community at docker

Community at Docker

By Julien Barbier, Sr Dir of Growth, Marketing & Community at Docker

About me

• Julien Barbier

• 2004-2008: Software engineer & Product Manager (Paris, France)

• 2008-2012: Entrepreneur (Paris, France & Miami, FL)

• Oct 2012-now: co-Founder of #while42 (International French Tech Engineers Network, 1500+ members in 30+ chapters around the World)

• Oct 2012-now: Sr Director of Growth, Marketing & Community at Docker (ex-dotCloud, San Francisco, CA)

• Contact me: julien@docker | @julienbarbier42

About Docker

• Build, Ship and Run Any App, Anywhere

• dotCloud, Founded my Solomon Hykes, in France (2008), and “relaunched” in SF (2010)

• dotCloud released Docker open source, Mar 2013

• Huge traction since then, in both user and enterprise adoptions led to a pivot

• Huge online and offline community

• Learn more: www.docker.com | @docker

Community is the new marketing

• Community represents 80+% of our “Marketing”

• Lower budget, Higher conversion rate vs traditional marketing

Your product/brand is not what you say it is.

It is what THEY say it is.

Community, TL;DR;

• Community is like a network• A community/network is as strong as the number of links between its

members

• IRL links are more precious than Online links

• You do NOT own or control the community• It is NOT your community: you are part of it, you can influence it, but you

do not own it

• It is not what your community can do for you, but what you can do for your community

• Your product/brand is not what you say it is. It is what THEY say it is.

• Lower budget, Higher conversion rate vs traditional marketing

• Communities everywhere!

• At the end of the day everything is always about people

People, TL;DR;

Track and monitor EVERYTHING

• Track and measure EVERYTHING• If it is useless now, it WILL be useful later

• Integrate tracking and metrics EVERYWHERE• Should be part of your product release cycles

• Should be part of every offline & online marketing campaign

• Measure the impact of every change, update, new feature, campaign, tweet, meetup, event, press release…• Be both HUMAN and DATA DRIVEN

The San Francisco Docker VIP club

• Jan 18, 2013: Initial commit• Closed source• Private presentations to startups by Solomon & Andrea• Word of mouth• “VIP” club on GitHub, by invitation only

• Belonging, Self-Esteem

• Mar 20, 2013: the project leeks on Hacker News• Hits front page & #1• 15K visits in a day• Huge interest from the

HN community

Hacking Hacker News 1/3

• HN = Tech early adopters

• Use / Create tools for monitoring• Reminder: Track EVERYTHING• If the tool does not exist, create it!• Track your company and product &

join the conversation as soon as possible• And track competitors too!

• www.hnwatcher.com

• Upvote and get to the front page• More traffic and brand awareness

• Join the conversation as soon as possible• Your product/brand is not what you say it is.

It is what THEY say it is

• Create and/or Post Content thatthis community like• It is about what you can do for your community


• Timing is important

• Experiment• And track + document

• Target different groupsof people by posting at different times

Source: http://blog.itlater.com/whats-the-best-time-to-post-to-hackernews/


• Do not post obvious marketing content• Remember: you are here to help this community

• Post in other social networks BEFORE• You will get more upvotes due to community posts• Belonging, Recognition

• If it’s good content and if it does not work, Recycle!• Try same blog post but with a different URL• Try with different format

• Blog post, Gist, Slideshare presentation, Youtube video, e-book, …

• Help the Docker community• It is about what you can do for your community• Upvote and post their content too!

• Recognition, Respect, Love• Add more links to your community• More brand awareness

The social network strategy

• Tips from HN strategy are true here too (cf previous 3 slides)

• Be everywhere!• Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Slideshare, Youtube, GitHub,

Stack Overflow…• But do know where to put more efforts when you do not have enough time

(track & measure!)

• Use the specificity of each social network• Different users, different features, different post previews, etc…

• Join the conversation as soon as possible• Your product is not what you say it is. It is what THEY say it is -> you

want to be part of this conversation!

• Identify leaders / influencers on each social media

Twitter tips of the day

• Include authors & companies handles in yourtweets• Recognition, Respect, Love• Add more links to your community• -> More RTs -> More reach -> even more links for

your community + recognition for authors• NOTE: this is true for your team too!

• Your team is a community

• Everything is a community!

• NOTE2: this is true for journalists too!• Everything is a community!

• NOTE3: this is true for partners too!• Everything is a community!

• It is ok to post several times

Twitter love + belonging example

Which twitter account should I use?

• Founder: 5K followers

• Company / product / brand: 500 followers

• Who should post product releases, news & co?

• Brand!• Build your company brand first!

• Build your company’s community (vs founder’s community)

• Be careful of Ego / Personal branding

• The founder may leave, but the brand will stay• You don’t want the community to leave with the founder

• Have the founder(s) RT the company tweet

• Your logo is (theoretically) more eye-catchy & recognizable than your founder’s picture in a twitter stream

Social Networks: more tips 1/2

• Post / RT your community’s content (blog post, articles, videos, …)• It is your way to say thank you• It is about what you can do for your community• Belonging, Recognition, Respect, Love• Add more links to your community• Encourages them to write more

• Do the same for every social media• Use specificity

• Don’t be lazy!• Do NOT use automatic / auto-posts tools• Do NOT use AddThis (or equivalent buttons) on your blog and websites

-> terrible branding!

