Reimagining your newsletter publishing process

It’s the night before your newsletter goes out and you’re still writing it.

Does that sound familiar?

If not, I commend you for being ahead of the curve. But the vast majority of creators aren’t so proactive.

And those are just a few.

We have a processes problem

Yes, we. I too am guilty of writing this newsletter the night before it’s due like a high school book report.

While it’s fun to joke about, there are some serious risks to the night before approach:

• Life happens. What if you’re sick or need to help someone who is sick? What if you lose your internet connection? What if… anything gets between you and the deadline?
• Quality might suffer. It takes time to put together quality newsletter issues, especially if you include time coming up with the ideas in the first place.
• The stress isn’t worth it. Every week (or in some cases every day) being stressed about what to write next can cause a lot of unnecessary strain on you.

You’re probably thinking you’ll just start writing earlier given the downsides to a night before approach. That’s a great thought, but the first few steps in writing a newsletter issue are usually the hardest and (speaking from experience…) you’ll probably go back to your old ways pretty quick.

Unless you have processes in place.

Let’s solve this together

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be working on my processes and sharing what I build with you. That way we can both go into 2024 with a lot less stress and an easier workflow for consistently publishing high quality content.

That means I’m going to do something I’ve never done with this newsletter…

Give you homework.

Please don’t panic, this is the kind of thing that will make your life easier and won’t take much of your time.

Your next steps

This week, take some time to answer the following questions:

• How often do you publish your newsletter?
• How far in advance do you currently write your newsletter issues?
• What does your typical week look like? How much available time do you have for writing newsletter issues?
• Do you currently have any systems in place to write, organize, and track the performance of your newsletter issues?

These answers are for your own benefit so I recommend being brutally honest with yourself.

Next week we’ll take these answers and begin building a system that will make publishing your newsletter easier over time.

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