Latest / Content, Briefly / "I'm not like other newsletters." Prove it.

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"I'm not like other newsletters." Prove it. · Content, Briefly

• 0:00
  Just watch out, the next Superpath newsletter is gonna be like 17 pages long. Someone'll respond back, and they'll be like, "Why?" And we'll be like, "You know what? Just listen to this podcast."
• 0:09
  Eric, if you're listening- Yeah... that's actually a challenge. [laughs] Eric is like, the first week of being a father. [laughs] He gets 20 pages long. It's actually just...
• 0:18
  It's actually a 20-minute voice note that's embedded- [laughs]... into the email. [laughs] And half of it is swearing at us. [laughs] And the other half is the baby crying in the background. [laughs] They're both crying.
• 0:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Alex here. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Metricool. I'll be honest about my relationship with social media. I don't love using it personally.
• 0:42
  Unfortunately, social media is an absolute essential for work. Significant amount of Superpath's growth traces back to LinkedIn, but it's the single most distracting part of my week.
• 0:52
  I sit down to write, I open LinkedIn to schedule one post, and 40 minutes later I'm reading a thread about something that has nothing to do with Superpath or content marketing.
• 0:59
  The other thing that bugs me is that it never closes. There's always one more comment sitting there, one more thing to queue up before tomorrow morning.
• 1:06
  Metricool surveyed people who do this professionally, like me, and more than half said they feel as overwhelmed as I do.
• 1:13
  Metricool wrangles the chaos of social media marketing with one streamlined calendar for all of your channels, so you can schedule content, format posts, and interpret analytics all in one place instead of opening five different distracting apps.
• 1:25
  It tells me the best time to post based on my own account data, rather than generic benchmarking. And the reporting sits right there, so I know what actually worked from last month.
• 1:34
  My favorite part is that there's one single inbox to manage all of your conversations across different channels. Over three and a half million professionals use Metricool daily.
• 1:42
  Start free or get 30 days of any premium plan with our Superpath code. The link and that code are in the show notes. Enjoy the episode. Alex here. Welcome to another episode of Content Briefly.
• 1:53
  Newsletters have been hot for a bit now. Lots of folks are writing them these days, and many of us receive dozens of newsletters per week, most of which, if we're being honest, go unread.
• 2:02
  But what makes you read one newsletter versus another? How many newsletter writers really consider what they're up against in the email inbox or how they're being perceived in the flow of their workday?
• 2:11
  I've been thinking about this a lot more lately, and I landed on a hot take that I decided to bring to the crew. I believe that professional newsletters are a task.
• 2:19
  I only have so much time in a week to do, quote, unquote, work things, and if I'm spending time reading a newsletter, it means another work task isn't getting done.
• 2:27
  In this episode, Chloe, Ruth, and Rachel join me to debate the idea that reading a newsletter is a task. Enjoy the discussion. Rachel and I have been talking about this for a few weeks.
• 2:37
  This is a topic area where I see myself disagreeing potentially with several of y'all. Um, but maybe agreeing on some areas.
• 2:44
  I say this all the time to people, but in Superpath there are 50 different things I wanna do that I don't have time for. Some of those are tiny things.
• 2:52
  Some are like, can I take an hour and can I tweak something on the member hub and, like, improve it? Some things are, like, big, big projects that maybe I'll do someday.
• 3:01
  I also have a list of things I wanna read, like newsletters, things that come inbound to me that are really long that I just don't have time in the workday.
• 3:09
  And then I kinda get to that point maybe, maybe in the occasional week that everything's gone great [laughs] and I've, like, actually knocked out what I was trying to do that week, which is not the majority of weeks.
• 3:20
  I have a little bit of extra time. I'm, like, always using the work energy on knocking out work bucket list items. I'm never reading the stuff. That's where I'm curious. I saw this idea...
• 3:31
  Actually, we were talking about this first, and then it came up in this newsletter, Beehiiv's newsletter. But the idea that a newsletter is a task in the inbox. That resonates with me for two reasons.
• 3:43
  One is that I think the email inbox is a place for tasks, and then two is, like, when we're talking about a newsletter, I think we should separate work newsletters versus, like, personal newsletters, because in my mind, if it is a newsletter related to running community, related to content marketing, that is a work newsletter.
