Do you ever wonder how GitHub squeezes the most value out of their team to provide amazing product updates? I was curious, so I analyzed their 2,381 (!!) updates to uncover where precisely the value lies and how they extract it.
Here are three things GitHub does with their changelog that you should steal:
Squeeze One: Relentless Updates
GitHub squeezes every single product change for changelog marketing benefit. They are cooking and have published over 2,300 updates since April 2018—nearly 29 updates PER MONTH. 🤯
Here's a bit of data for your viewing pleasure:
Aside from the pure volume, the longest gap between updates is just 15 days, and every month receives equal attention. They're also shipping more updates over time, growing from an impressive 40-60 updates per quarter to an unbelievable 120-160 updates every quarter. They publish so frequently that there was even an update published during my analysis—I went in with 2,380 updates and came out with 2,381.
Their team stays focused on improving the product for customers, and they're not shy about getting credit for that work.
One additional note: GitHub's changelog is separate from their marketing blog. While it's not necessary to have a separate changelog, I love that they committed from the start to updating their changelog so frequently that it's become a stand-alone product and marketing asset.
Squeeze Two: Team Generated Quotes
I've said before that including customer quotes is an S-tier changelog technique to both communicate value and sprinkle in social proof, all in one move.
The downside of this expert maneuver is that you need to coordinate with a third party to get updates out the door. While I have tips on making that process faster, GitHub skips it entirely with a genius realization: Our customers are developers, our developers are developers... why not have our developers talk about the great things our product is doing?
Here's a great example of a quote directly from one of their Principal Solutions Engineers:
To be clear, this isn't "free"—I imagine a Principal Solutions Engineer has a full work schedule at GitHub! However, the company clearly understands the value of making the changelog as informative and clear as possible, so they treat this as an investment that will yield ROI.
Squeeze Three: Planning The Next Step
GitHub looks for every opportunity to guide their changelog readers further down the funnel, adding numerous outbound links in their posts.
Like this:
Or this:
Or even this:
This shows that GitHub understands their changelog content interests everyone: existing customers, past customers, and potential future customers. Given this wide and relatively engaged audience reading these product-specific updates, how do we maximize the benefit of that interaction?
GitHub's approach is to move readers to the next step in their funnel, whether that's trying a new feature, reviewing detailed documentation, or finding the direct location to upgrade their account.
Small Recommendations
If GitHub's product marketing team hired me to further improve their changelog, I'd point out that there's room to be more specific about the benefits to end users. I understand their audience is mostly developers, who are generally pretty anti-"getting sold to," but let's look at the changelog entry that provided the team quote. Further down the post, there's this section on the functionality being provided in the new GitHub Copilot Chat feature:
To ascend to the elite level of changelog writing, your customers shouldn't have to wonder, "What was the point of building this? How does this make our business stronger? Why are we here?"
My rewrite would focus on making developers faster and more productive with fewer bugs, which gives us endless choices on what to promote. For an optimistic spin, how about:
Focusing on the outcomes that make your customers money is always a great idea, but is especially true when you ship to the crazy standard that GitHub does.
Connecting to your customers bottom line is the best way to make sure your updates aren’t just noise.
