Writing a newsletter is an art.

And like any other work of art, it takes effort.

You can use this effort to create something bad, good, better, or best.

The effort and time that it will take won’t vary much.

Here is how you can write a good newsletter

1. Make sure your newsletter delivers on the promise. That promise can be to entertain, inform, educate, or anything else.

2. Be sure to respect the reader’s time by removing fluff and telling stories (so it is not boring).

3. To make it easy for readers to consume, break it into scannable parts and bullets and add media like images and video. 

4. To make it easy to write it, follow a template. For example, I write my weekly marketing newsletter following a 3-2-1 template. I send subscribers three tools, two exciting books/videos, and one insight that recipients can act on. It still takes 3-8 hours to put together for a team of two but without template it will take longer, and I likely won’t do it.

5. Don’t write long newsletters. Go for anything a subscriber can consume in under 7 minutes, ideally 5 minutes. Unless you share in-depth research, in that case, add a link to a comprehensive study instead of adding it in the body of the email.

6. Make sure it is focused on a niche and covers a theme. Changing directions or topics in everything other than email does not instill trust and does not generate the kind of engagement you’ll get with a focused newsletter with a consistent theme. 

Hope this is useful as you write your newsletter.