When Centus approached me, they had a problem that’s all too familiar in the SaaS world: their platform was technically solid, but they were struggling to capture the attention of their target audience. Centus is a modern localization platform specifically designed for software teams and developers, offering collaborative, automated workflows for translating and localizing products. Despite having a superior solution, they were losing ground to competitors who had better brand visibility.
What I discovered was a gap between what developers needed and what the market was providing in terms of educational content. Most localization content was either too theoretical or focused on enterprise solutions that didn’t speak to the practical needs of individual developers and smaller teams.
The Challenge: Making Centus Visible to Developers
The localization space is crowded, dominated by established players with significant marketing budgets. Centus needed to differentiate itself not just through product features, but by demonstrating a genuine understanding of developer workflows and pain points.
Developers are skeptical of traditional marketing approaches. They want proof, practical examples, and content that respects their time and intelligence. They’re also incredibly diverse in their tech stacks, working across different programming languages, frameworks, and deployment environments.
Building Trust Through Educational Content
My approach was straightforward: instead of talking about Centus, I would create content that solved real problems developers face with localization. The strategy centered on producing over 50 comprehensive, actionable guides covering software and website localization across different languages and frameworks.
This wasn’t about creating superficial blog posts. Each guide was designed to be a definitive resource that developers could bookmark and return to. We covered practical implementation for Python, PHP, React, Laravel, YAML, and numerous other technologies that developers actually use in their daily work.
The content addressed specific scenarios: “How to implement i18n in a React application with user-generated content,” “Managing translation workflows in Laravel applications,” “YAML localization best practices for configuration files.” Each piece provided step-by-step instructions, code examples, and practical troubleshooting advice.
Content Strategy That Connected With Real Needs
The key insight was understanding that developers don’t just need tools—they need to understand how localization fits into their existing workflows without causing friction. Our content strategy focused on three core areas:
Framework-specific implementation guides that showed exactly how to integrate localization into popular development environments. Rather than generic advice, we provided copy-paste code snippets and real-world examples.
Troubleshooting and optimization content that addressed common problems developers encounter when implementing localization. This included performance considerations, memory management, and handling edge cases that other resources often overlook.
Workflow integration guides that demonstrated how localization could work seamlessly with existing development processes, version control systems, and deployment pipelines.
Repurposing Content Across Multiple Channels
Creating great content is only half the battle. The real impact came from strategically repurposing this cornerstone content across social media and developer communities.
Each comprehensive guide was broken down into smaller, shareable pieces: Twitter threads highlighting key insights, LinkedIn posts featuring before-and-after code examples, and GitHub gists with practical snippets. This approach multiplied the reach of our original investment in content creation.
We also engaged directly in developer communities—Stack Overflow, Reddit’s programming subreddits, and Discord channels—not with promotional content, but by providing genuine help and linking to our resources when they were truly relevant to the discussion.
The Results: Building Recognition in the Developer Community
While I don’t have hard metrics to share (client confidentiality), the positive response was evident across multiple indicators. Developer engagement increased significantly, with community members sharing our resources organically and referencing our guides in their own projects.
The sentiment around Centus shifted from “another localization tool” to “the platform that actually understands how developers work.” This wasn’t measured just in vanity metrics, but in the quality of discussions and the types of questions developers started asking—moving from “What is Centus?” to “How do I implement this specific feature with Centus?”
Most importantly, Centus began to be recognized as a thought leader in developer-focused localization solutions. Our content was being cited by other developers, shared in internal team discussions, and referenced in technical documentation across various organizations.
Key Lessons for Technical Content Marketing
This project reinforced several important principles about reaching developer audiences:
Respect their intelligence and time. Developers can immediately tell when content is created by someone who doesn’t understand their daily challenges. Every piece of content needs to demonstrate genuine technical competence.
Solve real problems, don’t just promote features. The most effective way to build trust with developers is to help them accomplish their goals, whether or not they use your product.
Consistency and depth matter more than volume. A smaller number of truly comprehensive resources will always outperform a larger collection of shallow content.
Community engagement requires authentic participation. Developers have finely tuned sensors for promotional content masquerading as help. Genuine contribution to their communities is the only sustainable approach.
The work with Centus demonstrated that technical audiences respond to content that respects their expertise while providing genuine value. By focusing on education rather than promotion, we were able to build the kind of trust and recognition that translates into long-term business results.
