Two Ways To Start A Developer Community On LinkedIn

"We have a Discord and YouTube but how do we use LinkedIn to reach devs"?

It's a question I get asked way too often. I know why this gets asked, because LinkedIn is traditionally known as a corporate platform. You use your company page to make updates, post about blogs you released, and to recruit talent.

At least, this is what 95% of companies are doing, including a lot of DevRel teams but there is a big opportunity here is to turn your company page into a developer community.

Are developers even on LinkedIn?

But before I dive into both of those, let's quickly talk about why even convert LinkedIn into a developer community because you may wonder whether developers are even on LinkedIn.

So I did what any rational person would do and search up "software developer" on LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

If you are unfamiliar with Sales Navigator, we have a definition in our glossary on it here. In the United States alone, there are more than 1,000,000 profiles that list "software developer" or some variation of the title as their current job.

And you can check this yourself, even if you don't have Sales Navigator by typing in "software developer" into the search bar.

Not all of the developers are posting to LinkedIn but that doesn't mean they aren't active or lurking. They are decision makers, seniors, with influence, even if not all of them have full authority.

Those are the ones you want in your community and in rooting for you when that enterprise deal is on the table.

Two ways to start a developer community on LinkedIn

I am going to walk you through two ways you can start building your developer community on LinkedIn, and one of them will apply depending on the size of your company and current presence on LinkedIn.

Use the parent company page for the community

Who this is for

The first way to start building your developer community is to use your company page to post content specifically targeting developers. I recommend this if you're a startup and your buyer is developers.

For example, if you help companies build their docs, your product is for devs so naturally all of the content you'd be posting targets developers anyways.

What to post

In that case, you should use your company page to post educational content repurposed from your docs or your blog. But you need to have a specific content cadence. It cannot be sporadic. This requires posting content that's optimized fully for LinkedIn, including infographics, carousels, text posts, all of which must be branded.

One mistake to avoid is copy-pasting content from YouTube and Twitter to LinkedIn. These three platforms are different and all require different strategies.

You must respond to every single brand mention, respond to every single comment. This is a lot of work but building directly on the parent company page means that developers will start messaging you directly.

Use a showcase page

What it is

This is the next level and is more sophisticated. Showcase pages are a LinkedIn feature that allow you to segment audiences on separate pages. Think of it like a child to the parent page.

One LinkedIn company page can have a maximum of 25 showcase pages. They have the exact same capabilities as a company page, with their own following and the ability to post content.

Who this is for

This is what I recommend if developers are not your core audience but you wanna start building your community. Let's take a company like DocuSign.

Their core product is for corporations and enterprise buyers, but they have an SDK and API that has a big developer adoption. Instead of posting the developer content on the LinkedIn company page, they post it to a showcase page called "DocuSign" developers.

Why we recommend it

Creating a showcase page is easy and what we recommend as it's a great way to focus purely on developer led content.

Honestly, showcase pages are a game-changer, and it gives a full social media page with your own comment section, even if your company has thousands of employees.

If you're a DevRel leader, that's where we recommend starting.

The Bottom Line

If you sell only to developers, use your parent company page. If developers are not your core buyer but you have an API or SDK they use, create a showcase page and post your developer content there.