In this week's episode of Dev Interrupted, we’re focusing on the increasingly valuable role of DevRels. Francesco Ciulla, Developer Advocate at the open-source daily.dev community - which has more than 100,000 daily active users - joins us for a DevRel deep dive.
Listen as Francesco explains how a career change in his thirties set him on a path towards becoming a developer, being hired by the European Space Agency and, eventually, landing a role as a developer advocate, crediting much of his success on his ability to leverage social media to advance his career.
Outside of his personal story, Francesco shares his thoughts on connecting with devs, why YouTube is such a powerful platform and settles the debate on the kind of content developers are most interested in.
Episode Highlights:
- (0:00) Accelerate State of DevOps survey
- (3:05) Francesco's career change to programming
- (10:15) How to leverage social media
- (16:10) Best ways to connect with devs as a DevRel
- (22:28) Challenges of being a DevRel
- (25:42) What platforms should DevRels be using?
- (30:07) Community building on YouTube
- (33:12) Technical vs non-technical content
Episode Transcript:
(Disclaimer: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors)
Conor Bronsdon: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Dev Interrupted. This is your co-host, Conor Bronsdon, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Francesco Ciulla, developer advocate at daily.dev. Francesco, welcome to the show.
Francesco Ciulla: Thank you so much, Conor, for inviting me, and I'm super excited to be a guest in a podcast.
I am a developer advocate at daily.dev and I'm also very active on social media, especially Twitter and YouTube. And yes, super excited to share something about me. Let's see if this can be helpful for someone.
Conor Bronsdon: I think we can manage to make it a little helpful for a few folks, particularly because you have a ton of experience, both as a guest.
And a host yourself. You had a circuitous pass to becoming a Dev advocate, and you didn't really start your career as a programmer until you were 32, despite knowing how to code. But in short order, you completed your CS degree got hired by the European Space Agency.
To your point about Twitter, you took it from zero to 35,000 followers in just seven months. Today you have nearly 170,000 followers. And you've also leveraged that to start a successful YouTube channel talking about issues facing devs and the tooling, the processes, everything that makes Dev developers successful.
One of the things that I really loved and that caught my eye first about you is that you, when you were starting that YouTube channel, you interviewed a hundred tech leaders in a hundred days and you've now interviewed nearly 200. And this has all been accomplished at really lightning speed.
You've been in the industry for less than 10 years. Really five years here now, professionally. So today we want to give our community that opportunity to learn from you. Like you mentioned where, you've done this incredible work community building at Daily Dev and elsewhere. And I know you have advice for folks who are either trying to, talk to developers, b dev rels, or looking to replicate some of that career success themselves.
So I think this is a great opportunity for those folks who are looking to level up their external promotion game and their ability to do this sort of stuff and the content creation side. So let's start with how you got there. First, I understand you were a volleyball coach before you made the switch to programming and Dev Row full-time.
What prompted that career change?
Francesco Ciulla: That was a great introduction. I always loved computers. My first computer was a Commodor 64, but I don't, we don't have time to, to hear all my story, but just to give an idea. Classic. I was also the first person in my class, to have the internet connection.
And I was like a 12, so it's very hard to explain to someone else what internet is, but let's go fast forward. So I became a global coach at 15. And I've always been that. So for 17, almost 20, 20 years. But in the meanwhile, I always loved the math and, and science, we can say maybe because, I have two parents who are both teachers.
So one is a math teacher and another one is a gym instructor. So probably I'm getting something from both of them. But I found that staying at PC for coding, it was super boring. I prefer the, of course, to stay in a gym. Except for games, this could make me, sit for a lot of hours.
But coding for me, I always found it like very boring. So that was a blocker for me. That's I say, no, I can't do this for a living. This is way before Twitter and developer advocacy. So long story short, when I was, 32, I was already a student in a computer science, degree.
But, I didn't like coding. So I was a computer science student that didn't like coding. Not very bad. We have some moments in our life that we don't know what to do. So I said, because I like the math and physics, but not coding part. And then one day, something happened. One, I did an exam and one of my professors, they say, no, Francesco, you will not never be a developer because you have good theory, but you're not good at coding, which was true, but usually when someone's, I don't think the motivation, but when someone's triggers you in this way.
