How I finally got my email newsletter to grow

The three people that are familiar with me know that I've got a background in entrepreneurial science (studying how entrepreneurship and marketing work through an academic lens).

For yeeeaaars, I stubbornly tried to ship content that incorporated that and it went absolutely fucking nowhere.

Nowadays, my content does SIGNIFICANTLY better.

Here's what I changed:

1/ Write content that people WANT to read.

The best way imo to do this is to research your industry. Look for stuff that's already going viral. That'll give you an idea of the type of format your audience likes.

In my case, literally NO ONE inside of the marketing/entrepreneurial science community did well.

To this day, all my colleagues (PhDs and Professors) have like seven followers.

2/ Examples, examples, examples

Don't write about game theory. Instead, give an example of how Spotify "offers" the opportunity to get extra discoverability in exchange for 30% of the revenue.

This creates an advantage for every individual artist ASSUMING others don't do the same thing. This logic holds for everyone, so everyone does this. The end result is that everyone opted-in and now the situation is exactly the same as it was before except you're paying 30% for the privilege.

Use this to explain stuff like payoff matrices, Nash equilibria, Pareto efficiency, weak/dominant strategies, and so on.

Only idiots like me enjoy deeply technical lectures. The average person wants eduTAINMENT!!!! Emphasis on the entertainment aspect.

Bonus points if you use pictures or a "Do/Don't" format that allows people to get the gist by skimming and not having to use their brains.

3/ Do a better job at distribution

There's no point in writing the best content on Earth if no one can find it. The idea that stuff can be found easily on the internet is so not true.

There are two ways to hide. You can hide behind a corner or you can hide in plain sight. The latter is how the internet works today. There's just soooo much content, it's incredibly hard for people to find you.

So you have to show up everyone, all the time, where your audience lives. Your audience needs to feel like they see you everywhere they are.

I used to spend 6 hours a day writing essays, uploaded them, and then called it a day.

Predictably, no one read them aside from my subscribers. If you're lucky, a few of them might share it but even IF that drives no subs, that won't offset the natural churn which is a normal part of life.

4/ Don't ignore this!

I've noticed a tendency among some people to discount everything they've heard before and dismiss it with "oh that's all super obvious."

This means they've got shiny object syndrome and constantly desire \new\ advice.

Instead, ask yourself: "Am I already doing this?"

If the answer is “No",” then maybe it’s not so obvious after all.

I promise you, these tips WILL deliver for you if you implement them. So instead of scrolling to the next piece of content, try to implement one of these tips.

Maybe you're sitting on a stellar interview you did, a blog post you wrote, or a video you created. Distribute it better.

Or maybe you're writing content \you\ like, instead of doing a bit of research to see what the thought leaders in your space do and modeling that.

Give it a try and keep me posted.

If you got something out of this, join my daily newsletter here. Every day (Mon-Fri), I share 1 tip or example on marketing for solopreneurs.