Category: NewslettersCategory: Newsletters

Don’t let the 0.02% of your recent unsubscribes influence what you send to the 99.98% subscribers who chose to stick around.

If you want to send more newsletters, but you’re afraid of upsetting your current subscribers, just do it. I bet most of your audience would love to hear from you more often, and for everyone else? Oh well.

Are you in this to please other people, or to serve your own deep inner desire for joy? Our best work comes when we are in alignment with ourselves, rather than trying to please a tiny fraction of our email list. Let ’em go.

We’re not for everybody, but the people who stick around are your people (for now).

Sitting down to write your next newsletter shouldn’t be painful. Not when you post a few times a week on Substack Notes, or have an archive of years of posts on various social media platforms. You might even have long abandoned blogs, or YouTube channels.

You’ve put out years of thoughts and ideas and observations into the world, never to be seen or heard from again, so don’t be afraid to revisit them!

You can copy and paste them, or just write a whole new take on an idea you had five years ago – whatever you do, it’ll work because it’s from you, and where you’re at right now.

As I said in “Writing a Newsletter Shouldn’t Beat You Up,” this doesn’t need to be hard.

“Your newsletter writing shouldn’t be a prison sentence. It shouldn’t feel like digging ditches. It shouldn’t be fraught with stress, or like dealing with a horrible boss. None of these things are desirable, and yet so many times we create these situations for ourselves.”

Maybe you struggle with sending out a regularly scheduled newsletter. You know you should send something to your subscribers, but some days it just feels harder than others.

Well, come to Thursday’s NOTES TO NEWS LETTERS Zoom call and join the conversation. One blog post, or one “webinar with a presentation deck” won’t have all the answers, but meeting with other creative people with the same struggles might help you figure this out!

NOTES TO NEWS LETTERS ZOOM CALL
Thurs, May 14 from 2:00PM – 3:00PM EDT (recording available)
Register here: https://luma.com/fku24gz8

Well, this was a bit of sunshine in my inbox recently, from photographer Gritchelle Fallesgon:

“I recently attended a Zoom gathering where singer and artist Nikki Lerner said, “Stop hoarding your creativity.” Those words really hit home and nudged me to get this out of my drafts and into your inbox.”

I set up that Zoom gathering, with two lovely people who happened to form choirs, a wonderful display of not hoarding your creativity, for sure!

But as Gritchelle mentions, this also goes for sending out a newsletter that’s been sitting in drafts for awhile, too! People signed up for your email list, and you’ve been doing cool stuff – so don’t hoard that creativity from the people who most likely want to know about it!

If you ever want to write something a little different, but you’re worried what people might think – that they might (GASP) unsubscribe – fear not, friend. As I mentioned in this week’s Escape Pod Zoom call, when someone brought this up:

“As the artist, as the creative person… I’m the lead magnet. People signed up for me, so they’re getting me. And if people get huffy about it and unsubscribe? Bye. I don’t want to hold back. I’m not a magazine. I don’t have editors. I want to write what I want to write.”

That’s the sort of stuff we talk about on our weekly calls. If you ever have pangs of doubt, fear, or apprehension about the work you produce, please join us!

THIS WEEKEND:

• BREAK UP 💔 WITH SOCIAL MEDIA #03: How do we reach new people without social media? Sat, May 2 at 12pm EST: https://luma.com/n628yxes

NEXT WEEK:

• CO-WORK ESCAPE POD. FREE. Tue, May 5 at 12:00pm EST: https://luma.com/1y6p4ead (two hours of virtual co-working!)
• ESCAPE POD #118 W/ SPECIAL GUEST MEG LEWIS. FREE. Thu May 7th at 2:00pm EST: https://luma.com/jzdkvpp2
• BREAK UP 💔 WITH SOCIAL MEDIA #04: Why Every Artist Needs a Website with Chuck Marshall! Sat, May 9 at 12pm EST: https://luma.com/mtvucpt5

See all events here: https://luma.com/escape-pods

One person on your email list can make a big difference.

I found out that Pearl Jam posted about the local nonprofit community art center Alice and I started, Art House Grandview, on their Instagram.

Three point eight million followers. A photo of a kid at Art House learning guitar, small hands on the neck of an instrument almost too big for them. Their foundation, the Vitalogy Foundation, picked Art House as the April recipient of their Future Days Fund grant. The money goes directly into the programs where we teach kids music for free.

Joshua Heath Scott wrote a newsletter, ‘HOW GUITAR CHANGED MY LIFE,’ and someone on the email list forwarded it to Pearl Jam’s foundation, which led to them highlighting Art House Grandview.

Joshua wrote that piece as only he could, talking about how Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten’ album was a huge influence, and “I’ve spent a lot of time on this Substack trying to articulate why art and creativity matter — why guitar matters — why it’s more than an instrument, why it carries the weight of where music has been, why holding one connects you to something larger than yourself.”

This is the core of talking about what we do.

We don’t just play music, we change lives.

We don’t just write essays, we shape culture.

We don’t just take photos, we document the world around us.

When we reduce ourselves to commodity offerings (check out my song, buy my print, read my article), we can’t be surprised when it’s treated as “content.”

So talk about your work in the same creative manner in which you make it. Dare to say you’re a writer even if you’re not “published.” Call yourself a photographer, a musician, a poet.

If the ding-dongs running the United States right now can claim they know what they’re doing, you have my permission to be anything you wanna be.

Let’s not define ourselves by our primary source of income, as we were put on earth for reasons beyond comprehension, beyond punching someone else’s time clock to pay the rent.

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Join me and the Social Media Escape Club TOMORROW, April 23 at 2pm EST, as we talk about this (and more), and you’ll leave with some new ways to talk about your work – sign up here.