Your third-party developers might not be full members of your team, but there’s no question they’re an essential piece of the final puzzle when it comes to your platform’s market reach and profitability. You want your developers to be actively and happily engaged in creating more value in developer relationships — for you, your end users, and themselves.
That means you need to find a few ways to create more value for them — and it’s surprisingly simple.
Make Your Developers Feel Special
Once basic needs are met, human beings are motivated by feeling needed, appreciated, and, well…valued. Here are a few powerful ways to make sure your developers know how much you value them:
- Public recognition. Praising some specific developers in your media can be a big boost for their ego and their business.
- Introductions to industry peers. A quick nod in an email about that one extra-savvy developer — with appropriate contact info shared — can go a long way in creating good feelings.
- Tell your developers you’re bragging about them. Don’t be shy about telling developers when and where you’ve been name dropping — they’ll love it!
- Send them well-earned congrats. Especially successful or innovative apps deserve a pat on the back, so give one, and let your developers know you’re paying attention.
- Promote their apps. Boosting their app downloads will create tons of value in terms of developer relationships, and it’ll help sell your platform, too.
- Help them help you. Seminars, speaking events, webinars, demos — whatever you’re doing to bring your platform to the world’s attention, invite some developers to share the limelight and help explain things while getting a bit of exposure themselves.
Simply showing that you recognize the teamwork involved in a successful platform can put you well ahead of other operators in the industry, and keep developers excitedly dreaming up new ways to build out your platform’s potential. Good developers are always in demand; give them a more rewarding experience than others and they’ll reward you with a full-bodied brand.
When developers can increase their value, their reach, and their recognition by building out your platform and increasing your audience, they’ll be that much more devoted to you and your brand. Keep them excited by giving them value through new opportunities, and that value will return to you in spades.
