Three Ways to Start Your Next Newsletter

There are three places to start when writing a newsletter.

1. Sharing

A link you shared with a friend can be your next newsletter. It might be topical, about a recent event or a new idea.

You could also dig through the archives on your blog or newsletter or your social media profile and re-share links that meant something a year ago or 10 years ago, like this blog post I wrote a decade ago:

“Every one to one interaction is priceless. It’s valuable. It can’t be outsourced, and you can’t just get some unpaid college intern to do it.”

Remember – something you shared 18 months ago was probably seen by just 8% of your followers – and you’ve probably gained more subscribers over the last year and a half!

2. Storytelling

We’ve all got stories, some big, some small.

I was taking some photos around town a few days ago, and the owner of the barbershop yelled, “come take our photo!”

Now, that doesn’t happen very often, but it made for a fun story!

Here’s some other stories I haven’t told yet:

• That time I invited by highschool buddy to NYC to hangout when I had the Deftones come to our studio for an interview.
• How I ditched all my belongings in 2010 and left Brooklyn with my bike and my laptop and rode to Rutherford, NJ to start my nomadic bike nerd journey and ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• When a manager for a big Grammy Nominated band told me they had a problem with my interviewer minutes before we were supposed to go live on a podcast.

You’ve probably got stories, and your subscribers would probably love to hear them.

3. Showing

This is the default, the starting point, the simplest thing to write about in your newsletter, but you have to do it in a way that feels right.

In last week’s ‘Social Media Support for Artists’ (hosted by the wonderful Beth Spencer), someone spoke about taking photos of her sketchbooks and then dreading the idea of posting them to social media and writing captions for each.

Someone suggested, “Make it a video!” And for this person, that resonated.

If you dread doing something, you’re probably not gonna do it. And if you do it reluctantly, everyone is gonna know you’re being pissy about it. The vibes will be off, my friend.

Here are two examples of sharing and keeping the good vibes:

• Noah Kalina sent a newsletter about making egg cups, which was a story from a magazine that had come out several months prior.
• Taylor Pendleton made a video of her walking around Death Valley taking pictures. No music. No dialogue.

Do I dread running? Well, I love eating pizza a lot more, that’s for sure.

But I do love being outside. So running gets me outside, into the space I love. And then I love sharing photos and videos from being outside, way more than making “infographics” or whatever to try to promote my work.

By sharing a glimpse of what I love, it shows a bit of who I am, and maybe that resonates with a few people.

Getting off social media has to be more than just “yeah, but how will I still sell stuff?” It’s about the time you regain, which allows you to explore, learn, and grow.

So don’t get sad about writing a newsletter, thinking you’ve got nothing to write to your subscribers—you’ve got plenty to write about, share, and explore with the people who’ve signed up and said, “Yes, I want more of what you have.”

You are more interesting than storage lockers, and that show has been on air longer than Seinfeld.