Improve your newsletter game

Since every artist/entrepreneur needs one, might as well do it well, right?

I had a pet guinea pig named “artichoke” but it never reached for the sun.

I guess this is the Part 3 in my “How to run your own newsletter” series. I wrote the other two what seems like eons ago, which is actually only a year or so:

What Sort Of Person Can Run A “Successful” Newsletter?

Best Practices For (Filmmakers) Before You Launch Your Newsletter.

In the latter one, I offered up over 35 “Best Practices” to use, but I kept finding more as time went on. I am sharing those with you now.

Since then, I share a few posts closely linked to newsletters — the need for filmmakers and other artists and entrepreneurs to have a newsletter— in that they spoke directly to the need to audience builds (ideally even before you launch a film or product):

Build Your Audience, Own Your Future

25 Reasons Why All Filmmakers Should Build Their Own Audiences

And of course there’s the short but sweet Secret Formula too:

Cinema’s Secret Formulas: The Closed Triangle Of Audience Elevation

But when it comes down to it, other than your film (or work or product) itself I don’t think there is a more versatile tool than a newsletter, and that’s what I want you to take another beat to consider now. If not for you, then for your friend who is working on something now. They need to be prepared. They need to do it right, or at least better.

If you or they can’t afford another newsletter now, no worries. If you can’t gift them a subscription, I will. Just tell them to reach out to me and let me know. Seriously.

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Ted’s 35+ additional recommendations on newsletter production and publishing.

1. Know why you need to build (own?) your audience. It this doesn’t motivate you, I have to wonder if you actually want people to see your film.

2. In the end though, do it only because you want to do it. If you don’t have passion for it, it will show, and that will do more harm than good.

3. Be yourself. Find yourself. Don’t cop some attitude or write from on high (he says as he does just that, but hey that’s me!). They read because of you. They want to develop a relationship with you. Show them who you really are.