A lot of developers build genuinely great tools and then wonder why nobody's using them. I've worked with a few technical founders and side-project builders as a digital marketer, and the pattern is almost always the same: the product is solid, the marketing is an afterthought.
Here's what I've seen actually work — not theory, just what moves the needle:
SEO starts before you launch, not after.
If your landing page has no meta description, no proper heading structure, and no target keyword in mind, you're invisible to search from day one. This takes an hour, not a marketing degree.Your GitHub README is a marketing asset.
Treat it like a landing page — clear value prop in the first two lines, a demo GIF, and a call to action (star, try it, contribute). Most devs bury the "why" under installation instructions.Distribution > perfection.
A decent tool posted in the right places (relevant subreddits, niche Discords, Hacker News, Product Hunt) beats a perfect tool nobody sees. Build in public if you can — progress updates get more traction than final launches.Analytics tell you what your gut can't.
Know your traffic sources, bounce rate, and where users drop off. Without this, you're marketing blind.
I write more on SEO, content, and growth strategy — some of it dev-adjacent — over at thenasim.com if it's useful.
Curious — for the devs here, what's actually worked for getting eyes on something you've built?
— Nasim Sayed | https://thenasim.com/
