The DevRel metagame is increasingly turning a hyper-global and hyper-local barbell strategy - either online and massively scalable, or in-person and high bandwidth, relationship-based. This makes sense - anything in-between is just not very good at either goal of content or community.
Given the choice between being 80-20 Very Good Online and Very Good IRL, or 20-80 the other way, it is almost self evident that the bulk of the investment should go to an incredible online presence (beyond the obvious scalability, being Very Good Online does translate to Good IRL, but not vice versa).
Blogging is by far the most scalable form of Very Good Online, but the rise in rich media consumption cannot be ignored, so that is what we are focusing on here.
Defining the Company YouTube problem
- Of all the major video, audio, and live conferencing platforms, YouTube is far and away the best platform for its install base (2.1b MAU) and social proof (subscribers, viewcount, likes, comments, etc). This is why devtools companies are increasingly investing in YouTube, and therefore asking for model examples from which to take inspiration.
- However, the best/biggest YouTubes are usually individual creators, from CodingTrain to TechWorld with Nana, and the options for sponsored content are often very limited.
- Viewer loyalty is very personality centric and these channels often go for a diversity of topics (doing the "Intro to X" or "X Full Course" or "How to get a Job with X" video for as many technologies as possible is the best way to pick up subscribers), both of which are ultimately unsustainable foundations for building a company asset.
- Misconception: Backend tools are less visual than frontend tools, so it feels harder to do well on video. However there are quite a few counterexamples - tutorials on Kubernetes, APIs and Apache Kafka that get millions of views.
Therefore, a separate Company YouTube playbook must be developed.
I've been keeping a list for the past year, and figured I should publish this as a standalone resource for people. This is a "live resource", so it will be continually updated and you can bookmark this as a reference. Many thanks to Chris Sean for helping with the research on this.
Generalized YouTube notes
- Titles/Video formats that work
- Introducing X/Announcing X
- What's new in X
- X in 5 minutes
- What is X? (OpenShift)
- X Explained (Virtualization)
- X vs Y (K8s vs Docker)
- The Top N things to know about X (Conf recap, #FiveThings)
- Surprising List (10 layouts in 1 line of CSS)
- Lightboard explainers are doing particularly well
- Thumbnails
- Large titles for readability
- Small face/screenshot
- Logo of the Tech
- Play button to prompt the user to hit play? (see Tailwind)
- Content
- High quality video
- Sound quality great
- Must Entertain - don't just educate
- Capture attention immediately, but leave open questions to develop over the course of the video - for watch time
- Special formats
- Weekly News Show (The Download, HTTP 203)
Above 100k League
| Company | Subcribers | Age | Frequency | notes |
| 1.1m | 12 years | 1/week | n/a, gaming company | |
| 661k | 9 years | 2-3/week | playlists- I/O 2022 - GUI Challenges - Adam Argyle - Designing in the Browser - Una - Chrome Dev Summit 2021 - Developer Shows - HTTP 203, Design in the Browser, Made with TensorFlow.js, #AskChrome, Developer Diary - Speed and Performance - Progressive Web Apps - Tooling & Polymer - UX Design & Accessibility top videos- The Top 8 web things to know from Google I/O 2021 6m views, 4mins recap - What's new in Chrome OS I/O 2022 3m views, 23min recap - Chrome Dev Summit 2021 Keynote 1m views, 47min keynote - What's new in Chrome OS 1m views, 12min Keynote - 10 modern layouts in 1 line of CSS 1m views, 20min talk | |
| 285k | 5 years | 2-3/week | playlists- Pinned video: most recent update - Technology Explained: Cloud Fundamentals, K8s Essentials, Hybrid Cloud, API Essentials - Kubernetes Essentials - IBM and Red Hat: Innovate Anywhere - Cloud Security - DevOps Explained top videos- API vs SDK: What's the Difference? 1m views, 9min lightboard - Kubernetes vs Docker 844k views, 8min lightboard - What is a REST API? 700k views, 9min lightboard - Virtualization Explained 471k views, 5min lightboard - What is OpenShift? 462k views, 7min lightboard | |
| 226k | 5 years | 1 short/day 2 videos/week | playlists- Pinned video: Sizzle Reel - Getting Started with VS Code (3-7 min tutorials) - VS Code livestreams (30-60min streams with guests) - VS Code Day 2022 (conf talks - 5-15mins talks) - Shorts - VS Code and GitHub (1 min tips) top videos- a lot of shorts... - Getting start with Node.js debugging in VS Code 400k views, 8min tutorial - VS Code - Debugging 400k views, 6min tutorial - VS Code - Quick Intro to JavaScript 400k views, 3min "Quick Tour" - Advanced Code Editing in VS Code 360k views, 6min tutorial | |
| 218k | 9 years | 3-5/week | playlists- Featured - keynotes, explainers, conf talks - The Download - weekly news show with Christina Warren - Conferences - GitHub Universe, Constellation, InFocus, Maintainer Summit - GitHub Checkout - PMs and Engineers sharing their work - GitHub Changelog - latest changes - 30 minutes to Merge - 30min guest interviews - Demo Days - 30-45min Guest speakers/talks - GitHub Community - Guest livestreams - Open Source Friday - featuring major open source projects top videos- What is GitHub? 1.6m views, 3 minute explainer, motion graphics - GitHub Arctic Code Vault 950k views, 2min announcement, cinematic film - Introducing Atom 1.0 500k views, 2min, sketch/edited skit - The new GitHub Issues 465k views, 1min product announcement |
