. And let’s share with the open-source community and build together. So, I’d say there’s a huge community element and a huge open-source element to everything that we do at Flagsmith. [0:17:04]
Richard Rodger: [0:17:05] Yeah, it’s a core value of the company, by the sounds of it. Let’s talk about content strategy, because that is – it is something that people struggle with, because what do you do? How do you decide on a strategy that is actually working and how do you measure it? Maybe I’ll start with another tricky question which is, what didn’t work? What experiments failed? [0:17:31]
Anna Redbond: [0:17:34] At Flagsmith?
Richard Rodger: [0:17:34] Yeah. Or can you say? [0:17:36]
Anna Redbond: [0:17:37] Yeah, I can. It’s important to talk about the things that have failed. I’m still decently early to the role and the company here, so we haven’t had many colossal fails yet, but I’m sure that they’ll come. The biggest thing that I’ve grappled with in coming here is measuring it, and that’s one of the biggest things that runs across developer relations, marketing, whatever it might be. Is that you need to figure out what’s working and what’s not, and that comes down to having good data; it comes down to having good strategy. It comes down to knowing what to measure and being okay with the fact that you can’t measure everything.
And one of the most difficult things for me was coming in and thinking, I want to measure everything. I want to know exactly what’s working and what’s not, and how do I measure that? What do I report on? And having some very great conversations with people I respect in the space that we’re saying you need to have some conviction that not everything is going to be measurable.
And you need to look at things like multitouch and the journey and the less tangible things as well as having solid outputs.” Because there’s so much to this role and if you try to measure everything as a developer advocate or as a marketer, you’re going to have no time left in your day. [0:19:06]
Richard Rodger: [0:19:07] Yeah. And it’s interesting to juxtapose that with consumer businesses. Because in that case, you’ve got much more clearly defined funnel and you can say, “Is our top of funnel big enough,” whatever. But with developer marketing, if you just try to make the top of funnel really big, you end up creating negative vibes and it doesn’t – things don’t work out for you. The frustration on the measurement stuff is shared by the whole community. Do you think we’ll ever figure it out? [0:19:42]
Anna Redbond: [0:19:44] I think that we can get close enough. And there are some people in the marketing space that I look up to that have found that happy balance between knowing what to measure to be able to create your case with conviction and to be able to know what’s working. And also knowing what to let go and having that confidence to know that it’s okay, that you don’t have to measure everything. But these things, we do know are working and we have the measurements behind it.
People like Jas Cook have such a great ethos on that and explain it so much more eloquently. I think that we can get close enough, and for anyone in this role, one of the most important things is being able to figure out how much you need to measure and how much time to sink in it, because it can be a bottomless pit. And that is something we need to be honest with ourselves about. [0:20:34]
Richard Rodger: [0:20:35] Absolutely. Let’s talk about actual different types of content. You guys have – you’ve a podcast. I guess you do a technical blog. Do you have sample apps? You have API documentation? Just take us through the different types of content and the tradeoffs around efforts and results. I know that’s a big question, but… [0:21:02]
Anna Redbond: [0:21:04] It’s a big question, but it’s an important question. And to be fully candid, I’m coming at this – we’re a startup; we’re small, we’re bootstrapped. So, all of our decisions behind content come down to knowing that we’re a small team and we’re doing it; we’re doing it our way.
But we do; we lean in hard on technical content. And that might be on our blog; it might be in – on other developer sites, it might be with partners. We do a lot of partner content and that’s something that I love doing for the relationships, and it’s something that has been really successful as well. We have a new setup there. [0:21:42]
Richard Rodger: [0:21:44] Take me through the partner content thing, because that’s – what is that? Is that sponsoring people to sponsor that using your system or – just take us into the details? [0:21:54]
Anna Redbond: [0:21:55] Yeah, so what’s interesting about Flagsmith is that it’s a specialty tool; we focus on feature flags and that’s our bread and butter. We haven’t decided to build out a big, all-in-one platform that also has deep experimentation tools or things like that. We do feature flagging and we work really well in the developer stack when people are using us with tools like analytics tools, observability tools, CICD.
So, lots of our strategy has been choosing not to build those things out in our own system, but to partner with the tools that people already use that do those things well. So, if someone’s using Amplitude or Dynatrace, they can integrate with us. And they know that they already have that decision point.
They have been measuring their analytics in Amplitude. They can keep measuring them there and then back that up with flag data from Flagsmith rather than having two different decision points. So, inherently, that means that to do my job well, I build strong relationships with those partners and help educate people on how they can use those tools together in their stack and make their life simple. [0:23:06]
Richard Rodger: [0:23:07] How open are those partners to working with Flagsmith or working with other partners in general? Do you find that there’s a lot of acceptance that it’s also part of their marketing strategy or do you have to sell it? [0:23:21]
Anna Redbond: [0:23:23] It’s a bit of both, and it comes down to knowing that we’re a small fish compared to some of the other people in the developer tool ponds. So, there will be an element of selling, but it comes down to – if there are customers that are using the tools together, we want to find the right ways for those people to be able to know how to get the most out of them and to use those complementary tools together in their stack.
