3 lessons I’ve learned from newslettering

Note: I define newslettering as not only creating one, but also studying the genre via subscribing to newsletters and interviewing people who regularly hit “send.”

1) The best way to figure out if your plan is going to work is to try it.

I’ve talked to many people who are crippled by anxiety. They want 100% assurance of success before launching. It doesn’t work that way. You come up with an idea and you test it. Then you iterate and you test that. And the best chance you have at success is launching with an intention to help others, not yourself.

2) Consistently reporting on a topic is both a goal and a reward.

Subject matter expertise isn’t something anyone is born with. It takes immersion. Challenging yourself to stay on the pulse of a topic your readers care about makes you their guide. Assessing the value of curated content to their lives (“should this be included or does it fail to meet a quality standard I’m creating on the fly?”) helps you begin to recognize quality, form your own ideas, and become a part of the conversation.

Committing to serving readers is both a personal learning journey and a path to thought leadership.

3) Email newsletters are relationship growers.

Letters have historically been an intimate way of staying connected. From my earliest issues I noticed that the more vulnerable I was—and the more focused on specific audience members I’d personally spoken to (as if writing just to them)—the more my message resonated with all subscribers. Mary Ellen Slayter explained it well in an interview when she said that newsletters take 1:1 and make it 1:many, but that only works if you still write as if it’s 1:1.

And it takes time. Issue after issue of sending little pieces of yourself to all those 1s.

Last week I shared a particularly tense story and encouraged you all to persevere in your newslettering.

This week’s intro is not quite as thrilling, but, I can attest, the more you put into your relationships with subscribers, the more fulfilled you will be by the process.

Ashley Guttuso  

Should Publishing Scare You?

What if 100k+ people read your newsletter each issue? Jacob Greenfeld Tweeted an approach that’s worked to make that a reality. It helps him consistently create content that resonates and it’s pretty simple: “share your secrets.”

He Tweets:

“All of my most popular pieces of content have one thing in common: I was scared to publish them. There is almost a perfect correlation between my level of fear before a post goes live and how much it resonates with readers.”

When it comes to your newsletter, are you nervous to hit publish? If not, it might mean you need to evaluate if what you’re sending feels like a secret or a commodity (aka anybody could publish that content).

Check out the full thread for some categories of “secrets” that might help you become more vulnerable with your audience.

Discovered via Marketer Crew.

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Treat Email Like It’s Snail Mail

In this Wired article, ​​Nicole Kobie offers a science-based solution to inbox anxiety: stop treating email like Slack and instead treat it like old-fashioned snail mail.

As newsletter senders, we should think through ways we can make our emails feel more like snail mail, aka less like a to-do pileup and more like a letter from a dear friend.

Discovered via Really Good Emails.

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Must Visit Destination: An Email Theme Park

Note: This is a place you go in your mind.

Check out Ann Handley’s recent issue of Total Annarchy, in which she mixes extended metaphor (what if working in email were a theme park called Email World?) with an actionable list of ideas to make it better (and “How do we make it a happier place?”).

I found myself responding as if I were attending a really, really motivational speech:

Ann: “Your From Line matters more than your Subject Line.”

Me: “YES!”

Ann: “One metric cannot possibly measure your success.”

Me: “Preach!”

.... and that pretty much sums up any Sunday morning she includes email or newsletters in an issue.

Read her suggestions, see if it also resonates with you, and let me know I’m not the only one.

And if you’re new to Opt In Weekly and just discovering Ann Handley, here’s a shortcut to all other moments of wisdom we’ve shared from her.

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Do You Have An Effective Content Strategy?

How crucial is a strong content strategy to the success of your marketing efforts? Insanely crucial... according to me (a content marketer).

Content is the conversation you/your brand should be constantly having with your audience. And, yes, that includes newsletters, but it’s more than blogs and emails.

Too often, the focus in content marketing is 90% on creating and publishing and not much attention is left for deciding how to distribute and repurpose that content so that it doesn’t just die on your website.

Check out these 4 fresh articles that address this topic from a few different, but overlapping, angles.