Then I remember me like coming back at home and saying, okay, now I want to be a developer. So I made like a commitment okay, I want to switch career because I've already starting, I'm getting older and not joking for being a coach. So there are different reasons. and so I decided, okay, now I want to start coding.
This is the way before social media and stuff. I started probably in the hardest way, which is, to learn with game development. Unity, 3D and C sharp because I wanted something funny, something which was a bit engaging because I couldn't sit for more than 30 minutes coding some JavaScript ML stuff.
By the way, I did some coding at university, but usually universities, they are more focused on the theory, which I think is correct. Computers degree is, they will not learn how much to code some theory about computers. So this is the long story short and and basically after two, two years I did my first interview.
It was for an internship position and that was probably has been one of the luckiest days in my life, at least from a career perspective. Because I got rejected, so I got rejected for an internship position. So if you get rejected for a position, especially if it's not, paid, probably this might be one of the luckiest days of your life, because then I doubled down my efforts and after three months I made another interview.
For the agency, I'll be super fast here. So I would've never thought that, I would never apply to, for a job of agency. So why did I end up working there? Because one of my professors at university once he sent me an email telling fco, you like to work for the space agency? I thought it was a joke.
So I said, okay, so this is a joke because we are like almost friends. And they said no, it's true. You can go there. They say, okay. So you know, when. Bar is so high, let's say. Okay, so let's do it. I have no problems. I'm curious because, might as well this, yeah this will never happen.
So let's go. Super. I was super relaxed during the interview process because, when, you do a casting and you already know that you'll never get there, so you are so relaxed that you're really yourself, you're was finally during the interview the other people were really stressed.
I was super relaxed. And also they asked, They ask us something about Git and Docker, which was probably, I was already strong at this, topic, which was, it was new in 2017, and then after one week I was working there full-time.
Conor Bronsdon: Did you have that moment where you're like, wait a second?
Francesco Ciulla: Yeah. And you know what it was great because of your space agency has great open spaces. I worked there like in a group of 200 people. Almost, 50% of the people are women in the group. So it was like, not what usually is in development because there's more like a science, let's say, environment.
So it was great also for inclusivity and other stuff. So I worked in a great group. , I worked there almost three years, and in January, 2020, I decided to be more active on social media. The reason is that I wanted to promote one of the applications that I created, the using Unity. So remember that I started using Unity. So after three years, I ended up putting an application on the Google Play Store, which is not an easy process, but say I, I did like this, process.
This is why I, so I didn't start him social media to improve my online presence or getting a job. This was like I would never thought that this would've been possible. I say, okay, this is a scam. Someone offered me a job on social media. So I started being acting on social media
then in March, I decided to take social media more seriously. So it was March, 2020, and maybe you remember what happened in February and March, 2020. Now, if you're watching this video, probably 10 years. Few things change in the world. You don't know. But if I say to someone March, 2020, you know that it happened.
The pandemic, the Covid pandemic. Also in Italy, we had a very, hard. Moments. One of the hardest lockdowns, cause it was like the second nation was hit. We couldn't go outside to get grocery groceries I dunno, before survived some days. So hard moments. but they think is that, I started working from home.
So I started, because before that, I forgot to say this, I was doing 100 kilometers of commute every single day. Read this for almost three. So it's two, three hours every day, which is basically, so basically going to work. It was a part-time job, like 12 hours per week. So it was a part-time job to go for work.
Long story short, I felt in love with social media and then, I started the YouTube channel in August, 2020, and I started making interviews. Let's make a break because this is, like I, I talked for a while, so this is like the first, first part I can say.
Conor Bronsdon: No I love this because, your story is so fortuitous and I can see where you, you didn't really like plan parts of it necessarily, but once you've realized something was working and you're excited about it, you doubled down and said, oh, like, how can I take this to the next level?
So I'm curious, based on that, what advice would you have for folks who are either switching into Dev or dev rel roles or maybe they worked in a different industry first and now are making that transition?
