Scott and Wes talk about marketing. Specifically how to do marketing if you’re a developer wondering where to start.

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Show Notes

7:58 - Personal Branding

• Build trust and reciprocity
• Be authentic to yourself and let that carry through in your work.
• Have the guts to put yourself out there and establish yourself as an expert.
  • Speak at conferences
  • Write blog posts
  • Make YouTube videos
  • Be on podcasts
  • Start your own podcast

14:50 - Running a Business

• Treat people well.
• Reward your customers.
• Don’t punish your users.
• Have a refund policy.

19:26 - Social Media

• Don’t push people off a platform. Bring content to them that is tailored for that platform.

• Get in early, before the platform becomes super crowded.

• YouTube

  • Quality content through quantity.
  • Write good SEO titles.
  • Tease your paid content or create a free one-off.
  • Don’t expect to make a lot of money, but it can be great for growing a brand.

• Twitter

  • Be helpful - small, digestible tips and tricks and great for growing a Twitter following.
  • Quality is still the key.
  • Steve Schoger is a great example of consistent, high quality content.

• Facebook

  • People have other interests besides web development. People like to see into your life.
  • Use Facebook to give people a window into who you are.

• Reddit

  • Reddit is really difficult. It’s easy to get banned. The best strategy is to not focus on marketing and just try to be helpful.
  • It’s sort of replaced forums and is a great place to build communities around different hobbies.

• Instagram

  • Recently IG has been blowing up for web developers.
  • Dhanish is a perfect example of how to do Instagram well.

49:55 - Paid Advertising

• Don’t be sleazy.
• Ads are good for getting likes and driving some traffic to something, but it takes experimentation to get the best bang for you buck.

54:40 - Email marketing

• Wes: Email is probably responsible for most of my sales.
• Keeps people up to date and helpful for promoting new courses.
• Helpful for figuring out what people want.

59:17 - Partnerships

• A lot of companies want to partner rather than just sponsor.
• It can be a great way to fund the creation of products/courses.
• Affiliate programs are great when they work out.

67:30 - Freebies

• Giving away free content is a surefire way to get people to pay attention.
• It’s about giving back to the community as much as marketing your products.

××× SIIIIICK ××× PIIIICKS ×××

• Scott: Cypress: End to end testing
• Wes: Audiobook: Own the Day, Own Your Life

Shameless Plugs

• Scott’s New Electron Course
• Wes’ Advanced React and GraphQL Course

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• Wes’ Instagram
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• Scott’s Twitter
• Make sure to include @SyntaxFM in your tweets