1. 2018 London | Emmelyn Wang
Content Strategy for DevPortals

2. What is the
Developer building?
Curiosity
Emmelyn Wang

3. API Experience | Lead and Influence
1
Convey Value
Evangelize
internally and
externally
2
Design
Quality
Patterns
Support
3
Engineering
Community
Moderator
for relaunch
4
Developer
Community
Engagement
Manager
5
Test and
Document
6
Technical
Marketing
Director,
hardware,
software, and
IoT blend
7
Independent
API Strategist
8
Global
Content
Strategist
concepts and
results at
scale
Build and Consume Emmelyn Wang

4. THANK YOU
Write the Docs,
You, Our Greater
Community
API the Docs and
the Speaker
Selection
Committee
Jason Harmon Kin Lane
Marilyn Rogers Texas State
University MATC
Society for
Technical
Communication
Texas Chapters
WWCode
Women Who
Code Global and
DFW Chapter
Emmelyn Wang
Confessions of a Content
Strategist | Aha Media Group

5. Does your organization know which five
types of decision makers you are targeting?
Technical Leadership is the #1 resource for non-
technical business leaders to consult with as trusted
advisors – build your content strategy around these
advisors.
Emmelyn Wang

6. Spectrum of DevPortal Options
BuildBuild
Choose Stack
Allocate Resources
BuyBuy
Requirements
Implement
Emmelyn Wang

7. Why Should I Choose You?
Design developer journeys base on how a developer chooses you.
Healthy Skepticism
The developer decides on whether or not to build using your API or technology.
 Reputation in the Developer Community including successful track record
 Response time
 High availability for their use case
 Security
 Dedicated resources
 Relevant documentation
 Patterns and use cases for onboarding and to reduce the complexity of the
implementation
 Thoughtful architecture, design, to spec
 API Life cycle and maturity
Emmelyn Wang

8. Consider
Your
Competition
Organizations of all sizes are now considering who owns a
full suite of technology offerings that they plan to adopt as
long-term advantage over competitors.
If they are competing against Amazon, then they will use
Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform for DevOps rather
than AWS.
If the organization is in the ERP space, they may not want to
use Oracle’s offerings.
DevPortal and API
Management Offering
Ownership
Apiary Oracle
Apigee Google
Mulesoft Salesforce
API Connect (3Scale, Red Hat) IBM
Emmelyn Wang

9. Competitive
Business
Landscape
Organizations of all sizes are now considering who owns a
full suite of technology offerings that they plan to adopt as
long-term advantage over competitors.
There are only a few independent DevPortal and API
Management vendors left in the space.
Relevance to Content Strategy?
Do you own your own content and life cycle?
Could you be using your competitor’s platform?
Emmelyn Wang

10. Recent History | Mashery was the Canary

11. CONTENT STRATEGY
Competitive Landscape
DevPortals compete against traditional B2B and B2C digital marketing for a sophisticated audience.
Solutions
1) Long-tail keywords: Engineering/Developer-focused results that cut through the noise from public-facing sources
and adding the ability to inject internal mapped analytics. Understand both the organization’s internal
dependencies and external landscape.
2) Engagement with the Developer Community: Publishing and maintaining relevant content is key to driving traffic to
the portal and making the portal a hub to which the community returns.
3) Long-term strategy: Engagement is far deeper than a financial transaction. Reflection of the relationship is based
on interaction, mindshare, connection, and reliance upon the information provided for a developer to successfully
accomplish their goal to build within tight constraints.

12. @LifeWingmate
Content Strategy for DevPortals is all about delivering a high value experience to win
and keep customers. One of the ways to achieve HVE is through the highest quality DX.

13. CONTENT STRATEGY FOR
DEVPORTALS
Emmelyn Wang
Total cost of
ownership?

14. DevPortal
API Specification
Systems that
balance and
integrate a variety
of considerations
Experience
Emmelyn Wang
Culture is the toughest piece, not the technology itself.
DevPortals with shared alignment are centered around the API specification.

15. CONTENT STRATEGY FOR DEVPORTALS
Provide business and technology context
Business Development through Strategic Partnerships
Answer leadership’s understanding of the overall value: What do we get out of our investment?
Technology Adoption through driving efficient software development
Support a developer’s performance, reputation, and positive drive adoption of the technology
Emmelyn Wang

16. THE CASE FOR DESIGN FIRST
CONTENT STRATEGY FLOW
Cost | Ease | Alignment
Software architecture is less expensive
and more powerful when decided upfront
before affecting downstream activity such
as building a software application.
The same approach applies to deciding
core content strategy before starting
downstream activity.
Emmelyn Wang

17. CONTENT STRATEGY
Provides a moderated and safe place to discuss ways for developers to solve a
technical problem.
Professional developers, especially your customers and partners, may not want to add
implementation specific details in a public forum.
Always provide clear expectations and community guidelines in channels of
communication.
Emmelyn Wang

18. CONTENT STRATEGY
Continuity of Care is not just support ticket numbers linked together in emails.
How is other information from your potential customers and current customers and
partners captured?
Decide where and when hardened content resulting from answering similar recurring issues lives and is
maintained.
It is quite possible that content strategy for DevPortals is more about service.
Emmelyn Wang

19. CONTENT STRATEGY
Map out where traffic is coming from and where it goes. Crosslink between the two
where it makes sense.
Emmelyn Wang
Technical Blog
Developer Newsletter
Syndication
Target A
Target B
Target C