Francesco Ciulla: Yes, absolutely. So I would say, don't take me as an example because I worked the study privately.
Never using social media before even getting my first role as a developer. This has been very tough. The problem is that if you want to learn something in private, if you get stuck, you can stay two weeks on a bug. Without nobody helping you. Or maybe you don't have a feedback for people, or maybe you are trying to deploy something to create something.
So without feedback it's very hard. But this was my, the only way I knew. So the first thing that I will say, you don't have to go hard on social media like I could do this because I was doing the, during the lockdown we had not much to do. So I dedicated my more time to Twitter and social media.
So I would say that, the part of like also making things public is important. So having a good GitHub profile, having all the repositories, having the, your portfolio set. Because, usually as developers we like to focus on like the real stuff, let's say coding part, but, The communication, I think, is the most important skill for a developer.
It's super underrated because we say, okay, but if I code well, but even if you're developers, we are still humans. I think so. The thing is that we have to communicate with someone else and the job as a of a developer is a really complicated one. When you probably, we basically talk to a machine, but then we have to transfer this to someone else.
Explain this to someone else. Even to some other developers. So that communication part is from what I know when the developers are a bit weak, maybe this is a stereotype. Okay. But many people are focused on the coding part and technical part, and not much in the communication part, which I think it's very important.
I know, I'm also, proud introvert. It's very hard sometimes to communicate with someone else. We don't want to, maybe we, did we choose a developer role because we don't want to communicate with people. No, I'm joking. But, so I will say to curate also your social media presence because you really never know.
Where you will end up. And since I started using Twitter properly, all my job offers, they came from Twitter freelancing first, the first of position, second level positions. Also paid collaborations. Sometimes I do. So I didn't know that this was possible. Now I'm here telling you that this is actually possible because, you are basically talking to so many people and if you, showcase your skills, Also, it can also be yourself.
Put some fan. I saw people being successful on social media with different styles. There are people who go like full meme, full fan mode. They're successful. I see people like who are super serious and consistent, they can still be success successful because they adopt the strategy, which is the best for themselves.
Sorry for being a bit, obvious, but being yourself on social media, I think is the most, consistent. It's something that you can do consistently because you are yourself. It's very underrated because, I'm older than social media. I'm almost, I'll be 40 in, in a couple of months.
Oh my God. So I know, which is the life before social media, but for people who are younger, they have social medias for granted. They're like, okay, so we have this. And so totally. The fact of appearing on social media and thing on social media is so important that it's important, more important than our lives.
This is, wrong because then you can't do this consistently. You can fake one day that I say, okay, I did something amazing. Okay, but then if you keep doing this every day, and it's not true, You are probably, I dunno, you start feelings like someone else that it's like your social media presence is different from what you are Until now. You're not gonna stay consistent until you can't because you basically are F 24 7, like an actor, like playing a role. The thing is that, When you go on some, in-person events, you should look the same. And for example, you should, I never heard someone say Francesco, you are different.
Like in person, like social media for now. I never had this so this is the thing, that it's important even if you are a developer. So to rate also your social media dedicate, if you have 10. Howard dedicate 30 minutes, 70 day social media, not just, coding.
Conor Bronsdon: Yeah. I'm hearing two themes here that I see a lot of really successful folks, emulate or talk about, one being the iceberg effect where people see this success you had on social media, but they don't see the years of.
Self-taught work and challenge and, building your GitHub profile and studying it in college. That kind of came before that. So I think that's one piece where we always see like the tip of the iceberg. We just see what folks do post and there's so much that, went into your success before that, the effort you put in the learning.
And that, that second piece you mentioned around. Building in public and the value of that in our modern era, whether it's, whether it's talking on TikTok or YouTube or Twitter, whatever it is, just simply building our GitHub profile, like these kind of key activities that building in public nature is so valuable today because it opens you up to opportunities when you're being real and demonstrating what you're attempting and growing on.