• 4:00
  I get other newsletters that are for fun that I use to just chill out and read, maybe I'll do that on the weekends, related to, like, sports, hobbies, whatever, and I put those in a completely separate category.
• 4:09
  But if it's a work newsletter and it's in my email inbox, that is a task. I don't subscribe to a ton of them, but the ones I do I'm like, I think I'll get value out of it. I just never, never get to those.
• 4:19
  And so I'm curious how you all react to that as I say that.
• 4:25
  I think one of my big takeaways from that notion is that there's an opportunity for newsletters to be really short and have a way to fit in where they don't become a task, because it's, it's usually those newsletters that are like, this is gonna take, take me 10-plus minutes to read.
• 4:40
  I need to, like, find time to read this newsletter versus the shorter pieces of content that come to me. It's like the reason we jump on LinkedIn between meetings. You're like, "I have three minutes.
• 4:50
  What is something I can digest in three minutes?"
• 4:52
  And so I just think there's an opportunity for short newsletters, but I simultaneously see in the newsletter world there's more and more newsletters and there are just so many long-form newsletters, and there's only so much capacity people have.
• 5:05
  Any initial gut reactions from you all? I could also talk about this topic for a very long time. I think you're spot on to separate work and personal newsletters as two completely different categories.
• 5:16
  I think I'm less convinced that every email should be short in order to not be a hard task to do.
• 5:27
  I'm more of the belief that a newsletter, or really any piece of content, but especially newsletters, 'cause I think I agree that if it's in your inbox it's a task. I feel the same way about, like, open tabs.
• 5:38
  You open a tab with an article you wanna read later, now it's a task. Those things need to justify the length and time they're asking of you.
• 5:49
  I only subscribe to maybe four or five work-related newsletters, and that's because over the years I've subscribed to 30, 40
• 6:00
  50 different ones, and most of them have not justified the time that they ask me to put into them. Something can be a waste of time even if it just takes two minutes.
• 6:11
  It feels less about just being shorter and more about making sure that you're giving back to that person, like, as much value as time that you're taking from them. What kind of newsletters?
• 6:25
  I'm coming from the perspective of when I was marketing weather, weather technology, I was writing a newsletter about data science.
• 6:33
  Very much like, "Hey, here's a roundup of all this really cool stuff that we've done recently, and all this stuff that's going on."
• 6:42
  There are industries where the news roundup is valuable, and then there are industries where, like, if you're marketing content marketing things to me, I do not care about the last six blogs you released.
• 6:55
  If you are some kind of construction, manufacturing, research firm, yeah, tell me what you guys have done over the last six months, because I can assure you I have not been keeping up.
• 7:08
  But I am a little biased in the s- fact that, like, I was the person creating that kind of content and seeing that there was a desire for it, and therefore I had to write more of it.
• 7:18
  Are you talking about, like, content roundups? Are you talking about thought pieces? In that case, I don't want a newsletter. I wanna go find that organically in an article, or I wanna see it posted somewhere else.
• 7:29
  Don't share it in a newsletter. Share it somewhere else for me to find it. I mean, I think that's why a newsletter is, I shouldn't say always, a lotta times is a piece of the bigger puzzle.
• 7:40
  You have the newsletter, and then that becomes your really personal hook on LinkedIn from, like, the CEO or whoever the face of your newsletter is.
• 7:49
  And then that becomes, like, a short video, and then maybe all of that informs, like, your keynote at, like, your trade show presentation. All of it can follow a content thread and a strategy.
• 8:00
  I think there's another dimension here too. You're classifying these, Alex, as, like, work newsletters. Is it professional development? So for us, that would be, like, the Superpath newsletter.
• 8:11
  You know, like, all those sorts of things. That's how I'd classify that. Then there's things that make me better at my industry-specific job, like your competitor's newsletters or, like, your market intelligence.
• 8:23
  I will say those are my best well-intended I'm gonna read these later tags. Those go in a labeled inbox,
• 8:33
  not to die a slow, painful death, but mostly, because there's just too many other ideas out there, and I don't necessarily believe in going to, like, your competitors to look for ideas.
• 8:45
  I believe in looking inside your organization. And then there's the other one, which is, like, your personal newsletters.
• 8:50
  The only newsletter that I read, besides the Superpath one, Eric Doty, uh, from top to bottom is Anne Hanley's newsletter. But do I read it the second it comes out in my inbox every week? Only when life allows me to.
