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What's Your Dark Matter Strategy?

20 points by swyx 4y ago

onionisafruit 4y ago
I don’t know much about marketing, but I can imagine one of the first rules of reaching these people is don’t ever let them find out you call them “dark matter developers”
Yhippa 4y ago
Do you want to reach them? They've probably been maintaining COBOL or are still maintaining Java apps on JDK 8. Still using JQuery for form validation and async HTTP calls. Not working on SPA's but static templates. That's decidedly unsexy, but they're putting in the hours to make important systems work. It's gonna take them work to get them up to speed in your micro frontend app backed by containerized apps on k8s.
mooreds 4y ago
I can share my preferred dark matter strategy: Google. Sure, only 33% of devs visit sites like HN. But 87% of people use Google in the USA ( https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/un... ) and 92% in the rest of the world ( https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share ). Stats, ironically enough, pulled from the first Google search result. If we posit these dark matter developers are: * like most normal people, using Google to solve their problems * use software terms like devs who hang out on HN Then you can build out a content strategy which answers their questions. Then Google will serve it up to them. My current content strategy is four fold: * educational content about our space (auth) that is non vendor specific (how to use JWTs, how to think about OAuth, etc). * specific tutorials (how to use OIDC with Drupal, how to protect a Rails API with JWTs). * leveraging the questions the community asks using publicly available, search engine friendly forums. * great docs so that when they want to use our solution, they can figure things out themselves. Because they are going to use Google to find answers to questions when they are interested in our product too. This is a solution that takes a long time but scales extremely well.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
For what? Adding new programmers? That is about critical mass, ecosystem, sample code for all the nooks and crannies of end-to-end programmin, stackoverflow questions answered, tutorials, etc. Critical mass like this requires a killer app, framework, or use case, and still a lot of enthusiasm and hand holding. And especially, high paying jobs.
- onionisafruit 4y ago
  I agree. These are the people shipping code and getting things done. Reaching them means distracting them from their work. They are generally resourceful, so if they need something you are selling, they will find you on their own.

20 points by swyx 4y ago

I don’t know much about marketing, but I can imagine one of the first rules of reaching these people is don’t ever let them find out you call them “dark matter developers”

Yhippa 4y ago

Do you want to reach them? They've probably been maintaining COBOL or are still maintaining Java apps on JDK 8. Still using JQuery for form validation and async HTTP calls. Not working on SPA's but static templates. That's decidedly unsexy, but they're putting in the hours to make important systems work. It's gonna take them work to get them up to speed in your micro frontend app backed by containerized apps on k8s.

mooreds 4y ago

I can share my preferred dark matter strategy: Google. Sure, only 33% of devs visit sites like HN. But 87% of people use Google in the USA ( https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/united-states-of-america https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/un... ) and 92% in the rest of the world ( https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share ). Stats, ironically enough, pulled from the first Google search result. If we posit these dark matter developers are: * like most normal people, using Google to solve their problems * use software terms like devs who hang out on HN Then you can build out a content strategy which answers their questions. Then Google will serve it up to them. My current content strategy is four fold: * educational content about our space (auth) that is non vendor specific (how to use JWTs, how to think about OAuth, etc). * specific tutorials (how to use OIDC with Drupal, how to protect a Rails API with JWTs). * leveraging the questions the community asks using publicly available, search engine friendly forums. * great docs so that when they want to use our solution, they can figure things out themselves. Because they are going to use Google to find answers to questions when they are interested in our product too. This is a solution that takes a long time but scales extremely well.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

For what? Adding new programmers? That is about critical mass, ecosystem, sample code for all the nooks and crannies of end-to-end programmin, stackoverflow questions answered, tutorials, etc. Critical mass like this requires a killer app, framework, or use case, and still a lot of enthusiasm and hand holding. And especially, high paying jobs.

onionisafruit 4y ago
I agree. These are the people shipping code and getting things done. Reaching them means distracting them from their work. They are generally resourceful, so if they need something you are selling, they will find you on their own.