It can be a bit of a pitch sometimes, but I will say to you there has been a lot of openness to at least build integrations and documentation together. And the more that customers start to use those tools together, the more you can get some momentum on content too, because you want to keep that momentum going because you see that people are using the tools. [0:24:14]
Richard Rodger: [0:24:15] And when you work with a partner, a partner like that, are you working with the developer relations teams in those partners, or are you working with arbitrary engineers that were assigned to you, or the marketing departments? Or is it all different- [0:24:30]
Anna Redbond: [0:24:30] Yeah, and interesting question, because it can vary. It depends on the partnership and it depends on what we’re doing with it. So, I’ve worked a little bit with some people that are building out the integration; I’ve worked with dev rel people and I’ve worked with marketers. It tends to come down to marketers and developer relations people, and then the engineers on our side and on their side will work together in building out the technical side of the integration that I can’t speak to as much. [0:25:00]
Richard Rodger: [0:25:02] I find this really fascinating; this is a really strong strategy. It’s not one – this is why we try to talk to a much wider range of people rather than just us techies. I find this a really interesting strategy that creates a really great foundation of credibility for the tool. When you’re a developer advocate, you’re very focused on, this is our tool and this is what it does and here’s how the API works. But what you’ve done from a marketing perspective is positioned it in a broader ecosystem, which is a really strong idea. [0:25:40]
Anna Redbond: [0:25:42] Yeah. We’re very consciously – and again respect to the engineers building the tool and to Ben the founder. We’ve made a very conscious decision to not build certain things and to say no to building out the tool to have big observability features and things. And that can be a way to position, and it’s something that people don’t talk about too much, because like you said, you’re so busy selling your own tool and marketing your own tool.
But to be really useful to a developer, you have to be able to work with the other tools in their stack and make life simpler. You don’t want to be adding decision points; you don’t want to be conflicting with data they’re getting in other tools. So, positioning yourself as, we do feature flagging and we partner with the other tools you already use or that your product team use or that your business people use – that has been a really interesting way to approach it. [0:26:43]
Richard Rodger: [0:26:45] And speaking as a developer, for me, it’s one of those little tells that I look for. Do these people play nice? Are they going to be difficult in various ways with other parts of – other things that I have to do? We’ve had guests from GitHub and Intercom and all sorts of bigger companies, people in developer advocate roles or leadership roles around developer relations.
And they effectively have infinite resources when it comes to creating content. You’re a startup; you don’t have infinite resources. And I – this is something I’ve struggled with in various startups and even in a consulting company, is getting enough technical content generated. So, how do you solve that problem? Do you go outside? How do you get enough content? [0:27:37]
Anna Redbond: [0:27:39] Yes. Interesting problem, one that we don’t talk about enough as marketers. It’s very easy to come into the role and want to do everything and want to do it yourself and to see it as a weakness if you can’t create all of the content inhouse as the team that you have. But again, I’ve been forced to be creative just through the nature of being a bootstrapped team. And a lot of that for me has come down to making choices to develop some content myself, but also to know that I don’t have the technical background to put out all of the content.
So, a lot of the content, I will come – I will create comes from working with other people, whether that’s interviewing the team internally and getting their views on things that are going on, things that we’re creating and why. Or whether it’s working with partners and saying, “Should we create some content together? We’re noticing that customers are asking X, Y and Z questions.” Or if it’s working with a freelancer because they have the experience with a language or a tool and they can speak to that technical content.
Or honestly, if it’s coming down to looking at the content we have that’s working really well and repurposing that, and saying, “This is a blog that’s really resonated. What are the follow-up questions that people tend to have around it, or what are the topics that branch off? Or can we do a podcast and get someone on to talk about this topic?” And it’s thinking creatively, knowing that I can’t do it all myself, because there just aren’t enough hours in the day. [0:29:15]
Richard Rodger: [0:29:16] No, unfortunately not, not when it comes to startups. The repurposing thing is an opportunity that a lot of people are missing, is – I go to – I look at a lot of technical content that people are producing and you’re thinking, you should do a retrospective blog post where you tie together all of these as a series.
There’s one company that I really like, moderntreasury.com. They have a fantastic blog – don’t know if you’ve ever seen it – where they do things like, they explain accounting to developers. But it’s a little bit fragmented. I was just looking at it this morning for projects with slides in my head, and I was thinking, they should have a blog entry where – which is a guide to all of the previous ones on this topic, which would be so useful. [0:30:07]
Anna Redbond: [0:30:08] Yeah. And that’s the thing too. If you’re a marketer coming into one of these companies, you often come in and think, I’ve got to create all of this content. How am I going to do it? But if you can slow down and look at what you already have and think, well, how can I connect the dots with what I already have or expand on it. There’s probably an absolute goldmine sitting right under your nose as it is. [0:30:31]
Richard Rodger: [0:30:31] Absolutely.