• 9:07
  But I read every single one of her newsletters, and that's because, again, it's like I am her audience. Uh, I, I think, I think there's...
• 9:14
  I guess what I'm saying is I think there's more levels of classification than what we have here.
• 9:18
  When I'm thinking about this, to kinda ground it in maybe an example, and I think this is a decent example, uh, but Emily Kramer, are you all familiar with her MKTOne newsletter? It's awesome.
• 9:30
  Everything she puts out, in so many ways I'm just, like, also a community builder that I, like, very much look up to, is just does so many things very cool. Her newsletters are so freaking long.
• 9:41
  In theory, invaluable to me. Like, here is, like, how this go-to-market play looks across, like, 50 different companies, just, like, in-depth on the inside about how they've redesigned their marketing teams.
• 9:51
  I've got this pulled up in my inbox right now. Um, I'm a paid subscriber. I very rarely read the pieces when they come out because I find them [laughs] very overwhelming. Like, there's a lot going on.
• 10:02
  There's a lot of different places to click out.
• 10:04
  One of the interesting things that I think she's done, which is one I, I'm thinking of, uh, that she did, was on in-person events, like what is working in in-person events right now.
• 10:14
  I think this is, like, beginning of this year, so it's, it's a while back.
• 10:17
  She's created a knowledge base with all the stuff that she puts out in, like, an MCP that you can, like, tap into if you're a paid subscriber, which makes a lot of sense because I was thinking about in-person events ourself- ourselves.
• 10:29
  Like, I never read the newsletter when it came out, but when I was thinking about it, I'm like, "Oh, I bet Emily Kramer has done some piece on this," and I just, like, went through my inbox, pulled up the piece that she did, and, like, read it at that time where it was like, now it makes sense for me to spend 25 minutes reading this.
• 10:46
  So I think it's really interesting that she's, like, built this tool for her audience, which is like, I will do all this research and I will push it out to you, and maybe I will acknowledge that you're not gonna sit here and read this what could be a 20 to 25-minute piece in the flow of work when that might not be the thing top of mind, but then I will let you access it when it is top of mind.
• 11:05
  But that's the... That's, like, one of the examples I think about a lot. I know this is really, really high quality. I have a lot of trust in her brand. This is super relevant.
• 11:14
  It's, like, maybe not a thing I'm working on today, but, like, what she's touching on is relevant to, like, both the industry that we're talking about and also me as a marketer, and yet I cannot figure out how to get that into my day because the pieces are just so, so long.
• 11:28
  My main thought is I think there's actually only two kinds of work newsletters. There's work newsletters that are designed to be read every week, and ones that are not.
• 11:40
  And I think Emily Kramer is a great example of one that is not actually meant to be read every week.
• 11:46
  I see a lot of people who are running really cool blogs or, like, small micro publications, and they're using the newsletter format because it's a way that people can easily find it and remember that it exists.
• 11:59
  But Emily Kramer's approach Is to build trust and retain that trust with every single issue.
• 12:06
  Everything she writes is so in-depth, there's so much research, there's so much to click on and learn from, and you wanna take notes. And as a result, she's not trying to get you to read every one.
• 12:17
  She wants you to know that when you need something, you can trust her to provide it, and that you'll go looking for it or you'll remember that she's there.
• 12:26
  You'll see it come up and think, "Oh, I bet Emily Kramer has something about it," and you'll go to the Substack page and you'll find what you need. That's her goal.
• 12:33
  Then there's a separate one, which is like, you know, Eric's, like, Wednesday newsletter for Superpath is a great example. That's designed to be read every week. Takes, like, two to three minutes to read.
• 12:44
  Eric is a great content friend. You see it pop up and you're like... He always has good ideas. There's always something valuable inside.
• 12:51
  It's never a waste of time, but it's a completely different approach, goal, mindset. So I think those are really the two kinds of newsletters, if I had to narrow it down. Yeah, I love that.
• 13:03
  I, I also have, I can't remember where I saw this. Was it in Superpath?
• 13:07
  Where there was, like, it, either an ask me anything or a webinar or a big article or something describing, like, Emily's work back on her newsletter, and it takes her an insane amount of time. Oh, yeah.
• 13:20
  I, I don't know if you, if you all have seen it. So, so it is really, like, that time to quality to relevance ratio, and I think she is the gold standard of what...
