Building a Site for your

Developer Community

Lauren Cooney

GPM, Web Platform & Standards

Microsoft

lcooney@microsoft.com

www.twitter.com/lcooney

Who Am I?

Not Evil- Microsoft (Web Platform & Standards, Developer Division)- IBM (Apache Geronimo; Info Management CTO Office)- BEA Systems (dev2dev)- Apache Foundation- Eclipse- CodePlex Foundation- Advisory Board, Web2Expo SF

Porter’s 5 Forces?

Cooney’s 5 Forces of Site Community

Dev Community Website

Customer

Clarity

ContentConversation

Connect

#1: Clarity

Why am I building this website? What are my Top Level Goals?

Questions to ask:• What need am I

addressing?• Does my company

already have a site that addresses these needs?

• What results do I want to see?

• How am I going to achieve these goals?

• What does success look like?

#2: Customer

Who is my Target Audience?

Address:• Who is the target

audience?• Is there another

community out there that fits these needs (competitor/partner?)

• Do I partner or do I create my own community?

• What is my differentiator & how do I create that (is there one of value)?

Who is Your Customer?• Customers are different than “target audience.”

• Figuring out your site customer involves segmenting the target audience

• Both of these audiences require different types of content and different types of websites and communication mechanisms

How do I Segment my Audience?Less is More:Tips and Tactics (on the cheap)• Look at competitor sites.

• Data is available on lots of different websites for free or a fraction of the cost of analyst reports/DevTrackers

• Scouring public blogs, wikis, research sites

• Sometimes analysts offer up free reports

•Talking to people in the industry

#3: Content

Content: At the Core of WebsitesWhy Content is so Important:• Content is KING

• Good content is absolutely critical; poor content means you’ll lose customers (no repeat visitors)

• Helps new users or current customers learn about news, new products & information critical

• Important in helping customers build out their skill set

• Core way to get developers plugged in/bought in.

What Content is Good?

What is Good Content?• Less is More (Good Content v Bad Content)

• Developer websites need code

• Interactive content is good (but keep it short & to the point)

• Short Videos• Learning tutorials• Demos• Step by step articles/how to• Interviews with the experts• Blogs• Syndication

How to Get Good Content

Tips & Tricks (on the cheap):• Have a volunteer Editor• Ensure you have company buy-in; ask engineers/product managers to contribute• Ask the community to contribute• Syndication deals• Search for good bloggers

How do I ensure it’s good?• Commenting• Rating ability• Provide editor’s email address (be accessible)

Once You Get the Content

Information Architecture is Critical

#4 Community

Characteristics of Great Community Sites

• Great mechanisms for conversation• Allow for feedback & bi-directional conversations• Employees listen & react• Voting/commenting/rating abilities• Clean UI/easy to use• User Contribution is high • Useful information & code samples

•OOBEOBEX

Trying to On Ramp To Our Stuff – Where Do You Start?

How do I onboard the community?

How do I Start to get Noticed?Real World Example (www.microsoft.com/web)

SEO SEO SEO Microsoft SEO Toolkit

Drive search traffic by leveraging top apps (Wordpress 40% PHP app market share), products and workload keywords

Search keywords such as “Install PHP Windows”, “Install Wordpress”, “Search Optimization Tools”, etc.

Start building Organic (Discovery) by raising awareness initially with Advertising (Direct) traffic.

Compliment with site-wide optimization of content/link structures for search

Build Top Product/App Pages enable ad traffic that also lend themselves towards organic search for /Web

Bootstrapping Organic Search

#5: Connect

ListenListenCritical to have an outlet for community and customers to provide feedback & ask questions

• Newsgroups• Comments sections• Phone number• Email aliases• A real Person

Respond

• People & communities want answers to their questions & comments.

• Provide access to real people

• Increases customer relationship & stickiness to community

• Respond in public if possible; likely other community members have the same questions

Audience Connection Methods

• Pick your methods of communication

• Ensure it scales• Make it easy to

remember/access/push method: user names, links, RSS, ATOM

• Commitment • Be Patient

Provide Personalities• Provide Interesting

Facts/Tidbits/ Information

• What are you doing? • Be polite and

respectful• Take time to

respond• Be relevant; be

credible• HAVE PASSION!

Core Takeaways

Dev Community Website

Customer

Clarity

ContentConversation

Connect

Questions?

Lauren Cooney Web Platform & Standards, Microsoft

Follow me on Twitter: @lcooneyEmail me: lcooney@microsoft.com

Thank You!