--- title: "What is developer advocacy? | daily.dev Ads glossary" url: https://business.daily.dev/glossary/developer-advocacy/ description: "Developer advocacy is the practice of helping developers succeed with a product in public: writing tutorials, giving talks, answering questions and demoing real use, while carrying their feedback back to the product team. A developer advocate is who does it." lastUpdated: "2026-10-20" llmsTxt: https://business.daily.dev/llms.txt --- ## What is developer advocacy? Developer advocacy is the practice of helping developers succeed with a product in public: writing tutorials, giving talks, answering questions and demoing real use, while carrying their feedback back to the product team. A developer advocate is who does it. Also called: Developer advocate, Developer evangelism. Advocacy replaced evangelism as the preferred word because the job changed. An evangelist promoted a product to developers; an advocate works for developers, inside the company, and the promotion follows from being useful. In practice the day is tutorials, livestreams, conference talks, community answers, sample apps, and a steady flow of "developers keep hitting this" to the product team. It works because the advocate is a developer: the credibility of someone who has built with the product and will say what is hard about it. That is also its limit. One advocate reaches the people in the room, the thread or the stream, a few thousand at most, so advocacy pairs with distribution that reaches the rest. A good advocacy program has a clear audience (which developers, on which stacks), a publishing rhythm, a feedback loop with product that visibly ships, and a measure beyond applause: activations and community questions answered, not talks given. ## What does a developer advocate do all week? Writes a tutorial that solves a real problem with the product. Records a stream or a short video of the same. Answers questions in the community, on social and in GitHub issues. Prepares a talk for a meetup or conference. Keeps the sample apps running against the latest release. And files, with evidence, the three things developers hit this week that the product should fix. The mix depends on the product and the person; the constant is that an advocate is an engineer whose job is other engineers' success. The moment the role becomes "say nice things about the product in public", developers notice and the credibility is gone. ## How is advocacy different from evangelism? Evangelism, the older term, was one-way: promote the product to developers. Advocacy is two-way: help developers succeed with the product, and advocate for them inside the company. The name changed because the job changed, and because developers stopped trusting people whose only job was promotion. In practice the test is simple. An evangelist's talk ends with a pitch; an advocate's talk ends with a working example and a GitHub link. An evangelist reports reach; an advocate reports what got fixed. ## What makes a developer advocacy program work? - **A named audience.** Which developers, on which stacks, with which problems. "Developers" is not an audience. - **A publishing rhythm.** A tutorial a fortnight beats a burst of ten before a launch and silence after. - **A feedback loop that visibly ships.** Developers keep talking to advocates whose feedback changes the product. - **Distribution for what gets made.** An advocate reaches the room, the thread, the stream; the rest of the stack needs the content put in their feed. - **A measure beyond applause:** activations from content, questions answered, changes shipped. ## How should advocates and paid distribution share the work? Advocates make the content; paid placements take it to the developers who do not follow the advocate yet. A talk at a conference reaches two hundred people; the same material as a promoted post on daily.dev reaches every developer reading that tag, with the advocate's byline on the company page so the ones who liked it can follow. Keep the voice. Developers click on "How we cut cold-start time by 60% in a Lambda" written by the engineer who did it, and scroll past "Unlock faster serverless performance". **Common mistakes** - Measuring advocates by talks given rather than developers activated. - Hiring for stage presence over engineering depth. - Sending feedback to product with no path for it to ship, so advocates stop collecting it. - Leaving good tutorials on the company blog where only followers see them. **How developers experience it** - They follow individuals, not companies; the advocate is the brand. - They test the sample app before they believe the talk. - They notice when an advocate admits what the product cannot do, and trust the rest more. ## On daily.dev An advocate's tutorial reaches the people who attended the talk. On daily.dev the same post runs as [In-Feed Ads](https://business.daily.dev/feed.md) to the developers following that tag, and the [verified company page](https://business.daily.dev/verified-company/) keeps them following after the conference is over. ## Developer advocacy vs developer evangelism | | Developer advocacy | Developer evangelism | | --- | --- | --- | | **Direction** | Two-way: help developers, carry feedback inside | One-way: promote the product to developers | | **A talk ends with** | A working example and a repo link | A pitch and a sign-up link | | **Reports on** | Developers activated, questions answered, changes shipped | Reach: talks given, impressions | | **Credibility comes from** | Engineering depth and honesty about limits | Stage presence | | **Still used?** | The current term | Older term, mostly retired | ## Go deeper - [Developer advocacy vs evangelism](https://business.daily.dev/resources/developer-advocacy-vs-evangelism-key-differences.md) - [Building a developer advocacy program that drives revenue](https://business.daily.dev/resources/build-developer-advocacy-program-drives-revenue.md) - [Developer advocacy frameworks](https://business.daily.dev/resources/developer-advocacy-frameworks-a-beginners-guide.md) Related terms: [Developer relations](https://business.daily.dev/glossary/developer-relations.md) | [Technical content marketing](https://business.daily.dev/glossary/technical-content-marketing.md) | [Community-led growth](https://business.daily.dev/glossary/community-led-growth.md) ### Frequently asked questions **What is the difference between developer advocacy and developer evangelism?** Evangelism is one-way: promoting a product to developers. Advocacy is two-way: helping developers succeed with it and representing their needs inside the company. The newer term reflects what good programs actually do. **What makes a good developer advocate?** Real engineering experience with the product, the ability to teach in writing and on stage, patience in community channels, and enough standing with the product team to get developer feedback acted on. **How do you measure developer advocacy?** By what the audience does: tutorial readers who activate, questions answered that reduce support load, community growth, and product changes traced to advocate feedback. Reach of talks and posts is an input. **Should advocates be on the marketing team?** They can sit in marketing, product or engineering; what matters is that they keep an engineer's credibility and standing with product. Advocates asked to write ad copy stop being advocates. **Can a small company run developer advocacy?** Yes, often with one engineer spending part of their week on tutorials, community answers and a talk a quarter. Start with the questions users already ask; those are the first tutorials. [All terms](https://business.daily.dev/glossary.md) | [Explore your options](https://business.daily.dev/schedule/?ref=glossary-developer-advocacy) | [How pricing works](https://business.daily.dev/pricing.md)