Micro-newsletters, a new way to build an audience
New. Not the only. Nor the best way since sliced bread. Caveat Emptor.
(Full Disclosure: I am a co-founder of https://MFY.im a tool for bloggers to send content updates via Facebook Messenger)
Curation is a thing humans have been doing since their hunter-gatherer phase. Nice beads, a beautiful rock or a lovely feather for my head-gear.
And fast-forward to today, we visit museums and art galleries which are curated collection arranged on the basis of a theme.
What’s all this got to do with marketing and building an online audience?
Well, the next best thing to highly valuable, actionable, original thought proving article that you write and share with your audience is a highly valuable, actionable, targeted, thought-provoking curation of articles you find on the internet shared with your audience.
Why?
Because winter is coming.
The apocalypse of information overload, that the algorithms can try to curve fit their machine learning skills around but will inevitably fall short. Because one thing an AI cannot possibly comprehend in the near future is the human skill of discernment. Or what qualifies as high quality or even good. Or fitting to a theme or sequence that builds up a story arc. These are quite strongly still in the purview of the human curator. And your audience will pay with their attention for your uniquely human discernment and storytelling skills.
So what’s curation got to do with newsletters?
Today, everything has an internet presence. Whether it’s an artwork, a music score or written prose or a book or news or a travel location. A newsletter curator discerns for her audience, what is of interest for this week’s newsletter issue and surfaces that to her audience. Quite a feat if you think about it, especially in the attention scarce world we live in today.
So why micro-newsletters? Isn’t email the only way?
Newsletters have been traditionally delivered via email. An email inbox is sacred and personal. And fits the long-form content that many newsletter authors write. But what if the creative constraints were tighter?
What if you could share only 5 links and you had to limit your commentary to 240 characters?
Like Dave Pell, the most famous newsletter author today on the internet says:
“What if a sentence could win the Pulitzer prize?” — Dave Pell
What if micro-newsletters delivered to social media messenger inboxes with such tighter creative constraints. Will it be a thing in 2019? Especially with FB messenger enabling page subscription messaging permission for FB pages and Whatsapp business API opening up?
Human-curated micro-newsletters vs Algorithms to organize what information you consume every single day; who will win favor with the discerning audience?
