The Promise of Promoting Content

Far more goes into building a newsletter than creating content.

If you want a successful newsletter, you need to build your subscriber count. According to “21 Ways to Grow Your Newsletter in 2021,” the best way to do this is to spend more time promoting your content than creating it.

Sharing Content

The more you post, the more likely you will be to grow a following. Subscribers want to see that they are getting their money’s worth. Try posting three times a week or including weekly or monthly recaps.

Emphasize the best lines, quotes and examples so readers feel more inclined to share them on social media.

Utilize SEO. Focus on what keywords you use in your headline and article. Think about what people will search on Google and how likely your post will be to show up based on the words you use.

Share. Share. Share. For one post, you should share it on multiple social media platforms, as well as forums and online communities.

Referrals

Find ways to use your current subscribers to spread word of your newsletter.

Use giveaways and ambassador programs to do this. Offer gifts or raffles to readers and followers who refer people to subscribe. On social media, offer a giveaway to followers who tag friends on your page or reshare your posts.

Repurposing Content

For each post, you create content that can be expanded on in other verticals.

Use the research you’ve conducted and content you’ve already created to make a podcast or YouTube video. That way, your reader has more ways to consume the content.

A good way to go about this is to add some more information, examples or visuals to make each vertical different, which gives your audience more incentive to listen, watch or read each one.

In “This 25-Year-Old Built a $13 Million Newsletter in 4 Years,” I learned what worked and didn’t work for Alex Lieberman in co-founding the Morning Brew.

He started out by creating an interesting PDF newsletter, which people grew more and more interested in. Seeing potential in it, he started using guerrilla tactics such as interview questions and business riddles to incentivize people to subscribe.

He and his co-founder printed fliers to share on college campuses and gave lectures to students at lectures and clubs to reach a younger subscriber base.

I thought this was interesting, because I am still in college and should utilize this to reach more people my age to grow my newsletter.

I also found it interesting that he said it was better to hire intellectual, curious writers who are passionate about the newsletter’s topic rather than professional writers with journalism backgrounds. He made a good point, because the curious writers will seek content that the subscribers are most likely curious about as well.

Sharing content, cross-promoting the newsletter and incentivizing people to subscribe are all as important as creating content, because a newsletter can’t succeed without building a strong subscriber base.