How do you get ideas for newsletters?

I have been writing newsletters for more than 6 months at this point. One of the most important parts of the writing process is ideation. You can't write newsletters without ideas. Ideas you express in the headline, fill expand with your subheads and paragraphs. No idea, no newsletter.

So, you need to make sure you have a process in place, so you can be certain to have an idea ready, whenever you start writing.

Without a process, you're stuck staring at the blank page every day, week or month.

Dangers of the blank page

You might not think the blank page is something to fear.

But from having been on both sides of this situation I can tell you that starting from a proven idea saves you a lot of hair-pulling and navel-gazing. Here are 5 dangers of the blank page I often experience:

1. Self-doubt

2. Frustration

3. Wasted time

4. Procrastination

5. Increased stress

But, there is a way to avoid all of this.

Using the 3-step plan I have laid out for you in this email, you'll never have this problem again. This is the technique I use to go from an idea to a finished newsletter in less than 30 minutes. Feel free to steal it and use it yourself.

I did.

1. Write short form posts

Writing short form is one of the easiest ways of starting to write online.

You quickly get your ideas out there for others to read. And you quickly learn what resonates with your readers.

To get a week's worth of short form posts, decide on 3-5 topics you're interested in and would like to write more about. It helps if you already know something about the topic, but it's not necessary. If you're not familiar with the topic yet but would like to learn more about it, then write from the perspective of a learner. Share the stuff you're learning with other people who would like to know the same stuff.

When you're starting, it's not important to write viral posts all the time. It's more important to figure out what you would like to write about. And after that find the intersection between your interests and the interests of your audience.

Write first, and figure out the rest later.

2. Look at your data points

Once you've started to get your ideas out there, it's time to look at what works.

When I put a short form post out on X I will immediately start to see feedback coming in. A few likes, comments and sometimes even a retweet.

But, the truth is that you won't know how well that post performed before giving it some time to breathe. My suggestion would be around 24 hours. Once the 24 hours have passed you will see the amount of views, likes, comments and retweets the post received. If you were to choose one metric to double down on, my suggestion would be comments.

Because comments mean that your post was valuable enough for people not only to like but spend an extra moment writing their thoughts down and attaching them to your words. So, note down how well your post performed. And by the end of the week, you can tell which one of your posts for the week performed the best.

That post will most likely be the one your audience is most likely to read more about.

3. Find ways to double down on proven topics

Once you know what performed the best, it's time to double down on your winners.

I like to find my winner at the intersection between what was most commented on and what I would most like to write more about. There's not much fun in writing something that might be popular, but you feel bored writing about it.

So, once you've found your winner, you can expand it into a newsletter using the following sections:

1. Introduction: Introducing the what, why and how of the topic

2. Mistakes: A section explaining how people misunderstand the topic, the mistakes they make or the dangers of not doing what you say should be done.

3. Solution: This is the meat of your newsletter where you help them find a solution and lay it out as steps, strategies, insights or anything similar to this.

Then end with a conclusion and you got a newsletter.

This is the same model I use for every one of my newsletters. It's the easiest way to expand one short form idea into a longer format. Try it out for yourself.

You won't regret it.

The 3-step plan was:

1. Write short form posts to create lots of data points.

2. Look at your data points to understand what your audience cares about.

3. Find ways to double down on proven topics so you can expand one idea into a newsletter.

Talk to you more next week.

Peter