• 13:32
  Like, I've, I've heard her referenced a lot in terms of, like, this is what we want to be put out. But to Rachel's point, putting that out every single week, that has to be a really specific goal. Yeah.
• 13:43
  I remember that headline when she was like, "Here's what I do," and I saved it, and it's on my read later list. [laughs] That saved folder on LinkedIn will be the death of all of us, I think.
• 13:55
  The thing is, the more that we talk about this, the more that I feel like, and what's the problem with that? So what? There is already more content in the world, even just for work, than you could ever possibly consume
• 14:10
  in, like, five lifetimes.
• 14:13
  I know this is kind of like an Oliver Burkeman approach if, if anybody listening to this is familiar with, like, Four Thousand Weeks, um, is his most popular book, is to just kind of say, like, yeah, I have a lot of stuff saved that I'm probably never gonna get to.
• 14:27
  That's okay because you know that when you need something you can go find it, you know who to trust, you know who to look to, you're getting stuff sent to you regularly that maybe you wouldn't have found another way.
• 14:40
  Like, there's all kinds of goods that come from it even if you don't actually check all those tasks off your list. Like, maybe that's just not the point at all. I honestly, Rachel, I agree though, right?
• 14:49
  I may not know everything, but I know where I can go find it. It's something that I have skimmed. It's something that I have received. It's something that I have actually made a personal connection with at some point.
• 14:59
  And even if I do use AI on it, it's probably something that I have read in the past. Do you guys remember... Is this still a thing? Is Blinkist still a thing? Is that around? Oh, man. That's a great question.
• 15:11
  I remember it. I know what that is. Are we dating ourselves here, you guys? I remember- It is still a thing...
• 15:16
  really liking it for stupid, dumb business books that everyone said you need to read and this is crazy important, and I was like, "I'm gonna fall asleep reading this." I, so my old company gave us a free subscription.
• 15:33
  Oh. And yeah. That's a good perk. Wow. Good, good solid perks. Um, that's what I'm kind of thinking of right now is, like, it depends on the mood you're in. Like, do you want the highlight reel?
• 15:44
  Do you want to walk away with one memorable moment? Then you probably need something that's in depth. Or are you just looking, I don't know, to make yourself incrementally slightly better?
• 15:56
  A highlight reel would be totally fine.
• 15:58
  Everyone always says that people have the attention of a goldfish, which annoys me obviously, 'cause a lot of us, you know, we're in long form content and we're like, "No, people still read."
• 16:06
  And it is true, people do still read, but it is that kind of time to value and relevance. I like newsletters in my inbox because it is the actual nudge to do something and to read something.
• 16:20
  Mine your inbox for the newsletters that you actually want to be reading, and then it's like every Friday at 3:00 when you're just absolutely zapped be like, "Hey, you know what would be great?
• 16:31
  Take a 10-minute break and read this, and based off of what you've been doing, this actually would seem pretty cool." I used to do something like that when I worked in-house, actually.
• 16:40
  Used to spend the first 20 minutes of every day reading newsletters or articles I had saved.
• 16:47
  I worked remotely, but most of the team was on Pacific Time, and I was on Eastern Time, so that worked out really well for me because nobody else was awake, no one was pinging me.
• 16:57
  I mean, I read so many newsletters and articles when I worked at that job just in, like, 15 minutes. You know, every morning that was kind of my routine.
• 17:05
  I work for myself now and no longer do that for inexplicable reasons. But like those kinds of habits, you think like, oh, 10 minutes, 15 minutes is not that much.
• 17:18
  Kicking it back even more old school, sitting at the coffee table with, like, your cup of tea and your coffee with the New York Times in front of you or whatever your newspaper of choice is.
• 17:29
  Everyone was saying newspapers were going away, and I mean 50/50 on the truth of all that and the validity.
• 17:34
  However, there was also, okay, well, newspapers are gonna become more of the elitist luxury thing because it's gonna be seen as a treat. And I guess that's the question.
• 17:46
  Are you considering your newsletter a luxurious treat, or are you just like, oh, it's the handful of chips that I need to, like, keep sustained throughout the day? Okay. Here's the, here's the hot- Take related to this.
• 17:59
  You mentioned, Rachel, that at your previous job you made space for reading newsletters, and now that you are self-employed, you don't.
• 18:07
  That is also kind of my situation as well, is like I'm like, okay, there was a time where I did read these things more, and there was in the past, and there's a lot of things that have changed since then.