Anna Redbond: [0:30:32] Yeah, there’s so much you can do with it. [0:30:34]
Richard Rodger: [0:30:35] You had a recent LinkedIn post where you identified a challenge around externals, which is that they may not – although they can generate some good technical content, there’s a challenge around them understanding the positioning of the company and the cultural vibe that you want to have running through the content. And that it’s not a case of throw it out the door and come back and it’s done and you plonk it up on the website. As well as paying for it, there’s additional cost internally to orient it correctly. [0:31:12]
Anna Redbond: [0:31:13] Yes, I think so. And it can be very easy to look at this and say, “I don’t have the technical knowledge. Therefore, I must outsource.” But the expense there is more than just the cost of hiring someone from Upwork or however you might source your freelancer. It’s also realizing that because you don’t have that technical knowledge, when that content comes back to you, it doesn’t just land on your plate; you’re going to need to QC it for things like branding, voice, position.
And then you’re also probably going to need to lean on your technical team to QC it to make sure that it – that if they’re doing it – if they’re created code and there are snippets or screenshots on there, do they work? Does it work the way that our tool works? And that depth that you can create with it can be – it can rack up pretty quickly and it can be easy to get into the back and forth of jumping between your technical team and a freelancer.
So, it’s looking at the right ways to get the technical content, and sometimes that might be a freelancer, but finding someone who is a specialty person for that tool, that language or whatever. Or it might be as simple as looking to your internal team and saying. “Can I interview you for 30 minutes on X topic and get that framework going internally?” and then move from there. Ther are different ways to get that content that aren’t creating a blog title and going onto Upwork, for example. [0:32:45]
Richard Rodger: [0:32:47] Yeah, and there’s quite a lot of variance, isn’t there, in the cost of those commissioned blog posts. The good people are 10 times the cost of standard content. [0:33:01]
Anna Redbond: [0:33:02] Yeah, and especially in the technical world. You – it’s easy to underestimate how much you might be asking of one freelancer. If you’re asking them to create a blog post on X tool, you might be asking them to create a blog post on X tool whilst also understanding how your tool works with it. And then however many programming languages around it, plus your positioning, plus other things. Ther are so many things to think through when you’re assigning these pieces, and the costs can rack up pretty quickly. [0:33:33]
Richard Rodger: [0:33:34] Yeah, and that means – it sounds like if you get a freelancer who understands your company, you probably want to ask them to do a series of blog posts, because you’re reducing the unit cost per post. Because you’re – you don’t have to deal with as much of that each time. [0:33:51]
Anna Redbond: [0:33:53] And you’re also then building that relationship with them and that trust with them. And if you can find a freelancer who can create great content – and we have some who have created great content for us – this is like finding a diamond in the dust. You want to hone that relationship with them as well. [0:34:10]
Richard Rodger: [0:34:13] Yeah, a lot of moving parts. [0:34:14]
Anna Redbond: [0:34:15] A lot, yeah.
Richard Rodger: [0:34:16] There’s a lot of moving parts. It’s very different from looking at your Google Analytics and going, “More Google ads.” [0:34:20]
Anna Redbond: [0:34:21] Yes. Or just saying, “Here are five keywords that we want to rank for. Let’s outsource them all as articles.” [0:34:27]
Richard Rodger: [0:34:28] I know; I know. Anna, thank you so much. This has been really interesting. And certainly, I hope we’re going to speak to a couple more people operating at this level, doing this sort of thing. Because it is an integral part of developer relations and part of fully professionalizing the activity, moving it beyond just go to a conference talk into a systematic, consistent approach, that can deliver, even if you don’t measure everything. [0:35:02]
Anna Redbond: [0:35:03] Yes. And it seems to be a growing space to – I see more and more people that are marketing in the developer space. And there are some truly great people coming into it, wanting to do great things and wanting to build great relationships. And it’ll be interesting to see how that evolves. [0:35:21]
Richard Rodger: [0:35:23] Cool, okay. I’m going to process this a little bit. Lots of really good insights in any case, just from this talk. Anna, thank you so much, this has been really great. [0:35:32]
Anna Redbond: [0:35:34] Thank you so much for having me on, it’s been wonderful to be here; it’s been great to talk. [0:35:37]
Richard Rodger: [0:35:38] Wonderful, take care.
Anna Redbond: [0:35:39] Thanks.
Endnote
Richard Rodger: [0:35:41] You can find the transcript of this podcast and any links mentioned on our podcast page at Voxgig.com/podcast. Subscribe for weekly editions, where we talk to the people who make the developer community work. For even more, read our newsletter. You can subscribe at voxgig.com/newsletter, or follow our Twitter @voxgig. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time. [0.36.10]