Cross-promotion is an exchange of posts with another channel. No money changes hands, it works under two conditions, and both are routinely overlooked.
Condition one: overlapping audience
An exchange with a channel from an unrelated field produces clicks and almost no subscriptions. The reader arrives out of curiosity, sees a subject they did not ask for, and leaves.
Adjacent is better than identical, though: a channel writing exactly what you write has an audience that is already yours — audience overlap.
Condition two: comparable size
An exchange between very unequal channels is not an exchange. The larger side gives more than it gets and knows it, which is why most such proposals go unanswered.
If you are the smaller side, offer something other than reach: a written post, an answer session for their readers, a discount for their audience.
What to check before agreeing
- Inflation. A channel with bought subscribers gives you nothing and takes a real post from you — spotting a fake channel.
- Views against subscribers. The single most informative ratio available from outside.
- Posting rhythm. A channel that publishes eight times a day will bury your post within the hour.
How to propose it
Briefly and concretely: who you are, why your audiences overlap, what exactly you propose and when. Vague "let's collaborate" messages are the ones that get ignored.
What to write in the post
Not an advertisement for the other channel but a reason to read it: what is genuinely good there, for whom. A recommendation in your own voice converts; a pasted description does not.
Track the result with a separate invite link, or you will never know which exchange was worth repeating — tracking traffic.
How Neurogram does this
Everything above is manual work that runs into the number of hours in a day. Neurogram does it on your own accounts and without you: it collects channels and audiences, writes comments and replies with a language model, and keeps limits and quiet hours so the accounts survive. See pricing or look at your case.