And I think it's one of the things that makes you a really good dev rel is you're not afraid of saying, I don't know this. Here's how I'm learning it, here's how I'm approaching it, and people really resonate with that. In your mind, is that the key to how you reach developers or what are the keys, to your approach?
Francesco Ciulla: I think that the developers are usually very, skeptical people, so they don't trust things like this is something say, so say they don't, like things just because someone says try this. So this is why the Dev role is so important for a company. So I think that the most important part is to stay authentic. It already happened, many times that like I was in charge of saying okay, this Fisher is wrong, or We are doing this wrong.
So you are basically, as a developer advocate, the connection between the company and the developers, but also vice versa. So you are not just, I don't like the term like advocate. It seems like you're just advocating just going on outside. But it's also on the inside. So getting the feedback from the people, from the developers.
So we're also technical. I'm lucky for many reasons because first of all, deli Dev is a tool. For developers. So this doesn't mean that we don't just have the developers for the product, but we, the, our users are developers.
So we are doing a tool for developers by developers. So it's funny that sometimes on the feedback we get you should really improve the border on these cards. So we get like a developer UI feedback, For the product, which is, amazing. It's mindblowing. It's it's great. and also, we do many things.
We are very active, especially on, on Twitter. And also we started making, shorts. We do many things. And also I want to say that, I'm very happy to jump in on this, amazing group. I want to say something super fast. The reason why I work now at LID Dev, it's because of a podcast, because I made these 100 interviews in 100 days.
So basically when I started my YouTube channel, the first part, it was very hard. So it was hard like to find the time to have this full-time role and then find time to record videos and also being active onto it. So it was impossible. So I needed something fast. So what I did, I published basically a coffee chat, which was way less, professional than what we are doing now.
Now we are doing something professional. We also got some compliments for the microphone. But when I posted this coffee chat, then it slowly turned into an interview. I started recording coffee chat with my friends and also other people. and since I made months of like connections and relationships on Twitter, I had many friends who wanted to join.
this event, let's say. So I was recording two, three episodes per day and I was publishing one per day. So at at some point it became, let's say automatic. One of the people I interviewed, it was an MD Kramer, the c o of Del Lid, Dev. At the moment I interviewed him, it was January, 2021.
There were three people in the daily dev so just to give an idea now, we are more than 20. When I joined, we were five or six in October, 2022. So the reason why I became a developer at, for Dev, I don't want to say that it's just a podcast, but that podcast, that interview probably, I dunno, it's door breaker, I dunno, say this in English.
It's very easy. It's easier, it'll be easier for you because, you already know that person. So this is, what I totally recommend, you don't have to do the same things, but You really never know. And relationships is something that you don't build like that. You do this, Slowly trying to find some common interest. For example, every time I do an interview, a podcast, I find, I dunno, we have something in common.
I dunno, someone played volleyball, someone, did something else. So even with my friends, because usually on, on Twitter, you don't tell all your life. But sometimes during a podcast, I find some common points. It's, this free, probably, so this is probably very important if you want to build.
Solid relationships with developers. So not just talking about which is the best JavaScript framework.
Conor Bronsdon: Yeah. I'd love to dive a little deeper on that, on how you build relationships with developers in your role in as a dev rel, as a Dev advocate. Now that you are being more intentional about this, what's your approach today and what are in your mind the things that make a great dev rel?
Francesco Ciulla: Let's Say three main things, which is the social media, your social media presence, the content you create. And the community. The community building, which is something else. You can be a great community builder, but maybe you don't create content or you are not active on social media.
So there's let's say the three pillar arts, where you base, your social your presence. Personal brand, I don't like the word, but let's say personal branding. And then I think also, We should never force, connections. So I dunno, we can be friends, but for example, if you don't use, probably it'll be hard to make a collaboration or, something that I really love about Dev is that it's super easy.
To connect with someone else because, Deva was born, let's say as a blog aggregator, but now it's way more than that. We have a community part, but it's basically connected with everything because we bring from sources, articles for developers. So it's very easy to be connected with someone. Cause if you make a collaboration, probably you already had one of your articles about one of your products, This is, I think, a hack we can say of being a developer advocate at David Dev.