• 18:16
  But like in my like downtime, my like treat, I will read a newsletter that is not work-related.
• 18:22
  But if I was like employed by somebody else, I'd be like, well, I- putting back my like early-stage content marketing shoes on, I would read all of Jimmy's posts from his Animals days.
• 18:32
  That was my break, was reading those posts, 'cause I'm like not gonna go read about, you know, sports for 20 minutes, like in between stuff as a treat 'cause I'm like, well, I'm on the clock still.
• 18:41
  There's something about like if I'm working, I wanna be working on the most productive thing possible 'cause I'm working for myself now. Yeah.
• 18:49
  I hadn't thought of that, but as soon as you said it I was like, oh, you're so right.
• 18:53
  Like when you're in-house, maybe Chloe and Ruth, you have other, other ideas on this, but when I was in-house I felt like, well, I gotta be here for eight hours no matter what.
• 19:03
  And I can't do like hard, productive work for eight hours. Maybe other people can, but I can't. So I would break it up throughout the day.
• 19:12
  Like, oh, I'll take a break and read these work newsletters or, you know, edit these blog posts, put them in the CMS. But now that I work for myself, I'm like, I don't wanna waste time doing that.
• 19:21
  I'm gonna work at my desk for four hours. I'm gonna stay in the zone, and when those four hours are done and my work tasks are done, I'm out of here. I, I can take a break by just doing anything I want.
• 19:32
  The thing I think that you're getting at, Alex, rightly, is that my work newsletters are no longer competing against the tasks for my job.
• 19:40
  My work newsletters are now competing against every other cool thing I could do to take a break in my life. Mm-hmm. And that there's absolutely no way they can compete with that. I don't know. Uh,
• 19:53
  again, it's like your best ideas don't always come to you when you're spending dedicated time looking at something really specifically. Sometimes the best ideas come to you when you're
• 20:08
  glancing at things, absorbing them because you're in a different mindset, and all of a sudden it clicks.
• 20:14
  If there was a silver bullet, black and white answer to how to like do dream marketing and dream content, okay, great, we'd all be billionaires. Instead, we just have to keep on saying, "It depends.
• 20:24
  It depends," and then explain why it depends 17 times over, right?
• 20:28
  So I don't know, I would argue like if you need that brain break, and you're spending it reading industry-specific newsletters and/or something that's gonna help you, again, do your job better if it's in that professional development lane,
• 20:45
  then go for it.
• 20:46
  We all need to give ourselves more freedom just to be able to browse, and if you really get into something and you wanna spend that like 10, 15 minutes on a quote, unquote tangent, you're spending it there because it means something.
• 21:00
  Now, that's different than being like, "Okay, I'm gonna take a 20-minute break to go look up all of the recipes that I am gonna cook tonight or meal prep or do something that's like completely, completely unrelated."
• 21:15
  But I do think there's a little bit of leeway in it. I agree with you. I just w- I didn't, I didn't have that much wisdom when I worked in-house. [laughs] No, when I was in-house, I was the same way, Rachel.
• 21:25
  I've always ran social, so what did I do? I was always just reading news on LinkedIn to look busy. [laughs] And no, truthfully, because that was...
• 21:36
  Like, I was trying to find things to do outside of taking more certifications on Google Analytics and HubSpot stuff. Are there more newsletters out here that I can go read or that I can...
• 21:46
  Are there blogs that I can go read about this industry that I have to go learn about? I've also always marketed very niche products.
• 21:56
  So like w- my very first job out of college, I, [laughs] I was marketing insurance products. I owned things like arts and craft insurance for people who were like vending at farmer's markets.
• 22:09
  I joined a whole bunch of Facebook groups that had, that had artists to figure out like, okay, what are these people complaining about?
• 22:16
  Um, I was marketing like cannabis business insurance and, ooh, you guys can believe the kinds of things I learned there. So I was always diving into something new.
• 22:26
  And honestly, that has been the one thing that has been very, very fun for me as a marketer, is getting to dive into the most random industries. I'm gonna go do this thing as part of my job, but also I'm kinda bored.
• 22:40
  Let's go see what these people in this LinkedIn group [laughs] or this Facebook group are doing today. Um- But again, that's like tangentially related, right? Like- Yes, exactly...
• 22:49
  one could argue you were doing like market research and marketing intelligence. [laughs] Yes.