Social Networks: more tips 2/2

• Include Photos / pictures in your articles

• Or even better: Use Open Graph or equivalent (ogp.me)

• -> More reach! (min 30% more clicks when you have a picture)

BAD GOOD

Social Network: tracking tools

• Use the right tools• It does not have to be fancy or expensive

• What we use at Docker for Social Networks(& web)• Mention.net

• HNWatcher.com

• Twitter.com

• (+ Google News for press)

• Forget about Google Alert, it does NOT work

• Track EVERYTHING

Content strategy

• Write good content, unique & relevant

• Write content your community wants to read• It is about what you can do for your community

• Target likely amplifiers!

• Forget about your SEO magic tricks• It does not work in the long run

• Encourage your community to build content• Say thank you, repost, post, upvote, RT, include them in your

newsletter, itw them, …

• Belonging, Recognition, Respect, Love

• Your team is your community too!• Say thank you, gamify, hall of fame, tweet, post, recycle, etc…

• Belonging, Recognition, Respect, Love

Google search auto complete

• This is what your community is looking for• Free tool!

• Automate: http://keywordtool.io/

Buzzsumo

• Find out what content did buzz on social medias

Why IRL community is so important

• Community is like a network• Adds more link to your network• IRL links are more precious than Online links• It is all about people, so you want to meet them and build a stronger

relationship

• People like meeting other people to talk about ideas, problems, discover new tricks, etc...• Belonging, Self Actualization

• A “meetup” visitor has more “value” than a website visitor• More engaged• More likely to stick with the product

• Actually more likely to stick with YOU, the person they have just met• It is all about people

• Use IRL as many times as possible

• Mix formats• Regular meetups, Panels, Hack day, Hackathon, etc…

• Provide Food + Drinks + Wifi! :)

Start small, and scale

• Target meetups in your area• Target by topics, competitors, & attendees personas• Try to get a team member to talk (lightning talks)

• Create your own meetup group• Can be in your office• Treat the first members with care and love

• Scale yourself• Create second, third group where your team can go

• Help your community build your community• See next slide

• It does take more time and effort to grow the Offline community

• Be sure to track this too!• RSVPs• Attendees• Members of local groups• Feedback (online/offline, surveys)

Help the community build the community!

• Help Meetup (co-)organizers with• Best practices• Updates on the product & messaging + Content

• Your product/brand is not what you say it is. It is what THEY say it is

• Tools• SWAG

• Tee-shirts

• Stickers

• Invite users to speak• People love to hear real life stories

• Your product/brand is not what you say it is. It is what THEY say it is

• Users love to speak (Recognition, Mastery, Self-Esteem)

• Don’t make it a sales event!• It should be about the community first

• Help them promote their event• Event page• Twitter and co• Newsletter• Love, Recognition, Belonging

Bring IRL back online

• Adds more link to your community

• Tweet about IRL events• Quotes, photos (tag ppl -> love!), numbers,

interesting facts, etc…

• Follow up with emailing / survey• Say thank you (send love!)

• No sales speech

• Add content they care about (it is about helping your community)• Include links to presentations they just saw

• Include links to anything that could answer their questions

• Include a link to your newsletter and / or online tutorial…

Bring online back to IRL

• Adds more link to your community

• IRL links are more precious than Onlinelinks

• Add a page with the upcoming meetups and events

• Include meetups and events calendar in your newsletter

• Use twitter and co to inform people about the next event

• Find any excuse to invite people to meet you• Regular meetup

• Giving a talk at a conference

• Panel

• Celebration

• Big news, Announcements, Previews, Proposals…

• Hack day

• Hackathon

• Product update

Global Docker Hack Day

• 1500+ attendees, in 30+ cities around the world• Includes both Online & Offline communities• More links!• Belonging

• Each meetup group provides a (safe) venue + food + drinks + wifi

• Main event in SF was broadcasted live• 2500+ views in 64 different countries• Recorded -> great content we then did post on social networks and co

• Preview of 3 proposals • Self actualization• And get feedback from the community

• 4 Partners involved (MSFT Azure, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Online Labs)• Partners are part of your community (everything is a community, give love to your partners too)

• 1 customer involved• How Docker is used at Yelp (Achievement Mastery Recognition Respect for the speaker)

• People hack on Docker• They have to submit title + video + description -> great content

• Best hack wins tickets to DockerCon Europe• DockerCon sold out, this is the only way to get tickets (Achievement Mastery Recognition Respect)

• The community votes on social networks for the winner

Show the example

• Show the example

• Pre-brief co-organizers

The voting page

• 36 projects submitted

• Tweet to vote!• Add team twitter

handles in the tweet!• Recognition, Love

• Reach on Twitter: 3M+

• https://docker.com/community/globalhackday

End result• This was super FUN

• Huge reach & noise everywhere

• So much that press already referred and linked to content in several articles. (more SEO)

• Thousands of tweets around Docker

• And Docker Global Hack Day

• Great position + Messaging was out and buzzing

• Great feedback from the community

• Great content was built

• The whole Maslow pyramid was covered

• We strengthened the community

• Co-organizers

• Hackers

• Partners

• Users

• Online community

• Community is happy

• And winners will be super happy

• They also wrote blog posts referring our content (more traffic + SEO)

• Partners are happy

• They also built content referring our content (more traffic + SEO)

Thank you!

• Any questions?

• Ping me to chat more about Marketing & Community:• [email protected]

• @julienbarbier42