~ 3 months so far. Reflection
by HuaI did some reflection after sending out the 12th issue of FontDiscovery. I originally posted this on Twitter (on 3/23), wanted to also share this here because I really love the timeline feature on IH! makes me feel accomplished.
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Another newsletter is done! This is my twelfth issue and
I have been reflecting for the past few weeks. Some very unedited learnings and thoughts here:
Content: people like case studies, so they know how to take their learnings into practice. I am going to have that more. Another idea: including a form so people can suggest topics they would like to know. Interested to see how to make FontDiscovery more open.
Headline: still struggling with trying to write better headlines. so far the headline with the name of the font works better. I tried to do some headlines that explain the value. But it doesn't do as well as the issues with font name. Could be my writing and need more data.
Visibility: Ok, so this is a silly one. For a while, I didn't put the name of my newsletter in the subject line. Why didn't I do that? It's because my headline is always on the long side following the {fontName, fontDescription} formula. so I had an emoji for the title instead. It's a nice idea if your newsletter is daily. But weekly. I feel like it doesn't work because it was easy to get lost in the mailbox for new subscribers.
Growth: so far FD is close to 150 subscribers - very stable linear growth. it's hard to tell with Substack's dashboard but I can say with confidence that niche subreddits is the best channel. I can get about ~20 - 30/ week.
Another thing that works for me is DM on insta. I chat with founders there about design. This is time-consuming, but I value this connection a lot. It also helped me learn a lot about how non-designers design their branding. so it's partially customer discovery. really lovely!
Some other channels I have tried: slack (founder/maker focused), discord, facebook group. This week I will focus more on public servers on discord while keep posting on subreddits. A channel I'm curious about: LinkedIn. how do you post there?
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One update I have after this I started syndicating my content on Hackernoon. I just started doing so there is no data so far. Another thing that happened is I started posting the newsletter weekly on a facebook group. There is interest there (immediately after I posted, I got 3 likes and a comment asking for links to subscribe), but the rules are very strict (zero links allowed)... we'll see how that goes.