• 22:53
  Like product marketers would probably be like, "We're getting it right from the persona's mouths, and now we're gonna use these-" No, yeah, exactly. I was a product marketer. Yeah.
• 23:01
  [laughs] So I would be like, "Okay, you spent like half an hour bopping around these groups. Like, did you learn anything?" Yes. No. If you didn't learn anything, then cool. Don't do it again. Mm-hmm.
• 23:12
  But like that makes sense.
• 23:14
  And also, I, I also worked in the energy efficiency field, and I remember distinctly during my interview when they were talking about ductless mini splits and I was like, "Why are we talking about birds?"
• 23:25
  [laughs] 'Cause I had no idea what the hell a duct, duct, D-U-C-T, by the way, less mini split was. And now I do, and now I have three of them in my home. And I was able to articulate what I wanted done with everything.
• 23:41
  Now getting back to the newsletter topic, am I going to then go sign up for a newsletter about genetically modified food and corn? No.
• 23:50
  But you bet your ass there are content communities around people that care about that. My first job was at a content marketing agency, and I realized that there is an audience for- Everything.
• 24:03
  And that's where it's just like, if you're gonna be running a newsletter, just know, like, what your goal is and who your audience is. And maybe you rotate the flavor.
• 24:11
  Maybe one time it's a roundup and the other time it is, like, an in-depth expose on genetically modified corn. I don't know. I feel like what I'm hearing from all of this, there's no one right way to do a newsletter.
• 24:22
  It just depends on, like, what are your goals? What is- who is your audience? How are they consuming content? What do they want? And I think Chloe's point is a good one.
• 24:32
  If you get, like, a print newsletter, like a newspaper, you probably are not sitting down and reading the entire thing front to back, every word, and they're not designed for that to happen.
• 24:46
  I think email newsletters also can take a cue from that. Maybe sometimes you do do a roundup of, like, here's a bunch of stuff that you might wanna read that's not from us.
• 24:55
  And maybe other times you do an in-depth piece on genetically modified corn. If those things both suit your audience, they're going to suit, like, these different niches of your audience.
• 25:06
  And people like me and Alex that just feel the need to check everything off our to-do list can just learn to give ourselves a little more grace and be like, "You don't have to read every issue of the newsletter even if you really like it."
• 25:19
  I mean, it's all about discovery. One of the ultimate green flags for a newsletter is if you find it so interesting that that content comes up in a conversation or you forward it to someone.
• 25:32
  How many times have we sat here and been like, "How many times has that newsletter been forwarded to someone? Who clicked on the, oh, subscribe a friend or share this or whatever," right?
• 25:40
  I guess the question is, whatever newsletter you're putting out there, is it helping someone discover something?
• 25:47
  And that might be discover something that your company wrote about two months ago that they just, that they didn't know about that's interesting, and here's why.
• 25:55
  Or it might be, oh, we're gonna take a, you know, we're gonna talk about the fact that we apparently all had zines when we were younger. Just make it worthwhile. Who do you have in mind?
• 26:05
  And make sure that it's actually gonna be something they wanna read. Getting back to Emily Kramer for a minute too.
• 26:11
  I don't know what she would describe as the ultimate goal of her newsletter, but is one of her subsequent goals to be known as, like, the gold standard for newsletter.
• 26:22
  I hear her name come up every time someone talks about what is a newsletter, what is a resource that is fantastic in every way, like, across all the, like, the marketing network groups that I'm on.
• 26:33
  It's just what are you trying to do?
• 26:35
  If what you're trying to do is create, like, the gold standard in newsletters, for example, whatever, or is it that it's just a piece in a larger puzzle, the whole actual content strategy, and that will dictate how much time you actually spend on it.
• 26:51
  If it's just a small piece in it, it's not gonna take as much time if, for example, John Bonini talks about this a lot, having, like, your podcast be, like, your anchor, and then your newsletter basically coming off of your podcast, and so it's like, what do you spend the most time on?
• 27:06
  You'll spend the most time trying to make the podcast as absolutely incredible as it can be because everything else will feed from that. Mm-hmm.
• 27:12
  Likewise, if your newsletter is, like, what you consider your pillar content and everything feeds back into it, then, like, yeah, it's gonna take up a ton of time.
• 27:22
  Something that you mentioned earlier, Chloe, maybe to round it out with Emily Kramer, is the idea that she's building a ton of trust by doing these just, like, super long form things.
