What kind of person is your newsletter?

Prologue

A person’s actions teach you what to expect from them, right?

It’s the same for a company’s content.

Think this through with me.

When we engage with a person over a period of time, we have the chance to determine their credibility and reliability.

Do they follow through, or do they fall short of what they said they’d do?

The moment you realize a person is full of it, or just not getting you and what you care about, you decide not to deepen the relationship.

That takes some time.

Conversations.

A series of evaluations.

Now, imagine that person is a brand’s content.

First, you discover it (word of mouth, SEO, paid media, EMAIL NEWSLETTER).

Then, over a series of interactions, you determine if it’s worth going further with each group of words you consume.

This is why content for the sake of content falls short.

Each and every bit of your messaging should further prove that you actually do what you say you do.

Consider each piece a potential step forward in the relationship with your reader.

When someone consumes it, does it make them want more?

Ask yourself, with every issue you send, “If I read this, would I want more?”

Screen Share

Why Wade Sellers Infuses His Newsletter, Apps Weekly, with Enthusiasm

Wade Sellers is the appiest person I know (pun intended). 🙄

Seriously. He has a unique energy and his newsletter, Apps Weekly, gives him a way to connect with an audience who can appreciate his passion for apps. And he’s completely ok with the fact that he’s still finding his path.

In this interview, he shows us how he creates Apps Weekly using Curated and Bublup.

Plus, he opens up and discusses the many emotions a newsletter creator might experience once they’ve begun the journey. He also explains why launching a curated newsletter on a niche topic is a far easier way to build an audience than starting a blog.

Newsletter Tips

10 Ways to Improve Your Email Open Rates Today

Juris Kristobans provides some very solid tactics to improve your open rate, plus tools to help you execute them. Do you do all of these things?

Via Really Good Emails.

Should Your Newsletter Be Seasonal?

What does that even mean?

Fiction writer Robin Sloan explains how some newsletters can be effectively delivered in seasons, like televisions shows.

“The first [example] is my year-long newsletter from 2019, which was titled Year of the Meteor. It was launched with an expiration date, and I swear to you, that ticking clock was like a power source: a lump of uranium decaying, spraying off energy. I mailed an edition every Sunday, always with the week number incremented in the subject line. Everyone knew the denominator; it felt like a progress bar.”

Via Inbox Reads.

Marketing

Consider Brand Journalism

In Why and How Companies are Turning to Brand Journalism, Sally Ann O’Dowd explains how brand journalism is different than content marketing.

“‘With brand journalism, the intention is to build reputation and promote expertise, not leads for somebody to sell something,’ says Jim Ylisela, a former Chicago investigative journalist, author, and co-founder of Ragan Consulting Group, which helps companies and nonprofits set up journalistic-style newsrooms.

‘[Some] audiences have grown weary and see through PR and marketing,’ he says. ‘If you can cut through the clutter by telling a good story that has people in it, then [your audiences] will pay attention to you.’”

This piece is worth a read as you consider thought-leadership marketing and achieving public awareness of your brand and its role in society. Read through to the bottom. She provides five tips for doing “Brandjo.”

Writing

Avoid an SEO Panic Attack by Making Sure to EAT

Recent changes to Google’s search algorithm aren’t something to fret over, according to Maria Minsker, especially if your content caters to readers’ needs.

EAT stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Click through for some reassurance that if you’re following these principles in your SEO writing, you’re not likely to experience a drop in organic traffic.

Curation

Do You Curate Inspiring Content? You Should.

The team at UpContent recently posted some tips for curated newsletter creators. You’ll want to check it out if this is the type of newsletter you write, or if you’re considering this approach.

I’m loving their emphasis on curating inspiring content (as opposed to just content that contains a particular keyword).

“No one bothers to spend much time at all with a newsletter or other piece of content that is not engaging. Everyone has different tastes and preferences when it comes to what they want to read about, but content that is uninspiring will quickly be discarded for something else. There is a nearly limitless supply of material available to view on the Internet, so it is not at all surprising that people expect the best from the content they view.”

Publishing

Should You Put More Content Behind a Paywall?

Max Willens reports on what publishers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun, are learning by experimenting with placing more content behind paywalls. The results indicate that when done strategically, increased subscriptions can offset ad revenue loss.

Via Media Roundup

Download the Media Moments 2020 Report

Media Moments 2020, an annual Media Voices report in association with What’s New in Publishing, is now available for download.

“From the collapse of events to the boom in subscriptions and shifting trust in journalism, this report explores how 2020’s defining moments have changed the media landscape, and what the future holds for 2021 and beyond.”

Note: Expect a video interview with Media Voices Co-Host Esther Kezia Thorpe in an upcoming issue of Opt In Weekly.

Money Matters

Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post Ad Tech Zeus Performance Takes on Google and Facebook

Zeus Performance, a publishing CRM built by The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is focused on site speed, especially bid and ad rendering. It was designed to face a perplexing challenge.

‘“So we really had an existential issue, which was: If we cannot build an environment that’s on par, if not better, than what readers and advertisers are getting from Facebook and Google, then what is our business?’”

Built in 2016, it was later offered to other publishers in 2019. It uses 1st-party data to sell highly targeted advertising across publications on the platform, which the Zeus team hopes will lure advertisers away from Google and Facebook. Time will tell.

Thinking of Buying a Newsletter? Profit Projections of $329K are Enticing. Are They Realistic?

Codie Sanchez of Contrarian Thinking presents some revenue projections and cashflow models based on buying newsletters with large subscription lists. It’s food for thought if you’re considering going this route.

Opt In Challenge

Adapt Your Email Workflow to be Agile

Download this ebook from Litmus for some pointers on speeding up your email workflows and becoming better at testing and optimizing email performance.

For newsletter creators, this can be further adapted by improving the way you or your team creates each issue and how you look at data (for mine, I look at which categories are performing best over time to then respond to audience insights).

Your challenge this week is to browse this ebook and think through how you can be more efficient and responsive to what your audience wants.

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.

Also, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with fellow email newsletter creators. All archived issues will be available on OptInWeekly.com, so you can send them the link to check it out.

Have a great week sending, y’all.

Thanks for reading,