Marketing to Developers (Who Hate Marketing): The r/webdev Playbook

Marketing to developers is playing on 'Hard Mode'. They hate ads. They hate fluff. They hate *you*. Unless... you stop marketing and start engineering. This guide is your survival kit for r/webdev.

Trust in the dev world is inversely proportional to the amount of 'Marketing Speak' you use.

The Hierarchy:

• God Tier (Open Source): 'Here is the repo. Run it yourself.' Instant trust.
• Mid Tier (Docs): 'Here is exactly how `API.call()` works with a specific error handling example.'
• Trash Tier (Marketing): 'Boost your developer productivity by 10x with AI!' (Instant ban).

If you post on r/webdev, key 'Show Code' or 'Live Demo'. If you link to a landing page with a waitlist, you will be downvoted to oblivion.

Bad Example: 'We built a new caching tool. Check it out at tool.com'.

Good Example: 'I built a Redis alternative in Rust. It handles 100k ops/sec. Here is the `bench.rs` file (link). It sucks for persistent storage, but for ephemeral caching, it flies.'

Developers love to correct people. Post a problem you are struggling with, and mention your tool as a *failed attempt* to fix it. 'I tried to solve X with Y, but Z happened.' They will pile in to help, and in the process, use your tool.

Developers hang out in fragmented communities: r/webdev, r/rust, Hacker News, Dev.to.

You can't be everywhere. Use MediaFast to monitor technical keywords across all these platforms. When someone asks 'How do I handle React state?', that is your signal to jump in with a helpful code snippet (not a pitch).

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