Newsletter, blog, or _____?
Newsletter, blog, or _____?
An update after my first full month of weekday posts shared with an emerging list of subscribers whom I hope to continue serving.
“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
Ah, what’s in a name? There’s an age-old question easily capable of evading a simple answer.
In late April I decided to start writing a 'weekday newsletter.' Yup, that’s all I could come up with as a name for it. It’s part blog, part article, and it comes out regularly, so it sort of fit.
Here’s the backstory on the weekday Aspire to Impact newsletter and an update after month one.
From DepositPhotos.com
The Why — There were a few motivations behind starting this little initiative.
I'm doing a lot of work on personal leadership right now and writing about it each morning helps me open up the path for the day, so why not share that writing?
I've never really been good at engaging with my email list and thought it was time to try a different path. Finding a platform that makes writing to subscribers more like sending an e-mail appealed to me.
And, to be completely honest, my e-mail list has been effectively 'dead' for quite a while years. Long story, but my not writing to them is one big reason!
So after subscribing to and reading a couple of people's Substack publications, I decided to launch my own and committed to writing every weekday through May.
The goal was simple: to see if I enjoyed doing it if anyone would read it and if anyone would subscribe.
While I knew a single month wasn't a long enough test of the latter, it was enough to test the waters on how writing and publishing every weekday would feel and get some basic insight into whether anyone would read what I shared.
The Results
Writing — I've truly enjoyed the process and will be continuing. It's helping me flesh out some ideas for my work, setting my days up to be more productive, and improving my writing. I'll put all those in the WIN column.
Process — Truth be told I made the move a bit hastily. I killed my previous email list the day before I published my first post. And I didn't have much success with the single e-mail I sent to my list inviting them to subscribe before shutting the email list service down (sending a few messages and sharing some of the content would have been a better path).
Subscriptions grew rapidly in the first couple of weeks as I shared a few of the posts on social media and directly with some friends and colleagues. They've since leveled off and frankly, that's what I expected. It's going to take time to get people to engage with a platform they're not familiar with, and it's going to take some effort to get their attention. That is something I'll be focusing on this month.
Content — Last Friday's very simple post about quotations got more three times the eyeballs of any other post. Whether it was the topic, the timing, or someone sharing it, I can't really say. But it's going to change my Friday path for a while as I'm going to publish a post about quotations every Friday for a few weeks and invite my readers to share their favorites so I can include them. This will begin on Friday.
The Unanswered Questions — After this first month of experience, here are the next step questions I'm pondering
Question One: Will a regular post on the topic that got the most attention to date engage more readers and start to grow the audience? (We’ll see how it unfolds in the next few weeks.)
Question Two: Would I be wise to create a weekend edition? Of the small handful of Substack writer's I now follow, some do weekday and a weekend post. There's a bit of summarizing in the weekend post and some stage setting for what comes next. Since I've heard from a couple of subscribers every day is just too much, I'm playing with creating a weekend edition to share the essence of the week's posts in a quick-read format. (I'm going to hold off for a while, maybe it's July’s test.)
Question Three: Will this path help me engage with more of the people I'm here to serve? It's unclear and way too early to answer. The key is going to be continuing the process and testing how to get more people to share content that resonates with them and to subscribe. (I'll be patient and continue for another 2-3 months and see how it unfolds.)
The Bottom Line — My initial test for May was to see if I enjoyed the process and wanted to continue. The answer is YES. I also wanted to see if anyone would actually read a weekday newsletter and subscribe to have it delivered in their inbox, and again the answer is YES. And, I was curious if I'd hear from people as I started publishing regular, that's also a YES.
Today’s Action Advice
If there's something you keep thinking about doing, start it today. Adopt a try, test, learn approach with no investment in the outcome other than learning. Be patient, do the work, and assess the process and progress regularly.
Good luck with the first step. I’d love to hear how it goes (or at least what you’re planning to do). Please hit reply and share what you’re doing with me?
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P.S. If you’re finding value in these posts, please take a moment to share them with someone you know who needs to be inspired to think differently and become the person they are capable of becoming. You might be able to help them take the most important step — the first one.