Evolved Media - Capture knowledge. Make it useful. Spread the word.

Evolved Media’s API Marketing Programs apply the latest practices in content marketing, social media, and developer marketing to the task of getting the word out about your API so it starts to make a difference in your business.

We draw our experience from more than 9 years of content marketing experience aimed at highly techincal audiences. In addition, Dan Woods, CTO and Editor of Evolved Media, is co-author of “APIs: A Strategy Guide”, a book published in December 2012 by O’Reilly Media.

The challenge of marketing APIs is that you must engage two kinds of people:

• Developers, who hate marketing but love education, documentation, sample code, and sandbox environments, and
• Business development and marketing executives along with heads of line of business, who want to know how the API can help solve business problems.

Further complicating this mix is the fact that sometimes the APIs are intended for internal use and sometimes for use in a business ecosystem. In either case, a program to get the word out is required.

One thing that experience has shown: Unless you are Twitter or Google or Facebook, if you build it, they will not come. An API is a product like any other and like most products time and effort are required to get the world interested.

Our API Marketing Programs help promote an API through the folowing tactics:

• Setting a clear strategy is the best way to ensure success. While every API is a journey that involves learning and corrections, progress is accelerated if you have a clear and detailed plan from the get go. Deciding on the right metrics and tracking progress is key to keeping momentum.
• Coordinated implementation and marketing planning can accelerate time to market. The marketing planning should start from the beginning of an API program. Through content marketing and social media techniques it is possible to build an audience before the launch. Starting marketing early also helps build up a larger community of beta testers.
• Strong documentation for an API is crucial to attracting developers. Developers need both the details of the workings of each API call along with a comprehensive description of the system the API controls. Good documentation is consistently the number one request from developers of API providers.
• Business executives need a clear path to value. APIs expose business assets of some kind: A product, a service, or information. Explaining the business value of these assets using case studies, infographics, and other means is key to getting funding for developers who will use the API in an enterprise context.
• A sandbox accelerates the understanding of developers. Developers love the hands on immediacy of a sandbox environment that lets them test out individual API calls. Providing such a sandbox accelerates time to competence for developers.
• Sample applications get the ball rolling. A well designed and properly documented set of sample applications can accelerate both development and brainstorming about how to put an API to use for business purposes.
• An API community web site becomes a enduring asset. A quick look at the developer.facebook.com, developer.twitter.com, and other similar web sites show the care that these companies take in creating a useful and engaging web site for their developer communities. Most companies will benefit by extending the scope of their web site to address business issues. By building an email list and twitter followers the web site becomes a valuable asset.
• Outreach drives attention to your API through hackathons, events, webinars, and social media. A steady drumbeat of promotion to new and existing audiences reminds people of the opportunities your API provides and the learning assets that await them. Such outreach also provides a way to listen to what the community has to say about the API and how it can be improved. The right mix of promotional tactics changes based on the maturity of the API and the nature of the audience being sought.