It is super easy for me to connect with, with other Dev. It's also one of the reasons why I joined. I say, okay, if I join David Dev as a developer advocate, I will have the opportunity to connect easily with almost 200 thousandths people of the develop of the daily Dev community. And this is amazing.
Conor Bronsdon: I love that. What are some of the challenges on that you faced in this kind of Deval role? So we've talked about some of the successes, how you're d being successful, your approach, what you think makes a good dev rell, but what are the things you face that are maybe, challenging you?
Francesco Ciulla: Yes. On social media, we like to brag and then, showcasing our life is perfect. Read everything correct. The truth is that, as a, I think the main issue is that, you have this feeling that you're never done. Let's say that you have to handle the social media Twitter account.
Is there a hand there? No. You can literally stay 10 hours of your working time on the Twitter account, but probably this is too much. No. So what four, three minutes is probably not enough. So it's hard to find the balance. If you have to do relationships. There is no end because if you, if I tell you, please build this wall.
I'll build this wall and then I'm done. I go to the bar and get a beer and I, I feel amazing because I created something. So the first issue is that many of the things we do are remotely software things. So it's hard to touch them. We can say. So we have this feeling that, we're doing nothing.
And this, even if you're a developer, we can say, but at least if you're a developer, you have an issue assigned, you create something, and when you do the pr, you are done in the role. It's very hard. Let's say for example we made a TikTok video. One of these videos on TikTok got half a million views.
Okay, so half million, I think it got 20 thousandths comments. So can I reply to every one? One by one, maybe. But that will be like a job of month or three weeks. So we have to find a balance. Especially on social media, it's very hard because if, okay, if I create content, say, okay, I create four tutorials per month, it's okay.
The social media part is very dangerous, I can say, as a rail. And so that's, I think the main issue and also, Trying to be authentic, but also advocating for the company, trying to find the good collaborations. I think this is a great one, by the way. Because you are basically the front man, front person of your company.
So you are trying to do the meaningful collaborations to find the good ones. Try to also be, not biased, but you're, we're, you are working there. So This is the, this is probably hard. And also, giving negative feedback about the product. I dunno, this, feature our users, they will not like it, like telling this to someone offered you a job, but it's not easy, but you, it's your role.
Once you understand this, it's easier because now I know that's my role also to criticize something of the company itself. But I do this because I want, of course, the, company to be the best. So that's probably something that maybe for a beginner, maybe it's hard to criticize, cope after they also hired you.
But because you are doing this for the good, so this is also a bit hard.
Conor Bronsdon: I appreciate that context. I think it's gonna be really valuable for folks who are either looking to level up their dev rel skills or maybe are interested in making that pivot from being an individual developer to taking more of an advocacy role. And one of the key things that I've heard you talk quite a bit, and obviously it's very essential to your success, is that content piece.
I think there's a lot of opinions about what's the best way to reach developers? Should you be on Macedon, Twitter, TikTok, wherever else? What do you think it is? Is it writing videos, social media, or does it depend?
Francesco Ciulla: So I made basically everything. So I have some experience in this and I'll try to find an answer.
Probably it'll be hard because first of all, it really depends on the type of person. So I think it. If you start, let's say from zero, you are not the, nothing, you have your Twitter account with three followers and some code.
Okay. So let's start with this, scenario. So I think that, working on a social media presence, it's important and I think that it's important if you are looking for maybe in the future for a devil position to don't just be obsessed with a devil position because it's not, Let's say super easy.
So I would work really, calm and quietly for months, for one year, one two years. And then you build the relationships. That's the most important part, because trying to or just reach out, say, I would like to be the brail. It's a bit hard. It's like saying I want to be a developer. But if you don't have the knowledge, if you don't have the skill, That's basically a dream, which is great.
It's also good to have, but if to turn this dream into an actual thing, you have to put some work and also be very patient. So being very patient and also focusing on something, I think that, it really worked. For example, for me, I start ensuring docker content consistently on social media. So first of all, After three months or four months, that I started doing this consistently, I became a doctor captain, which is a volunteer role, but, it gives you a lot of like confirmation.
