Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning that at no additional cost to you, I will receive a commission if you click through and make a purchase. For more information, read our full affiliate disclosure here.

When I was building my first Substack newsletter, there were no third party resources available for newsletter creators. Getting my first 250 paid subscribers was hard! That's why I created my own Substack Course.
CASEY BOTTICELLO
Founder, Blogging Guide
Substack is one of the leading newsletter creation platforms, in part, due to its focus on adding free tools that make it easier for writers to publish their content. Recently, Substack introduced a new tool called Substack Recommendations. This article will explore the new Substack Recommendations feature, and look at some of the ways writers can benefit from using this tool.
How to Recommend Other Publications on Substack
1. Adjust Publication Settings
The Substack Recommendations feature, can be accessed by going into your publication settings menu, and scrolling down until you see a section labeled “Recommend other publications on Substack“:

Click the “manage recommendations” button.
2. Choose Publications to Feature
Next, you can choose which Substack newsletters you want to recommend to your readers. If you are a subscriber to any paid newsletters, those newsletters will automatically pre-populate at options. You can also enter a publication name or an author name into the search box to find a specific publication to recommend:
You can select multiple newsletters to recommend to your readers. For example, I checked several of the newsletters that I thought might be of interest to subscribers to the Blogging Guide newsletter:
After you have selected your recommended newsletters, click the Recommend button to save those choices.
3. Manage Your Recommendations
Next, you can manage your newsletter recommendations. You can add or remove Substack newsletters from your list of recommendations. You can also add or change the reasons that you’re recommending them.
To edit the “Why you recommend” section, click the three dot icon (…) next to any of the publications that you are recommending, and then click on the “edit recommendation text” button:

You can now enter additional text explaining why you chose to recommend this Substack newsletter to your audience.
For example, I added a brief explanation of why Canva Templates might be useful to readers of Blogging Guide:

4. Owner of Recommended Substack Newsletter Receives Email
Now, you have successfully created a Substack recommendation, promoting another newsletter to your readers!
One of the cool features of the Substack recommendation is that the author of the newsletter that you recommended will receive an email, notifying them that you are featuring their newsletter:

This is obviously a big part of the Substack recommendation feature, as Substack prompts the featured newsletter recipient to “Recommend back” the newsletter that has taken the time and effort to recommend it.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Substack provides writers with one of the best sets of digital publishing tools. The new Substack recommendation feature is a great addition to these tools! I can imagine all sorts of of positive interactions between Substack publications, that would have never otherwise occurred.
It is definitely a good move by the platform to increase the visibility of all publications. As you might imagine, if a large publication were to even briefly feature a smaller publication as its Substack recommendation, this could be a game changer for the smaller publication, by generating a surge of traffic and increased visibility.
If you want to learn more about Substack, check out our Substack guide, or enroll in our Substack course!