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Half-Baked Thoughts 🍀🚬
If you drop soap on the floor, is the floor clean or is the soap dirty?
The #1 tip people give for growing a new newsletter? “Share it with your network - friends, family, grandma, colleagues, LinkedIn.”
Here’s the problem: your network ≠ your audience.
I’ve subscribed to plenty of friends’ projects out of support (hello, cooking newsletters). But I don’t cook - my toast comes out burnt more often than not. So while I wanted to cheer them on, I wasn’t the right reader. I didn’t engage, and that hurts more than it helps.
When you invite everyone, you fill your list with people who’ll never open or click. On paper, your subscriber count grows. In reality, your engagement tanks.
A better play? Be intentional. Share with the people who’d actually care. Frame it as an invitation, not an obligation:
❌ “Hey BFF, I’m starting a newsletter. Please subscribe.”
✅ “Hey BFF, I know you love cooking. I’m starting a newsletter on baking, and here’s my first draft. Would love your thoughts.”
One builds numbers. The other builds an audience.
💗 What I am OBSESSED with…
✨ My all-time favourite creator, Kristina Volchek, just dropped a gem: “10 Principles of Good Newsletter Design on Beehiiv.” As someone obsessed with email design (and secretly geeking out about UX), this blog was exactly what I needed. It finally gave me the vocabulary to put a name to certain formats and the words to explain not just what I like, but why I like it.
📰 What’s new…
🔥 Notion 3.0 is here: Think less note-taking app, more all-in-one AI workspace. The new Notion Agents can create docs, build databases, run workflows, and soon you’ll be able to spin up Custom Agents to automate different marketing tasks. Translation: less admin, more strategy.
🔥 New alpha: Prompt to edit your Figma Design. Now you can bulk-edit designs, generate dark/light mode variations, or even create new UI components by typing what you need. Perfect for marketers who want faster creative iterations without leaning on design teams for every tweak.
🔥 OpenAI is working on a type of LinkedIn competitor: Early days, but the idea is an AI-powered hiring marketplace that better matches talent to companies. For marketers, this could change how we recruit (or get recruited) in the near future.
✨ Until next time…
Sakshi | Co-founder at Koala Lab
Cheers to staying out of spam and in your heart! 🫰🏼