It's a sort of ambassador, like star for it. The day after I became a doctor captain, I received my first offer as a. Which was not was another company, but like to give an idea how content can really bring you some real offers. So I got like a real offer and it was so strange for me because I was collaborating with this company just to make a video, but then this turned into whatever position.
So this is how, powerful can be. Creating content if you are also a developer. I think it's, it's super, important, especially if you also mix this with a bit of social media, let's say from platforms. I never tried Masteron, and I think that the best is to focus on one platform for a while.
So now you see me jumping on many different, platforms, but now it's different for me because I do this also as a job. As a role. I've also now used to Twitter. I made more than 100,000 tweets, so I stayed on Twitter for a while. So having, one account, it's better. Someone said it's better to be, Batman on one social media that Mr.Nobody on all the platforms. So having one strong platform, I think is the key. I still just on Twitter for, as I say, as you said almost one here. And then I started the YouTube channel. This allows you to focus on a platform for a while and then you start something else. So this worked for me.
I'm not saying to don't start the YouTube channel until you reach a 50,000 followers, but, I think at focusing on what pla one platform and I'm seeing focusing and like the effort you put. So maybe you don't have, for example, on YouTube, And now i's, say I'm more focused on YouTube rather than Twitter, but, sometimes people, they don't see this effort.
Like I published now, a video like 15 minutes ago that I worked like for weeks on this video. There is a lot of behind the scenes, for content creation. But if you do this consistently, then probably you'll attract Dev roles, or you can push your career in content creation. Dev content, probably top my favorite topics.
I can talk, I can speak about this before. You gonna have a whole serious Francesco content creation.
Conor Bronsdon: I'm sad we have a stop here in a few minutes, but, this is great. I'm really loving the opportunity to dive into this with you. And I want to talk in particular about something you alluded to, which is so many devs flocked to YouTube as a place to learn and grow.
What has your time on YouTube taught you about community building?
Francesco Ciulla: Yes. I do the same. So when I want to start some, a new topic, usually I flock on YouTube, as you said. So I am. So I think that YouTube is a great, you think YouTube is a great platform for learning, but also as a content creator and from a community perspective it's great.
I also created a community of content creators. We've also connected with Dev now, so YouTube is a great platform. I think the best will be to just focus on one single topic. For a while, I didn't do this perfectly, but let's say that, this is the advice that, that I give. So choose one topic and focus on the topic, and this is where you really can build trust.
And you can also build your presence, but not just social media presence, but like content creation. I know many dev rels who got the role because they started the YouTube channel. I don't think it's my case because me was more like for this like human interaction, but let's say I know people, I dunno, they started a Python YouTube channel and they got hired for a company who use Python as a main language, for example, And JavaScript frameworks, front frameworks. I think that having a good YouTube channel, I think it's, it's really important. But it really takes a lot of time creating if you're not a millionaire or your parents are not millionaires, probably. Starting a YouTube channel is not the decision, the money decision.
So we have this misconception that like YouTubers, they are all millionaires. The trust is not exactly that, but YouTube allows you to, one thing to reach out to reach people for free. We can say so. YouTube has this embedded search where people can discover you. So getting discovered in these hard times, it's, it mean, it means, really, means a lot.
It creates direct connection. I don't need a TV to invite me to reach out someone. I don't need a newspaper to invite me. It'll be nice. I also been appeared in a couple of, newspapers, That's good to have, but it's not the only way I can reach out to people. So what YouTube is great because it creates this direct connection with other people.
I can create a tutorial about the lid Dev, or for example, I started, YouTube series about the rail. It's called Ave Unlocked, and it's me talking about the rail. So you can literally do whatever you want. And this is, What really makes YouTube a powerful, platform, let's say as a content creator?
Conor Bronsdon: Yeah, I think people underestimate the fact that YouTube is still the second largest search engine in the world. A ton of people flock there to, to look for how to tutorials, interesting content. And I know you've done a lot of different things there. You've covered a lot of different topics.
So I'm curious, what have been the most successful or popular topics that you've doven into as a Dev?