1. Barb Mosher Zinck writes how strategy trumps actual content. Her conclusion sums it up: “If you want your content to matter, don’t ignore all the work required to make it matter.”
2. While content strategy is important, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Darrah Brustein offers 9 strategies to make it effective and enjoyable.
3. Speaking of simplicity, you don’t have to start at square one to have an effective content strategy. Here’s a solid guide to content repurposing by Si Quan Ong.
4. Finally, your content is meaningless if nobody sees it. This article from Ghost Newsletter explains the why, where, and hows of content distribution.

If You Hate Self-Promotion, Check Out These 5 Marketing Strategies

Self-promotion can be challenging and awkward, but Hugh O. Smith is sharing 5 marketing strategies to make it easier.

Discovered via The Write Life.

thewritelife.com  

Are You Making These Common Copy Mistakes?

In this 14-minute YouTube video, the Kopywriting Kourse identifies 9 common copy mistakes, like using too many buzzwords and overthinking style/format, and offers quick fixes.

Discovered via GrowthMarketer.

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Are You Pursuing Change?

Innovation has become the norm in the publishing world. From new strategies to improvements in technology, publishers must be willing to adapt constantly. This week’s Publishing Insights focus on what publishers are doing to keep up.

• The New York Times has reached over 10 million paid subscriptions. They’ve outlined the strategies they used here (one of them is subscribers’ ability to “gift” up to 10 different articles each month).
• Big tech has no doubt changed local news. In this CJR article, Timothy Karr writes that the future of innovation is “non-commercial.”
• How can publishers benefit from AI? Marcela Kunova explores possibilities like searching audio, analyzing sources, and more in this article.
• As a publisher, you have a responsibility to find and correct misinformation. Olivia Collette explains how the comments section just might be your biggest resource.
• In her LinkedIn post, Anita Zielina reports that the Knight Foundation and Google Digital News Initiative are granting $900K to News Product Alliance. Check out what this will fund here.
• What do publishers plan to do to grow revenue this year? This Reuters Institute report found that subscription strategies will take priority over display and native advertising.

Thinking Of Selling Your Newsletter?

Jeff Possiel has sold 2 stand-alone newsletters as well as a community package containing a newsletter. In this interview, he shares why he sold, how he made them profitable, and what he’s working on now.

paved.com  

How Tech Giants Can Hurt Small Biz

This 19-minute episode of Planet Money by NPR looks at how tech giants both help and harm small business (they even cover iOS 14 and ATT).

Discovered via Alex Bauer’s Twitter account.

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How Curated Handles The Scariest Acronyms: SPF/DKIM

Hey, everyone. Seth with Curated Success here.

Did you know that Curated automatically handles SPF and DKIM for your newsletter to improve your deliverability score?

In short, correctly configured SPF and DKIM records show email providers like Gmail and Outlook that the sender is safe, which lowers the risk of your emails landing in spam. If you want a deep dive into SPF and DKIM, check out this article.

By default, Curated only sends email that’s been verified with valid SPF and DKIM. This affects your newsletter in 2 ways:

1. Higher deliverability thanks to valid SPF and DKIM
2. Your sender email address is yourpublication@yourpublication.curatedmail.co*

You’re still able to set the reply-to email address for your publication in the Email page of your settings so you can receive responses.

*If you’d like to remove the “curatedmail.co” portion of your sender address, you’ll need to configure your own SPF and DKIM records by following these instructions or watching this video. We’ll continue to send from our valid SPF and DKIM records until yours are correctly set up.

If you have any questions, let me know!

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Curated Crash Course Today At 4 PM Central

Curated Crash Course is today at 4 PM CT!

As usual, the first 30 minutes include a tutorial on getting started with Curated followed by a Q&A session that begins at 4:30.

This is built to be a come-and-go Zoom call, so feel free to hop in whenever you can and leave when you have to.

If you have any questions about Curated or newsletters, we created a Google Form where you can submit them.

Seth will answer them live at Curated Crash Course during the Q&A segment of the session, but if you can't make it, he’ll send you a recording so you can see your questions answered.

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

Praise Your Competition

A recent experiment by the Harvard Business Review found there are times when praising (as opposed to criticizing) your competition benefits your brand. This week your Opt In Challenge is to try out this strategy: identify a competitor and find a way to praise them publicly.

Discovered via Smart Brief on Social Business.

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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