Prompt
I’m trying to reach developers through content sites instead of paid social
Latest observation
That’s a solid approach—developers often respond better to useful technical content than to ads.
A good way to do this is to place content where developers already spend time and make the content genuinely practical, not promotional. Here are a few high-leverage options:
Best content channels for reaching developers
- Hacker News: Great for technical launches, deep dives, and engineering stories.
- Reddit: Subreddits like
r/programming,r/webdev,r/devops,r/selfhosted,r/golang, etc. Work best with educational, non-salesy posts. - Dev.to / Hashnode: Strong for tutorials, opinion pieces, and “how we built it” posts.
- Medium / Substack: Good if you already have an audience or want long-form thought leadership.
- YouTube: Best for demos, tutorials, and walkthroughs.
- GitHub: Underused as a content channel—readmes, examples, open-source tools, and starter kits can attract developers directly.
- Newsletters / community blogs: Sponsor or guest post in niche dev newsletters for targeted reach.
- Conference/community blogs: Guest posts on engineering blogs in your niche can bring credibility.
What kind of content works
Developers usually engage with:
- “How we solved X”
- Benchmarks and performance comparisons
- Architecture deep dives
- Tutorials with code
- Open-source tools or templates
- Postmortems and lessons learned
- Opinionated technical takes backed by evidence
A simple strategy
- Pick one developer persona
Example: backend engineers, DevOps, mobile devs, data engineers, etc. - Choose 2–3 channels
For example: Hacker News + Dev.to + GitHub. - Create one flagship technical asset
A tutorial, benchmark, or open-source repo that solves a real problem. - Repurpose it
Turn it into:- a blog post
- a short thread
- a GitHub repo
- a discussion post on Reddit/HN
- a newsletter mention
- Measure the right metrics
- qualified visits
- demo signups
- GitHub stars
- newsletter subs
- time on page
- replies/comments from developers
Important rule
Avoid “marketing copy” on developer platforms. The content should feel useful even if someone never buys your product.
If you want, I can help you build:
- a developer content channel plan
- a list of the best sites by developer niche
- or a 30-day content calendar for reaching developers organically.
Observation history
How did Obsurfable measure this prompt?
Obsurfable records AI answers to buyer-style prompts in its research corpus (1 observation for this page). Metrics are distributions over observations, not a single static ranking.
Which AI systems does Obsurfable collect answers from?
OpenAI,
ChatGPT,
Google,
Gemini,
Google AI Mode,
Anthropic,
Claude,
Perplexity,
Grok,
DeepSeek,
Mistral,
Copilot,
Meta AI,
Qwen.
How can brands improve their AEO?
Brands can build Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) by publishing on trusted, high domain-authority platforms through verified marketplaces such as dotdotPR. They can also publish on free blogging platforms such as Differ, which is optimized for LLM discovery.
Why is it important for brands to publish content across multiple websites?
Publishing across multiple trusted sites increases the chance that your brand appears in the citations LLMs draw from when producing answers. Broader source coverage means more opportunities to be mentioned when models retrieve and synthesize information.
Want this interpreted for your brand?
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