20. CONTENT STRATEGY
Map out where traffic is coming from and where it goes. Crosslink between the two
where it makes sense using SEO optimized unique URLs. Be intentional about where
you drive traffic.
Emmelyn Wang
Your Partnership Page Reseller Where to Buy

21. Your content strategy is a direct reflection of
your relationship with your developers. Emmelyn Wang

22. Your API maturity and resources determine the
content life cycle. Emmelyn Wang

23. Test DevPortal Interaction
 Physical prototypes foster conversations about
how we interact.
 The ability to spin up a working proof of
concept that provides a basic SDK and doc
within 20 minutes influences decision making.
Emmelyn Wang

24. Content Strategy for DevPortals to achieve a high value experience through the highest
quality Developer Experience DX.
Ask Developers what they want and
stay true to deliver what they tell you.
Emmelyn Wang

25. Measure Impact
High Availability
Service
Subject Matter Expert SME Recognition
Healthy Relationship Indicators
Emmelyn Wang
Served on Weavr.ai’s Product Advisory Board
Developer Relations Platform
https://weavr.ai/?ref=ewang18

26. THE CASE FOR DESIGN FIRST
COMPARE CX WITH DX
Cost | Reducing Complexity | Alignment
The Customer Experience comprising of
Customer journey and product / service
design are often clearly communicated
across the organization.
Customer Journey Mapping
The same approach applies to
communicating your Developer
Experience and the Developer Journeys
your organization supports.
Developer Journey Mapping
Emmelyn Wang

27. Maturity | Audience | Purpose
Relaunch
Optimize
Pre
DevPortal

28. MATURITY | AUDIENCE | PURPOSE
No DevPortal | Internal/External, Not Yet Understood| API Reference Only
Greenfield development: start from scratch
Analytics: Benchmark Mode
Iceberg Model: Typically not API design first
No API Design Style Guide to guide consistency, scalability
Result – Doc Team manages manual processes, heavy lifting, waterfall (rather than agile)
Emmelyn Wang

29. Precursor Talk: https://www.meetup.com/WriteTheDocs-ATX-Meetup/events/255188139/

30. MATURITY | AUDIENCE | PURPOSE
Rebuild DevPortal | Vetted Customers and Partners | Relaunch
Revamp existing Developer Community
Migrate, update legacy content
Move community to a new platform
Introduce and manage expectations for a better experience
Watch out: Don’t just offer giveaways such as tablets and
fitness trackers as email headlines, let the quality of the
content and engagement drive the value. No need to
discount what developers inherently use.
Emmelyn Wang

31. MATURITY | AUDIENCE | PURPOSE
Optimize DevPortal | Developer Community & Relationship to the Organization | Serve, reflects, recognizes, nurtures
Proactive
Responding to Business Intelligence
Build on Strong Net Promoter Score (NPS), SEO across global search engines, page and
domain authority
Dynamically intelligent content with CI/CD pipeline and feedback gets routed into R&D
and product management
Emmelyn Wang

32. Content Strategy
Decentralized blockchain / cryptocurrency companies who combat
surveillance on the web
Why? On page / Off page elements reflect your technical and ethical
vision.
Unique URL’s for each section of your documentation
Why? Human readable URLs are important for search engines,
humans, and have more evergreen capability that GUIDs.
If you create video content, make the transcript available. If it makes
sense for your business, translate the text as part of localization and
globalization.
Why? Machine and human readable. Helps with searchability,
accessibility, and discoverability. See Heavybit.
Emmelyn Wang

33. RECOGNIZE: THERE ARE ONLY 1ST CLASS CITIZENS
Contributors and Maintainers
Responsibly triage and vet both internal and external pull requests,
issues, and conversation trends.
The best way to recognize your developer
community is to invest in them over time.
Emmelyn Wang

34. LOYALTY
From a DevPortal…
To my DevPortal…
Healthy development
environments
Seamless Experience from
DevPortal to product / API
Emmelyn Wang

35. RESOURCES
The Case for Design First

36. RESOURCES

37. Content Strategy for DevPortals Emmelyn Wang
{
"name":"Emmelyn Wang",
"pronunciation":"emmaleen (British A)",
"title":"API Strategist",
"company":"Axway",
"phone":"+1 256 369 9264",
"email":"ewang at axway dot com, emmelyn dot wang at gmail dot com",
"location":"Globally Remote or in the Griffin Innovation Lab",
"twitter":"@lifewingmate",
"medium":"@emmelyn",
"devportal":"developer.axway.com"
}

38. Axway
We’re Hiring Near You
API Solutions Architect
Instructional Designer
Principal API Digital Mentor
For the latest, visit https://www.axway.com/en/company/careers.

39. RESOURCES
Safari Books
The Anatomy of A Dev Portal – APIs:
A Strategy Guide

40. RESOURCES
InVision’s Design Talks and UX Research
IDEO U’s “Service Design: Create
Moments People Will Remember”

41. RESOURCES
Public Reports for Developer Skills,
Hiring, and Talent Gaps

42. Bootstrap Framework
HTML/CSS
JavaScript
Python
Ruby
AI/Machine Learning
Scala
Quantum Physics
DevOps Cloud Specific Admin
Container Orchestration
White Hat Hackers
Specialized
Consumer
friendly