How To Be A Tech Evangelist

Wikipedia defines Tech Evangelists as any “person who attempts to build a critical mass of support for a given technology in order to establish it as a technical standard in a market that is subject to network effects.” And of course at very grammatical and technical stand-point, that’s absolutely correct. But what these definitions of evangelism seem to leave out are the qualities that evangelistic people have that helps them spread the gospel of tech better than others.

In my opinion, without an effective use of evangelism, most start-ups will wind up doomed to fail. It’s the passion of unaffiliated users which guides start-up companies into the limelight. Without a flag head to raise the message to the masses, the message is left at half-mast, already prepared for the entrepreneurial death rattle.

So what makes and evangelist an evangelist? The answer is, “not just one factor”. In order to be a successful evangelist, there are key personality traits which one must already posses, as well as other skills which are learned among the way. Social networking is changing the world of evangelism as we know it. Mostly providing an easier outlet to spread the word. But before you can talk to the audience, you actually need an audience. Which brings us to our first key trait.

1. Social savvy: Any master of the art of evangelism knows that without an audience, evangelism isn’t much of a help to anyone but yourself. The spread of social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed (which will eventually result in a new breed of evangelism, the PR tech evangelist) have helped make communication of any given subject much easier in the face of the masses. Before the social media explosion, evangelists were limited to writing blogs, speaking at conventions, and pretty much held by the very scary “word of mouth” factor.

If you can understand your audience, you can understand the first step of successful evangelism. Gaining the crowd which will help spread the love. The great thing about social networking is that it allows you to communicate with a broad audience while still being able to converse on a personal basis through direct messaging.

2. Passion: In order to be successful at any evangelism game, you have to have a full-on passion for what you’re talking about. If you’re planning on feigning passion to earn a paycheck, the chances of a successful knowledge spreading campaign diminishes vastly. Believe it or not, enthusiasm is contagious, even on the ole’ Interwebs.

Actually, especially on the ole’ Interwebz. The Internet allows us to show our passion to a much larger audience then ever before. In this day and age, anyone can be an evangelist.

3. Knowledge: One of the most important factors of evangelism is knowing the ins-and-outs of the company or technology you’re evangelizing. Naysayers are sure to bring up certain features of the product which they think are negative. The only way to answer these people are with knowledge of your limited niche. To explain why your passion is so adamant about the technology in question and why it beats the friggen sucks out of the competition.

But more importantly, having knowledge about the future of the tech field is key. Where will this product be in a year, 5 years, and 10 years down the line? How will it improve and expand? How has the company learned from past mistakes and what are they doing at improving the product for the future? Always keep up to date with any changes in features, architecture, corporate disarray, etc and so on.

You don’t always have to agree with every event that goes down in your field of technology. But discussing what changes could be made to improve the current situation is always a plus.

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