⌨️✏️📃 how to run a newsletter📃✏️⌨️

The latest in the How To Be A Creative™ series, we deep dive on the art of the newsletter.

Want to learn how to run a newsletter? You can! But you have to upgrade your account (and, if you can’t swing that financially, send a message and we can figure something out).

This month’s How To Be A Creative™ entry is based on your vote for which subjects to explain and explore. Vote for the next subject at the bottom. Revisit older entries in the series, like How To Be A Creative.

A few months ago, my friend Erin sent me an email about wanting to start a newsletter. She had moved to a new city, started a new position, and wanted to step it all up: she wanted to start a newsletter.

So we chatted. I shared some insights and ideas, offering general best practices for a publication and what I’ve learned from running The Trend Report™ for a high school’s worth of time. What was a string of emails became an hour and a half Meet call explaining what you’ll find below.

Here’s what I told her — and what I would tell any of you who want to start a newsletter, who are starting a newsletter, or who have a newsletter and want to keep it going. This is all framed as questions too, in case you want to use this as a sort of checklist to guide your process.

Why are you starting a newsletter? 

If you’ve arrived at the idea that you want to start a newsletter…why did you land here? Think about this critically as a newsletter — like a blog, like an Instagram, like a zine, like pitching stories — is something that is just a bunch of words popped into a place. It doesn’t mean, say, that you’re going to get more eyes or that what you write will be inherently message: it’s deeply a “the medium the message” sort of thing. The medium is technically by email, although there’s nothing to say that this couldn’t be via mail-mail or an audio note or a large poster hung on the wall of your apartment complex: it’s all technically a newsletter, meaning it’s a collection of updates shared semi-regularly. What differentiates a newsletter from other formats is the periodic nature, that it shows up with some regularity and with some familiarity. These aren’t urgent but they are timely, aided by the “constancy” of being a well that people can dip into. To run a newsletter is to become some people’s school paper. If that sounds daunting, annoying, or taxing, I suggest trying another form or format. This is also to say: newsletters are trendy now — but they won’t always be. Something else will become even more sexy in the future and this form will become passé: such is life. If you’re doing a newsletter just because “it’s trendy,” certainly question that. This boat is far from port — and I’m not sure starting now “because it’s cool” will get as much of a return as you might think. Start with plenty of grains of salt in your pocket!

What’s the “point” of your newsletter? What’s your thesis?