Getting the attention of people who are doing APIs within enterprises is not easy. I would say that I do pretty well getting people to tune in for brief moments, but it is something that is more art than science. People who work within enterprises on APIs don’t always have the time, bandwidth, interest, and incentive to tune into what is happening outside their enterprise, and when they do, there are numerous channels to tune into depending on their age, role, and multiple other dimensions. While I don’t have sales quotas to meet or other GTM metrics to satisfy, I enjoy the game of trying to capture the attention of new folks as well as keeping the attention of people who regularly disappear and pull back because of their day to day work expectations, with a few considerations.
- Channels - The channels to reach enterprise folks is very limited and capturing via LinkedIn or search engine, and then keeping via email newsletter is key.
- Titles - Writing titles that speak to what people are experiencing around with APIs hooks them on LinkedIn and top 10 results via Google search.
- Length - Rarely do people have the time to read lengthy pieces, so keeping things short and sweet helps ensure you will be able to keep their attention.
- Usefulness - Always working to keep stories as hands-on and relevant as possible to what is going on in our world, focusing on helping people in their work.
- Frequency - You have to throw out a lot of stories, varying in topic and usefulness to get someone’s attention, and regain regularly when it is lost.
The velocity and noise of the daily reality of enterprise folks doing APIs is often underestimated by service providers, analysts, and other storytellers who are working to break on through. It is easy to think that everyone doing APIs within the enterprise is interested in doing the right thing, has the baseline of knowledge required to understand where our stories are coming from, and will have the time and emotional bandwidth to take the next step. Ultimately I find it takes several interactions with folks before they adjust the frequency they are operating on to something reflecting the outside world. The life within each enterprise will often have it’s own frame-rate and noise levels, and there is rarely a single narrative tone that will work consistently across every industry.