To add: GCP YouTube - 870k subs
10-100k league
| Company | Subcribers | Age | Frequency | notes |
| 71k | 13 years | 20-30/year | playlists- Pinned video - Twilio Engage product intro - 50second stinger, 11k views - 2021 Conference videos - good thumbnails - Learn with Nathaniel - person-driven 8-12min tutorials - Twilio Quickstarts - "how to X" - 4 minutes each, 40-60k views top videos- Introducing Twilio Studio (37 seconds, 7m views) - What is Twilio? 2mins, 5m views - Navigate Messaging Compliance with Twilio 90secs, 2.7m views - Some ads for Twilio SIGNAL | |
| 60k | 1 year | used to be 2/month | playlists- What's New in Tailwind CSS - Tailwind CSS v2.0 - full course in 10-20min segments - Tailwind Talk - livestreams with guests top videos- What's New in Tailwind 3.0? - 26min overview, 158k views - Introducing Tailwind CSS v3.0 - 55sec ad, 138k views - Just in Time: The Next Generation of Tailwind CSS - 13min, 132k views | |
| 40k | 4 years | ~4/week | playlists- Pinned video: Why Instacart Chose Confluent - For Technical Leaders & Executives - Kafka Summit videos - Kafka 101 Tutorials - Confluent Customers & Use Cases - ksqlDB Videos top videos- Intro to Streams - Apache Kafka Streams API - 356k views, 10min tutorial - What is Apache Kafka + ksqlDB? 271k views, 12min lightboard - What is Apache Kafka? 237k views, 10min lightboard - Apache Kafka Fundamentals 186k views, 24min talk with slides - Creating a Streams Application 156k views, 10min tutorial | |
| 40k | 9 months | 2/month | - Hired top dev youtubers to produce beginner/introductory focused content - Promoting their twitter/insta in description - Uncertain company ROI | |
| 23k | 3 years | 40/year (incl conf) | YouTube channel features individual developer advocate youtubes.playlists- Pinned Video: The Future of React & Next.js – The Web’s SDK - 74k views, 27min keynote - Next.js Conf 2021 - Next.js Conf - Special Edition - Next.js Conf 2020 | |
| 10k | ~1 year | 50/year (incl conf) | Significant promotion on Twitter.top videos- Remix Tutorial with Kent - 6 hour livestream with 61k views - Remix v1 Beta Launch - 90min livestream with 29k views - CDN Caching, Static Site Generation, and Server Side Rendering - 43min talk with 25k views - Introducing Remix - 48sec stinger with 20k views |
YouTube Shorts game
- AWS Container Shorts youtube.com/playlist?list=PLehXSATXjcQHGYuf..
- VS Code Shorts youtube.com/c/Code/videos?view=0&sort=p..
Who else?
Misc YouTubes to explore
- Honeypot Highly produced documentaries on Kubernetes, Vue.js, GraphQL, and others
- Same producer left for OfferZen to do Laravel and Svelte
- Roboflow - has some >100k views videos despite being a small channel
- Altinity
- Clickhouse
- Prismic (doing ok, just surprisingly low compared to production quality)
- Temporal swyx worked on this from 2021-2022
Business Oriented
Ahrefs - 333k subs
- Decent production quality with some motion graphics and high density advice (example)
- Post 2-3x per week, average length 5-11minutes, max 2 hours
Top videos:
- SEO For Beginners: A Basic Search Engine Optimization Tutorial for Higher Google Rankings (1.3m views)
- Complete SEO Course for Beginners: Learn to Rank #1 in Google (1m views)
- Digital Marketing for Beginners: 7 Strategies that Work (1m views)
How to Speed Up Your WordPress Website (Simple Guide) (500k views)
-
Great thumbnails
- Consistent - Post 3-4x/week
- Decent thumbnails
- Top videos
- What is the HubSpot CMS? 2.6m views, 30 secs, motion graphics
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning 1.6M views, 3 mins, motion graphics
- Why No One Knows Who Created The Bitcoin 1.3m views, 2 mins, motion graphics
- What is Artificial Intelligence (or Machine Learning)? 1M views, 6 mins, motion graphics
- Sarah Cooper: How I Turned an Everyday Observation into Whole New Career 709k views, 12 min talk, at conference, comedian
- Playlists:
- Generation No-Code - 5-12 minute highly produced interviews
- Figma to Webflow: Full Course - 5min-2hr videos as part of Webflow University
- Webflow: 21 Day Portfolio Course - 4-8min videos
- Courses, Full site builds
- Top Videos:
- Meet the design tool from the future — Webflow - 23m views, 30 second ad
- Design, build, and launch — with Webflow - 18m views, 40 second ad
- How to build a custom portfolio — Official Webflow course trailer - 14m views, 90sec course trailer
- If life were like web design — Webflow - 8m views, 1m funny ad
- Bright yellow thumbnail, very consistent format
- Great background to help you feel you can trust their content
- video quality is amazing
- straight to the point
- intro helps pull viewer in by telling them why they need to watch the video
Todo:
- Slidebean: youtube.com/channel/UC4bq21IPPbpu0Qrsl7LW0sw
- Notion: youtube.com/channel/UCoSvlWS5XcwaSzIcbuJ-Ysg
- Podia: youtube.com/channel/UCX6oDZxFdB-kvF9m9j8f6sg
Contribute Edits
This list is open source and hosted on GitHub: github.com/sw-yx/company-youtubes
We will periodically sync it back to DX.Tips over time. PRs and discussions welcome!