• 27:31
  So there's a, like, internal social network for, like, former founders of this accelerator program I was a part of, and, um, somebody was asking, "Hey, is it worth it to put billboards out in, like, on the highway in San Francisco?"
• 27:44
  And I was like, "Oh, wow, Emily Kramer wrote this super long piece on this."
• 27:51
  I trust enough in her process that I'm gonna drop that link in and say, like, "You should definitely read this even [laughs] though I didn't 'cause you're making this decision."
• 28:00
  That's exactly the one she was trying to, uh, trying to look at there. And so it's interesting. Maybe that's the whole thing. Put in the time, build the trust.
• 28:08
  It doesn't matter if people fully read it because maybe they'll share it. Well, isn't that the point of thought leadership, right?
• 28:16
  Like, hey, here's this expert who has been an expert for years and years and years, and here's everything that they've built and everything, and all the people they talk to. You can trust what they're saying. Yeah.
• 28:27
  Go share all the stuff that they're saying. And also that it might not be relevant to you in that moment right now. Mm-hmm. But you're gonna think of them later. And hi- Mm-hmm...
• 28:36
  did we just describe what marketing is as a whole? And then also, what does that make you in that moment? It makes you someone who someone else is gonna come to, like, "Hey, you shared something really great last time.
• 28:48
  Do you have any thoughts here? Have you seen anything else?" Mm-hmm. So my question, though, is, Alex, did you ever go back and read the article on billboards?
• 28:56
  That could've been a really full circle interesting moment if you were like, "I did go back and read it." [laughs] I did.
• 29:03
  When I recommended it, I, like, skimmed it for, like, five minutes to be like, "Okay, I know what I'm recommending here."
• 29:09
  You don't wanna, like, throw something out there that you're like, "Actually, this took a whole different direction, and I just didn't make it to the end." So I skimmed it, but, like, I didn't read it.
• 29:17
  My question for you, Alex, what would you say is, like, the main goal or task or length, however you wanna look at it, of, like, what a newsletter should be if it's a work-related newsletter? Hmm.
• 29:29
  Rachel is in change my mind mode from- I am- You guys had that earlier today, right?... so in change my mind. [laughs] I, I am. I will, I will wholly own that. Um, okay, great question.
• 29:39
  I do think it has me thinking more about the trust element. Part of this is this idea that, like, somebody... Like, I feel bad. Emily Kramer put 100 hours into this newsletter. It is, like, top tier.
• 29:51
  And, like, I don't think I'm that different from the average reader.
• 29:53
  We have a bunch of writers here, and I do think y'all default to reading a lot more than the average reader, and so I think I'm, like, median reader here. So I'm like, why are we doing all these, these long form things?
• 30:03
  But I think it's been very compelling to think about, like, the trust element of this.
• 30:08
  I do think one point that we didn't pull on that, Rachel, you brought up earlier was talking about our own Superpath newsletter and, like, Eric's blurb. I think that's great. I mean, ob- obviously I read all of those.
• 30:19
  But I also think that reading that takes two minutes, and what we didn't unpack, what does it look like to do a personal essay blurb that's, like, 10 to 15 minutes?
• 30:29
  It's awesome to have those kinda, like, notes from the field from Eric.
• 30:32
  Quick, digestible, it can happen between meetings, but the second you're doing that same personal note and it's 10 to 15 minute read, yeah, I'm not sold still on that.
• 30:41
  I like the short note, and I like if you're trying to do something comprehensively. I don't know. And I'm not here to say that there's one form of newsletter that's better or...
• 30:48
  I mean, as with all content, like, that's not the case obviously. I just don't, don't think every newsletter writer gives credit to, like, how they show up beside two dozen other newsletters in somebody's inbox.
• 30:59
  Which, which ones actually get read? 'Cause only a, a few of them do. People are always like, "I get a million newsletters and these are the two I read." How are they choosing the two they read?
• 31:07
  It, it gives me a lot more to explore. I don't think I'm, like, settled in a, in a certain place on this yet, though. We have hit time here, so I appreciate it. Chloe, Rachel, Ruth, thanks for joining me today.
• 31:18
  It's been a lot of fun. Great convo, guys. Thank you. It was a good topic. Thanks, everyone. Good pick, Alex. Bye, all. [gentle music]