Francesco Ciulla: Yes. So I, as I say on my YouTube channel, I create different tutorials. I think that for now the technical content is, the best probably, but also some good Dev videos. So probably, for example, I create.
Live, some crowd rest API using different languages. I created 10 episodes, so it's basically me creating this application from scratch using different languages, JavaScript, Python, and whatever. So that, those videos, they really performed very well. I made a Kubernetes video. I made, Testing APIs with Docker and Postman like I published this one hour ago.
So this is, let's say, the content to performs the best. I also make, as I say, podcast and Dev, serious people love the Dev Serious and podcast. But the thing is that when I create a podcast or a. Video, it's more for my current audience. So I'm basically talking to my friends. So I'm talking to the people who already know me because people don't, it's hard that someone tries.
It's people are more likely to like, look for JavaScript, look for technical things. But I do the bot because I like them. Bot probably should have different channels to do that, but I create so different series. But I think the content to performs the best for now is this one. I also try to be very.
Community driven. So for example, like I ask what would you like me to create a video about this? Or ask me something and I'll do a video. I try to have this approach very community driven and for now it really works. It also gives me like some ideas. Sometimes I select. Make me a question and I'll just reply in a video like we are doing now.
You can ask me anything and I can also do a shout out if I like the question. So that's probably my favorite one to create. But the ones who perform better are the ones who people can actually search on that. And also from a technical perspective, I started connecting the articles. We also post, post on the lid Dev, linked to the video.
And this is like a huge, conversion. So an article redirects to the video really well. Almost one person out of three who read the article. Then they go on the video when you have 10 thousands or 20 thousands views on an article. It's a lot and it really helps. If you try to search on Google people can either find your article or your video.
This is what really makes, makes the difference. And of course, usually I use Twitter more as like a behind the scenes. So I can say, I'm working on this, I'm working on that. I can post some blooper and something like that.
Conor Bronsdon: I really appreciate that context. It's an interesting window into your approach and what is now driving the success of daily.dev’s outreach and your Dev approach. So Francesco, thank you so much for taking the time today to talk through this and coming on the podcast. It's been really interesting.
Before we go, I want to give you a chance to plug that YouTube channel. Where can folks find you on the internet?
Francesco Ciulla: Yes. You can find me Francesco Ciulla on YouTube. I'm probably the one who will appear. And I have a Dev series there when I talk about the, not also some technical stuff last shut out.
Of course it goes to daily.dev, that's how you spell it. And my job as a developer advocate, it's very easy now because, Using the red is 100% free, so we just have to convince you to just check our website. We have the progressive web app, we have the extension. So this makes my role, my job as a developer advocate, super easy to do.
So we are not premium and other stuff, pricing. We are just running on ads and this is how you maintain this. So we do need this for developers. Just check it out and you'll make it happy. Let us know. What do you think? Put it in the comments.
Conor Bronsdon: I'll say on a personal note, I am both a user and an advertiser on daily.dev. I'm a fan of the platform and I'll definitely recommend checking it out.
Francesco Ciulla: Perfect. Perfect. Who am I to disagree and of course, I dunno when this will be published. Will this published on YouTube? Oh, absolutely will be. Yeah. So please subscribe to this channel, like this video and leave a comment below. It's very important to support the content creators. We really underestimate how much important is to support the content creators.
Since I started my YouTube channel, I started to liking more videos. Leave more comments because you understand the effort. So huge. Shout out also to the podcast.
Conor Bronsdon: I love that Francesco. Thank you so much. Yeah we definitely are always looking to grow our Dev Interrupted YouTube channel and really appreciate you coming on and sharing some of your best practices.
It's been a fascinating conversation. Everyone who's listening can also subscribe to our newsletter on the Dev Interrupted, where we give you each episode every week, including the YouTube links and a date dive in Industry Insight article on Thursdays. If you're listening here, maybe check it out on YouTube, like Francesco said, definitely check out his YouTube.
It's fantastic. Great content on there. I highly recommend the Dev series he mentioned. And we'll see you next week.
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