Twilio
Twilio Developer Blog: growing organic discovery through developer education
Twilio · Software engineering, developer education, and organic growth
As the founding member of Twilio’s developer content function, I helped increase Developer Blog organic views by approximately 900% within my first 18 months.
Outcome
900% growth in organic views in 18 months
The opportunity
The Developer Blog helped developers discover Twilio through the technical problems they were trying to solve.
Its primary objective was organic discovery: attract developers with useful technical resources that made Twilio’s APIs easier to find, understand, and use.
That required content with engineering substance. Tutorials needed to help developers build something while explaining how Twilio fit into the implementation.
What I owned
I joined Twilio in September 2018 as the founding member of a new developer content function, combining software development and technical communication.
I authored technical resources, built custom publishing tooling, established technical and editorial standards, and created a global community contribution program.
As my responsibilities grew, I led a distributed team of technical writers, developer advocates, and educators. I partnered with Product Marketing and developer-facing organizations to align technical education with product narratives, launches, and customer journeys. I created content playbooks to lead in global customer adoption across NAMER, EMEA, and APJ.
The decisions behind the work
Combine engineering with education
I approached technical content as an engineer helping other developers build.
During my developer-content engineering tenure, I authored 77 resources and established standards for the work. That hands-on contribution gave me practical experience with both the technical material and the publishing process the organization needed to support.
Build the foundation for a repeatable program
Alongside authoring, I built custom publishing tooling and helped establish the technical and editorial practices behind the developer content function.
Those investments supported a program that could grow beyond my individual output.
Expand coverage through a contributor ecosystem
I created a global community contribution program and later built and scaled that ecosystem to expand technical coverage across Twilio’s growing portfolio of products and APIs.
As a director, I led the distributed team supporting developer education and coordinated with partner organizations on relevant product narratives and customer journeys.
Connect discovery with customer behavior
Organic views were the Blog’s primary growth measure. As the program matured, I also established standardized measurement frameworks connecting developer education to signup behavior.
During my Senior Manager tenure, high-performing technical content averaged seven developer signups per asset. This gave us another way to evaluate the usefulness of our work beyond audience size.
The results
| Measure | Reported result |
|---|---|
| Developer Blog organic views | Approximately 900% growth within my first 18 months, starting September 2018 |
| Individual technical contribution | 77 resources authored during my September 2018–August 2020 engineering tenure |
| High-performing technical content | Seven developer signups per asset on average, reported during my Senior Manager tenure |
| Developer Blog signup intents | Up 153% year over year in May 2026, according to internal reporting |
These measurements describe different periods and populations. The seven-signup average applies to high-performing content, while the later signup-intent metric is distinct from completed registrations.
How the program evolved
As the Blog matured, our work expanded to maintaining the existing collection and making better publishing decisions.
Make performance useful to the team.
In January 2026 we reintroduced Blogalytics (a custom, team-developed, AI-infused research and analytics tool) back into the team’s workflow to make content performance easier to examine in one place. It supported filtering by date, author, team, product, and programming language to identify trends, strong performers, and gaps.
The purpose was to help the team decide what to publish, update, and investigate.
Evaluate the existing collection.
In March 2026, a cross-team audit identified 29 articles with fewer than 100 page views and no signups over approximately six months for review.
My team reviewed the relevant tutorials, recorded owners and next steps, and coordinated follow-up decisions about rewriting or archiving them.
Make maintenance visible.
By May 2026, we expanded our activity reporting to include maintained and updated posts alongside newly published content. That gave a more complete picture of the work required to sustain the Blog.
Adapt to changing discovery behavior.
We also began incorporating AI-discovery research into content planning, extending our attention from search traffic to how developers encountered and understood Twilio through answer engines.
What I learned
Audience growth and conversion require separate attention
In the week of May 10, 2026, the Blog recorded 9,831 organic views, up 103% week over week, while its reported conversion rate fell from 2% to 1%.
Our update identified conversion optimization as a next step. The traffic increase was valuable, but it raised another question: how effectively were we helping those new visitors move forward?
Publishing volume does not guarantee immediate traffic growth
There were times where the team published an average of 20 monthly blog posts while monthly traffic remained flat.
That reinforced the importance of evaluating publishing activity and audience outcomes separately, allowing time to observe performance rather than assuming that more output would immediately produce more traffic.
Maintaining content is part of developer education
An established tutorial collection requires continuing attention to relevance, product changes, and performance.
The audit process and expanded maintenance reporting made that responsibility visible. Operating the Blog meant supporting the usefulness of what developers could already find, alongside creating new resources.