You’re expecting a story from me this morning.

A meandering tale of some experience I relate to newslettering.

Because—unless this is the very first issue of Opt In Weekly to hit your inbox—that’s the formula I follow:

It’s almost always a personal narrative stretched into a metaphor about how to write a newsletter… except for when it isn’t.

And, this week, well, it isn’t.

Because I’m on a company retreat at Lake Pickwick in Iuka, Mississippi (do you know how to pronounce it?) and I’m somewhat off my game after a day of boating and playing games with the Simple Focus Software team.

They’re all discovering how obnoxiously competitive I am.

And I considered not sending this issue until I’m back home, in my usual quiet space, able to concentrate and tell you a semi-meaningful story that helps you improve your newsletter process.

But what’s occurred to me is that I’ve built expectations.

Not just of myself, but of you, too, if you read this newsletter regularly:

An expectation that I will tell you a story once a week.

Open my brain and let the words flow.

Make connections.

Deliver a tale that helps you craft your own newsletter, whether it follows a similar format or is wildly different.

Don’t fret. The story well hasn’t run dry.

It’s more that I need time to reflect, and I’m very much in the middle of experiencing.

Ideas are forming, but the 4-hour drive home tomorrow is when they will truly congeal, as I course down a familiar path, surrounded by fields of soybeans and corn.

And, so, this week I’ll just remind us all of a thing I’ve been thinking lately:

The best stories draw from personal experiences.

If you’re new to newslettering (or have hit a dry spell), it might help to step away from the screen and go “jump in a lake” (aka do the thing your reader does so that you can actually help them do it better).

Teach them to expect you to make a splash.

Ashley Guttuso  

Advice From The First Year

Devin Reed has officially been publishing his newsletter for one year. To celebrate the milestone, he shared 13 lessons he’s learned, including:

1. Write to solve one specific problem for one specific type of person.
2. Consistency can’t be overstated. Never skip a week.
3. Great writing is concise — cut as many words as possible.

Check out all 13 in his LinkedIn post.

linkedin.com  

Find Joy In Newsletter Writing

Have you ever dreaded creating your next newsletter issue? Sasha Sullivan offers 10 tips on how to overcome the dread and fall in love with the newsletter creation process all over again.

medium.com  

Monitor This KPI

Mail Privacy Protection has changed the game. Now, instead of mainly monitoring open and click-through rates, Jodi Harris advocates making subscriber replies your priority KPI.

Ann Handley has previously called this OWBR aka Open to Write Back Rate, which we included in this issue.

Discovered via theCLIKK.

contentmarketinginstitute.com  

Advanced Curation

Content curation is constantly evolving and expanding. Here are a couple of ways you as a creator can go deeper in your curation.

• This content curation guide from EBoxman goes a little deeper than your average “what is content curation” article. It breaks down types of curation (think aggregation, distillation, etc.), who should curate and why, strategies, advice, advantages, and more.
• Curation is about so much more than gathering and sharing articles. Here, Joanne Camarce explains curation’s role in the customer lifecycle, from gaining a customer’s attention to fostering loyalty.

Note: We included a curation tool round up in this section last week and later found out is extremely dated. Sorry about that. Lesson even curators for a curated newsletter by a brand called Curated need to remember: Just because the date is recent doesn't mean the content is. Mea culpa.

Demand Gen Reporting Advice

Allison Loehman uses a master reporting doc to measure demand generation with the following 6 pillar tabs:

• Inbound Business Performance
• Inbound Pacing
• Monthly Cohorting Analysis
• Budget Pacing
• Demand Capture Analysis
• Demand Creation Analysis

Learn how they’re organized and why in her LinkedIn post.

linkedin.com  

Influencer Marketing Considerations

Thinking of hiring an influencer? Factors you’ll want to consider:

1. Cost. In this article, Werner Geyser breaks down 8 factors that impact influencer rates and how to find one that will work for you.
2. Authenticity. Danica Lo urges marketers to weigh the advantages of big-name influencers with the value of user-generated content from less famous, but still influential people. Which would serve your brand more?

Beyond Blogging

Want to reach more people with your content? Karl Yeh suggests that instead of creating weekly blog posts, you should create several short form videos and distribute those first.

linkedin.com  

Successful publishers are constantly building. This week’s round up includes a few bricks you can add to your proverbial foundation.

• “Do you want help?” Stefanie Murray writes how this simple question led to news organizations collaborating to expand resources and reach.
• Facebook referrals are on the decline. In this Adweek article, Mark Stenberg reveals 4 charts that show how Facebook traffic has changed for publishers.
• “The problem is clear, but the solutions are complicated.” Monica Chin explains how tech journalism has an accessibility problem and this article is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to finding a solution.
• In this article, Charlie Beckett does two things: 1. Explains how AI technologies are impacting journalism and 2. Works to explain how even the smallest publishers can benefit.
• What if consumers don’t want to pay for a full subscription and micropayment options have proved unsuccessful? There may be another option. Esther Kezia Thorpe writes about a Sesamy, a company ready to tackle payments for single pieces of content.

A Profitable Playbook

WorkWeek recently surpassed 110,000 newsletter subscribers. However, in this Twitter thread, their CEO, Adam Ryan, explains why the real victory has more to do with the revenue those subscribers represent.

Discovered via The Rebooting.

twitter.com  

Diversify Your Creative Income Sources

Treyton DeVore lists 34 ways to make money as a creator (including examples) in this Creatorbread article.

Discovered via For the Interested.

creatorbread.com  

Link To A Specific Item From A Previous Issue

Hey, everyone. Seth with Curated Success here.

You can link back to previous content that you’ve published in your Curated newsletter in a few different ways. One way that we’ve mentioned before is by linking to an archive search on your newsletter’s site so readers can easily read content you’ve created about a certain topic. But, if you want to link to a specific item from a past issue, an archive search might be a bit too broad.

With Curated, you can easily link to a specific item from a past issue by using a direct link. Here’s how:

• In Curated, click on the Issues drop-down and select All Published Issues
• Select the issue number that has the item you want to link to
• To the right of the item, right click on the link icon and copy the link
• Share the link to point your readers to that specific item

You can use this feature to share direct links to your content whenever it feels appropriate.

For example, you can share this link when the content is applicable to a discussion happening on social media, which is a great way to get traffic for your newsletter, or you can use it to refer back to a specific item in a new issue of your newsletter (like we did with the archive search link at the beginning of this segment).

If you have any questions about this functionality, let me know!

Psst! If you can’t find that item or issue, you can always use the search bar at the top right of your publication site.

New to Curated? Make a copy of this Getting Started with Curated Checklist to help launch your newsletter (public, private, or paid).

Stay Out Of The Honeypot

This week your Opt In Challenge is to avoid the email honeypot. Not sure what that is or how to avoid it? Check out this Selzy article by Tamara Liparteliani. Hint: it’s a deliverability trap.

Discovered via Really Good Emails.

selzy.com  

Like this newsletter?

Let me know. Reply, email me at Ashley[at]optinweekly.com, or find me on LinkedIn to hit me with some feedback. I’d love to know what you think.

Happy newslettering,

Ashley Guttuso