I’m not a marketing guy. Actually, there are some issues involving me that would qualify as anti-marketing. However, I know some awesome things I perceive as great marketing. Here is a list of four of them, in no particular order, without being complete.
Softwerker: A lovely designed (German) magazine created by Codecentric that is free to order and always contains high-quality content. For me, this is the gold standard in terms of “free give away “.
Gitlab Handbook: Gitlab itself is awesome, no doubt about it. Additional to great functionality, the organization releases documentation about the company culture like this handbook for communication. This provides me with an insight into how the people at Gitlab work and it is also extremely helpful for me as a tech lead.
Tom Homberg (reflecting.io) publishes an extremely valuable newsletter I’m always looking forward to read when it appears in my inbox. Yes, I’m talking about newsletter via e-mail! If a newsletter contains content worth reading such as Toms mails, e-mail marketing works like a charm.
For me as a Java developer, the (German) Java Aktuell as a community-driven Java magazine is one of the best examples of how a self-organized community works.
In conclusion, all of these examples have one similarity that makes them valuable: They deliver great content. For me, this is the only metric that counts. It sure is nice to have a good looking design or some nice images. But nothing beats content that is easy to access.