Power Platform Weekly - Special Edition 3rd anniversary!
Power Platform Weekly - Special Edition 3rd anniversary!
Meet our newsletter buddies Megan V. Walker and Danish Naglekar along with a Power Platform Weekly trip down the memory lane!
Welcome to Power Platform Weekly!
In this special edition you will not find the usual links to Microsoft and community content, instead we have other subjects lined up for you. Today we’ll look back at the past years with Power Platform Weekly.
About one year ago the future did not look that bright… The end was near, but we could not let that happen. Fortunately we found our way to Substack! 🏡 Along with that we introduced a new persona 🛠 and made some other changes.
There are other newsletters 🗞 with Power Platform related content, believe it or not! We were curious to hear about their motivation for starting and continuing a newsletter and we wanted to gather tips from them about how to get your content into a newsletter!
It’s always fun to look at statistics 📊 so that’s lined up for you as well and last but certainly not the least, appreciation for our readers and content creators including highlighted feedback. 🎉
🏡 From Revue to Substack
In the end of 2022, the news reached us that the newsletter service we had been using, Revue, was to be shut down. We enjoy delivering Power Platform related curated news and did not want Revue’s end of life to become Power Platform Weekly’s end of life. We started to look at alternatives and since Substack is free of charge as long as you have a free newsletter, it was a good match for us.
Fortunately, we could bring the old issues from Revue with help of an option to migrate to Substack. We could keep our old issues and cause as little trouble for our subscribers as possible being able to also migrate old issues and the list of subscribers. 🥳
You can find all issues at the PPWeekly site, under Home or Archive.
🕺 New persona
When we moved to Substack, we did some other changes too. We chose to combine the Articles and Tools & Code sections into just Articles and we introduced the Tools persona 🛠. The personas are meant to make it easier for people to find the content that is relevant for them.
🗞 Newsletter buddies
We reached out to two of our newsletter buddies. What motivates them and do they have any tips for content creators how to get into their newsletter?!
Power Platform Dev Weekly - Danish Naglekar
Power Platform Developers Weekly was initiated by Danish Naglekar and he was joined by others later on, meet the PPDevWeeky crew.
What motivates you to continue with PPDevWeekly?
As a developer myself, staying connected with the Power Platform development community is crucial. PPDevWeekly allows us to stay up-to-date of the latest updates and news, fostering a sense of continuous learning and improvement. The motivation stems from the desire to provide a valuable resource for professional developers working with the Power Platform, contributing to their success and growth.
Running the newsletter yourself compared to doing it with others?
When I was running the newsletter by myself, I felt it was somewhat opinionated. But bringing a diverse group together helped remove that issue. Also, if doing it yourself it was very hard to keep up with everything that gets released on Power Platform every week. On the other hand, a team of editors helps with that workload.
But you cannot just bring a team of editors and make sure the content and consistency are the same. To make that happen there were several automations done using Power Platform (obviously) & some other tools to ensure any editor can jump in and can curate the same consistent article every week.
Any particular community contributors you would like to highlight a little extra when it comes to dev content and why?
Oh boy, the list is long. Each content creator has a unique way of delivering the content which always amazes me. One who stands out in terms of consistent and engaging content is Matt Devaney. Another content creator is Temmy Wahyu Raharjo for his innovative solutions to complex problems and the range of technologies he uses in his solutions.
Tips for content contributors how to get into your newsletter?
Relevance: Ensure that your content is related to Power Platform development, providing practical insights or solutions.
Clarity: Clearly articulate the key takeaways of your content, making it easy for readers to understand the value it brings to their development journey.
Engagement: Foster engagement by encouraging discussions and feedback in the community. Content that sparks conversations is more likely to be featured as a cover story.
Consistency: Regularly contribute high-quality content. Consistency builds trust and increases the likelihood of being recognized and featured in PPDevWeekly.
D365 Marketing Weekly - Megan V. Walker
Megan V. Walker runs a newsletter dedicated to marketing content in general and D365 Marketing in particular, D365 Marketing Weekly.
What motivated you to start a newsletter?
I wanted a place to be able to share all the fantastic community content about marketing with others, and also share marketing related things that I thought were interesting but not related to the Power Platform. Seemed like a place was needed to combine both of those things, so I started the newsletter!
Will you keep calling it D365 Marketing Weekly even though the product name has changed?
I did a short poll in Issue 30 of the newsletter, and it was close to 50% of people that said just keep it the same, so yes, I will keep it with the same name for now! Anything else just feels like a very long and cumbersome name!
Any particular community contributors you would like to highlight a little extra and why?
I've noticed two wonderful contributors who are writing and sharing content about Customer Insights - Journeys.
Kelly Simpson used to work in Marketing and has started on her journey into the Power Platform. The Marketing App was the perfect fit for her, and I'm really pleased she then started a blog to share her findings. I regularly share her content in the newsletter!
The other contributor is Pauline Kolde. Pauline first caught my eye because I noticed her blog is not only in her native language of German, but she also translates and shares her posts all in English too! Very impressed by that. She also has a fantastic way of finding solutions to real-world business cases, and came up with one of my favourite examples ever of a Real-time Journey with a trigger that runs based on the current weather in a specific location... it was brilliant!
I hope I get to see more from them both and am enjoying watching them on their respective journeys (no pun intended 😉).
Tips for content contributors how to get into your newsletter?
There isn't much people need to do, just write some content about the marketing app! I am ALWAYS looking for stuff and some weeks it is very slim in terms of content to add to it. So the more people that share content about marketing the better, and then just let me know your blog is out there!!!
📊 Statistics
What’s a special edition and looking back at past years without a bit of statistics?
In October 2021 when we celebrated 1 year, we had a 😎 moment and 1234 followers on LinkedIn. We could not decide if we wanted more followers or not.
Well, looking back, of course we wanted more. Because that would mean we would be able to help the contributors with awareness of their content and more people would stay up to date with the latest about Power Platform and be more equipped when it comes to building awesome solutions, supporting real-world business cases.
One funny thing we look at is our subscriber count. It is one of the most stable things in the universe. Even when we take a Summer break people sign up for Power Platform related news.
Add two years to that moment with 1234 followers on LinkedIn and we have just reached above 13000 followers. It now looks like below.
~4.500 Subscribers
~13.000 LinkedIn followers
~2.500 Twitter followers
We’re happy to see we are able to reach you all, spread awareness about other people’s content, and help you keep yourself updated within this space!
Thank you!
We want to say thank you to all our readers and to all the amazing content creator out there, keep the content coming!
🎉 Highlighted feedback
We always appreciate feedback and to see people happy about making it to the newsletter. 😀 Below are some posts that totally made our day! These comments are a big motivation for continuing with the newsletter.
Wise words from Belle Bennitt - set aside a few minutes a day to keep yourself updated. (We include content not only from MVPs of course, there are many people out there sharing their knowledge and amazing content, MVP or not.)
We will end this special edition with one of our favorite greetings we got after celebrating 1 year with the newsletter. See you in 2 years, yes! Time flies, we’re already celebrating 3 years+. 5 years and 10 years, who knows where we all are in 5 or 10 years and who knows how the platform evolves. Only time will tell!
