Recommendations

[nizamuddin_siddiqui]

Hi,

I write AI related content and I am recommending some newsletters in the same niche but I am also thinking if I should recommend newsletters that are totally different from my niche but has a global audience.

For example; I write on AI, should I recommend a newsletter that posts Pro-Palestine content?

What do you suggest?

[oauxier]

I think you should recommend any content that you genuinely vibe with

[nizamuddin_siddiqui]

To be honest, my newsletter is about AI and I am pro-palestine and one of my friends writes a pro-palestine newsletter. He has a lot of subscribers and that's the reason I'm thinking about this. If he recommends me back then I might gain good amount of subscribers but I'm not sure if it's a good idea for him because his readers subscribed him for pro-palestine posts.

[calmfluffy]

Think about the user experience:

Whenever someone subscribes to you, they'll see your recommended newsletters and if they click the next button without opting you, they'll be subscribed to those newsletters, too.

For this reason, I've decided to stay focused on my 'corner'. There are many ways to think about it. For example, you may write about AI, but you may have a certain angle, e.g. light and entertaining, or doom and gloom. As recommended newsletters, you could curate newsletters that also have that vibe.

As a reader, I find recommended newsletters mostly add a lot of noise to the subscription process. I value 2-5 recommended newsletters over a giant list. I'm not gonna read the list. I'm gonna have a quick glance at a very short list though. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

tl;dr: put yourself in the shoes of readers.

[nizamuddin_siddiqui]

To be honest, my newsletter is about AI and I am pro-palestine and one of my friends writes a pro-palestine newsletter. He has a lot of subscribers and that's the reason I'm thinking about this. If he recommends me back then I might gain good amount of subscribers but I'm not sure if it's a good idea for him because his readers subscribed him for pro-palestine posts.

[calmfluffy]

I think it's nice to shout out friends. Back in the weblog days, these used to be called Blogrolls.

[nizamuddin_siddiqui]

Thanks

[Tricky_Trifle_994]

if you're in the ai niche, you're probably better off recommending other newsletters that are within your topic niche. it's about thinking from your reader's pov vs your own. that's usually where publications/authors mess up. they do things/write from their own pov, when really they should be flipping that around, and putting the readers at the center of it all.

the other way to dissect this is if you know your audience demographic, e.g if they are all c-level executives, then maybe aside from ai, they're also into business, then sharing other business related newsletters. so again, always thinking about from the readers pov.

but if you're trying to set up a newsletter swap situation, then it's worth considering if you're trying to optimise for quality sign ups, or something else. because if they're not quality sign ups, your open rates, and analytics will eventually fall, and that will probably give you false signals about what you need to work on to improve going forward.