More content ideas: event series, Q&A and short videos

#devrel #developerrelations #writing #content

Coming with content ideas is not easy. I have previously shared interesting content ideas you can try:

In this blog post I want to share a few additional ideas you can try.

Online event series

Pick a topic and schedule a series of online events covering a particular aspect of a bigger topic. For example Marek Sadowski and Lennart Frantzell are doing a 4-part online meetup on IBM Cloud.

I like breaking a topic into series as it allows to focus on a particular technology in more detail. You also don’t need to think about running out of time when you try to cover everything at once. Once you complete the series you can upload the videos to YouTube and publish a blog post with links and a short description of what developers will learn. You can also collect all the questions and answer them in a separate blog post. That’s part of content creates content approach.

Online event series with different speakers

This is very similar to above but with a different speaker for each session. For example Upkar Lidder hosted a 3-part online meetup Build, Run and Manage your AI models where each session had a different speaker.

Build, Run and Manage your AI models series

Having different speakers for each session will bring their own style and perspective and will make it more interesting to your audience. You can still have one person host the entire series.

Q&A with speakers

Once you have hosted an online event series with multiple speakers you can schedule another session. Invite all the speakers to come back and talk about the technology they focused on and also use this session as a live panel and Q&A session. I think this is a great way to end a series.

If you are a fan of The Walking Dead, this is similar to the Talking Dead. After each episode the main characters from the just aired episode get together and discuss what happened in the episode.

This works well with multiple speakers but you can also host a Q&A session if a series hosted by only one speaker.

Short video series

Choose a sample solution you have built that might have taken you a few hours to build. For example, how to build a serverless back-end application that saves a new user into a database and notifies via SMS message and email (that a new user has registered). Instead of recording one very long video, record short videos (10-15 minutes max.) showing how to build each step of the solution. I like short videos because they are usually fast to record. If a video is 12 minutes long, that’s the actual time it takes to record it. It’s usually a lot faster then writing similar steps in a written tutorial. If you make a small mistake you don’t necessarily need to stop. As long as you can recover you can continue recording. No one expects you to be perfect. Plus, mistakes make you look human. Once you recorded all the videos, upload them to YouTube, write a blog post and share with your community.

I hope these examples will help you write more content. Of course it’s important anything you write has value – it should show how to solve a problem, how to build a solution. It’s rarely about the quantity. I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.