Developer relations is an integral part of many software companies who hope to win the hearts and minds of developers. You may refer to it as developer evangelism or community outreach but ultimately, it's a motion dedicated to ensuring that:
<ol>
	<li>You're proactively listening to what the community needs and looking to see how you can help</li>
	<li>You're providing a conduit for developers to offer you feedback</li>
	<li>You have an opportunity to share your vision with the community and hopefully solve some of their problems</li>
</ol>
In my opinion, this is absolutely the right order to be driving on since it's important to always think of the needs of the community.

But the problem with developer relations is that it's a subjective, somewhat nebulous field that in most cases doesn't involve tangible "<em>things</em>". This can make it hard to measure how successful you or your team are and if you're hitting the mark with your community.

<h2>What do Developer Advocates do?</h2>

From my experience and through many discussions with my peers, the typical developer advocate tends to focus on several key outreach mechanisms to engage with developers. These are:
<ol>
<li>Social media engagement, primarily Twitter</li>
	<li>Content generation via blogs or 3rd party sites such as Smashing Magazine</li>
	<li>Screencasts</li>
	<li>Podcasts</li>
	<li>Webinars</li>
	<li>Local or regional meetups and usergroups</li>
	<li>Major conferences including speaking or attending</li>
	<li>Code contributions to community efforts</li>
	<li>Hackathons</li>
</ol>

The need to scale a message means that numbers 1 through 5 will get the most attention allowing advocates to engage with the largest possible audience