Hi, hope you have had a relaxing summer.
Just a short post for now, to let you now that I have returned from a month-long trip to Scotland, brimming with energy to take this Substack to the next level. If you have not already, check out the short update I sent out while I was still there.
Expect more information on upcoming changes and content soon, as I share my upcoming plans with you in more detail.
I am currently creating a new posting schedule that better fits these changes, and that is going to accommodate the more regular and diverse content that I have got planned. That is why I would like to have your opinion on what day(s) of the week you have the most time to read/watch/listen to my content. This helps me better decide on an appropriate posting schedule.
For longer content, mainly the in-depth articles that I already publish (like the recent interview on AI and the story on Russia’s alleged abduction of children, I am planning on moving to a once a month publishing schedule, and I want to know what day of the week would give you the most time to read stories like these. I have excluded Thursdays and Fridays since I have my teaching responsibilities on those days.
My second question, would you prefer to see these longer, once-a-month posts as one single post, like the Russia story, or rather split up into two posts, with a week or so in between, as I have done with the interview on AI? Or would you rather have me decide what works best for each post? When I read other writers’ or journalists’ posts, I know that on the one hand, I prefer to be able to finish the entire article in one read if a subject really grabs me, but that I also sometimes forget to come back to longer posts that I did not finish, because I happened to be travelling or otherwise interrupted before I could read all of it. For myself, splitting a post up can help give me more time to work on them, since I can already publish the first part before finishing the second part. It also lets me incorporate feedback or recent developments if things have happened in the meantime. Bottom line: what makes it most likely that you would read the entire post?
If you have any other thoughts, reactions, ideas, I encourage you to leave a comment and I will take it on board.
Can't wait to see the new content, Robert
I think it's better to put all the info you need into one big post, especially for the kind of topics you cover. Gathering all the essential details from a centralized post, particularly when the writing is engaging as you mentioned, is in my opinion, superior to navigating through a series of posts as that completely kills the reading flow; and it adds more steps for the reader to get the same info they could've gotten from reading one longer post.
If any other major developments occur, you can always cover that in a smaller follow-up post, or edit the current post to add whatever's new (granted the post won't be sent again to your subscribers but you can always announce the changes you made through notes or other platforms).
But that's just my two cents; let's see what the majority decides :)