Getting to the heart of Apify’s developer content strategy

Apify was not looking for a beginner’s content playbook.

The company already had a growing content operation, an experienced team, and a packed production schedule. The question was whether an outside advisor could understand that system quickly enough to challenge it usefully.

Apify didn’t need generic content advice.

When a content engine is already working, the easiest advice to give is often the least valuable.

The team did not need another list of channels or formats to try. They needed space to step back from day-to-day production, examine their assumptions, and explore questions that did not fit neatly into the existing schedule.

That required understanding the company, its developer audience, and the way the content operation actually worked—not arriving with a prewritten playbook.

Four short sessions covered different parts of the same system.

We worked together across four focused, 30-minute sessions over several months.

The conversations moved between content strategy, conversion, team workflows, hiring for developer-facing roles, and broader growth questions.

Those topics may appear separate, but they affect each other. A content strategy changes when the audience changes. Conversion depends on what happens after someone reads. Hiring decisions determine which ideas the team can execute consistently.

My job was to understand the context quickly, connect those questions, and challenge the current approach where useful.

The work continued between the calls.

The value did not come only from being a sounding board during the sessions.

I reviewed the team’s context, asked questions about the workflow, suggested practical improvements, and followed up with notes and resources after the conversations.

That allowed each session to start further ahead. We could spend the limited time examining decisions rather than repeatedly reconstructing the situation.

The outcome was a fresh perspective and a stack of concrete ideas.

This engagement did not produce one redesigned page or a single headline metric.

It produced something Apify’s content team needed more at that moment: an informed outside perspective that could get to the heart of its concerns quickly, question an already successful approach, and open up new directions.

By the end, the team had a new problem: deciding which of the resulting ideas to pursue first.

For a mature team with no shortage of work, that was the right kind of problem to create.