Going Bi-Weekly, The History &Trajectory of #FeatureFriday

This is the last weekly edition of #FeatureFriday.

What began as a series of posts about product features to encourage myself to regularly think and write about product has become a pretty juicy weekly newsletter that goes beyond mere feature proposal to full-blown articles about a range of product-related ideas.

With that, the newsletter also began to take a LOT longer to write. So long that it has quickly become unsustainable at the currently weekly post rate.

So, in honor of Pride Month, I am switching the feature over to to BI-weekly (see what I did there?)

Content Creation Timeline

As of now, the feature takes up to 3 days to concept, write, edit, and get out the door. This is simply too long to keep up with on a weekly basis. I'm also finding that I want some more time to consider the contents of these articles and do more editing passes.

I've also found myself needing to involve others. Last week I needed to seek permissions to publish a graphic because it was copyrighted to someone else. I've also been wanting to interview folks for insights on some topics I have in my content backlog and that requires scheduling and coordination.

So it all makes sense to scale back to a bi-weekly schedule.

The Origins of #FeatureFriday

Content is part of being active on social media. Being active is part of an overall strategy of maintaining my network. It also is part of driving inbound leads on people who may wish to refer or hire me for full time, part time, or contract.

When working part time, I wanted to make sure I was continuing to grow and develop as professional. I felt that regular thinking and writing exercises about product was a good direction and would show potential clients/hiring managers how I think.

At first, the #FeatureFriday content was posted in my regular feed on Friday afternoons when I finished writing. My week wouldn't be complete until I posted my #FeatureFriday. I hoped by making a regular post with low stakes I could get over the hurdles of impostor syndrome and turn it into a habit. Having to create content on a schedule would also contribute to building my own motivation.

I didn't hold myself to requirements of deep research or even practicality. I don't work on these products so I don't have access to their data, stakeholders, or user research—all things that I'd use in actual feature development—anyway. I just wanted to think about features that could make for better user experiences and create content. I can easily write product specs once I have an idea so I thought writing about that would help me create content more regularly. After figuring out a feature, I did want to showcase a little strategic thinking so I often added info on what kinds of metrics might be affected and whether or not the feature really made business sense. But that wasn't the goal.

Why "#FeatureFriday"

• I wanted to publish on Fridays when I tended to be less busy and make it a weekly occurrence.
• #FeatureFriday is itself a reference to social media trends such as #FlashbackFriday, #MotivationMonday, and #ThrowbackThursday. This is also why I stylized it with the hashtag and camel casing.
• I love alliteration.
• I liked the dual meaning of feature: it was a "feature" showcasing something notable I was writing and a product feature I was describing.

The name came to mind quickly and I have yet to think of a name I like better so I kept the name on the newsletter.

From Post to Newsletter

As time went on, I found myself putting more thought in and wanting a way to easily reference back and scroll through what I'd written. The posts in my feed were ephemeral and had limited reach. I was also being frustrated by my inability to add formatting and in-line images to what I was writing.

So I started to explore the newsletter option. And quickly learned that once you start, it's quite difficult to stop. The moment I published my first one, notifications went out to all my connections and over 100 people subscribed!

LinkedIn was kind enough to put out their games feature in my second week giving me a meaty topic that I was supremely confident in writing about. This helped push me from simple features to longer posts.

Advantages of LinkedIn Newsletters

• All your connections and followers are invited to subscribe when you create a newsletter.
• When you publish an edition, a notification (email/push/on platform) is sent to all subscribers.
• When someone visits your profile or starts following you, LinkedIn will send a notification recommending they subscribe.
• From a newsletter article, it is very easy to find other editions of the newsletter.
• LinkedIn claims that their articles have SEO and will be easily found by search engines off of LinkedIn (still figuring out how true this is).
• You have access to bullets (one level), numbering, bold, italics, headings (two levels), code, block quote, links, and images with captions.

The Notification Dilemma

I currently have about 250 subscribers with no control over how and when LinkedIn choses to recommend folks subscribe. I can only control when the content is published which triggers the notification.

If a notification is intended to function as a call to action (as opposed to being simply informative), then it is useful for a recipient to receive that notification at a time and place when they can actually take that action (see last week's discussion of behavior design for more info).

With that in mind, if I wanted people to read it, I needed to be publishing at a time when the most users are likely to be at their desks or on their phones with the will to read one of my articles.

Friday afternoons are NOT a time when people are looking to take on work no matter how entertaining I am. The posts may surface in the feed later but the notifications were an important prompt to get views.

So I tried publishing on Tuesdays. Which was confusing because I wanted to keep the name #FeatureFriday. And also meant that while I finished writing on Friday, I had to wait to even review the post (editing scheduled posts is a nightmare) and get feedback.

After a bit more experimenting I believe the best solution was to publish Friday early in the afternoon (ideally 12:30 PM eastern, 9:30AM pacific). This meant the article had to be mostly done the day before which itself was indicating a need to work on it further in advance.

As a Portfolio

Since starting the newsletter, I've found that the contents are a great reference for work samples. Like many folks, much of what I've worked on in the past has been under NDA, sunset, or simply wouldn't make sense without context. Who really wants to read some PRD for a project that they don't know anything about?

When asked to share work samples though, I realized that the newsletter was perfect. It contains demonstrations of my knowledge across a wide range of topics relating to product, behavior, gamification, and software development. It's also written for a general audience unlike a PRD. And unlike the products I've worked on, I can usually claim responsibility for the entire contents of the article—unlike software and games I've worked on which is always a team effort.

I recently updated my resume to refer to it as a "newsletter-shaped portfolio" which I believe is an apt description.

I've begun to include some of the most in-depth entries, such as last week's case study, on my list of publications on my LinkedIn. I published them so they certainly count. And by using this feature, I am able to share more context about the knowledge I'm displaying to put forth as portfolio entries.

What I've Accomplished

This is the 20th iteration of #FeatureFriday and even if I scale it back, I have several accomplishments to be proud of:

• Built confidence to write with authority about things I know a lot about
• Shared useful information to help upskill my peers
• Have used the work creating content as both a work reference and a topic of conversation in interviews
• Learned new things here and there as I fleshed out some articles on research topics.
• Begun creating a new portfolio built on a social network with marketing materials but also showcasing a range of skills and knowledge personally
• I finally memorized the alt code for an emdash. (ALT+0151)

Record of Previous Editions

• #1 - Sale alerts in the Acme grocery app
• #2 - LinkedIn "unwilling to relocate" flag

• #3 - "Duo Drive" - a driving feature for Duolingo
• #4 - "Calendly Social" (fun fact, this was based on a design exercise I had prepared for an interview a few months prior)
• #5 - Caching the member QR code for the Planet Fitness app
• #6 - Getting Facebook to show me what I actually want
• #7 - Calendly, Linktree, and GDC
• #8 - Troubles with logging into United Airlines loyalty program
• #9 - How badges are actually a useful feature for the Planet Fitness app
• #10 - Training users to use calorie trackers
• #11 - Streak tracking in the calorie tracker Lose It!
• #12 onward were published as new letter entries

The Future...

I don't believe all entries in the series will be full meaty analyses. I intend to keep some of them simply as cool feature ideas/improvements written with as much bandwidth as I have available in the given timeframe.

But I do hope to continue writing for the foreseeable future and I do hope others find what I write entertaining, educational, and insightful.

Heather Arbiter is a Product Manager and Games/Gamification Designer. You can learn all about her on her LinkedIn profile.