How to build a newsletter from the ground up

Welcome to Episode 4 of The Communication Lab — my series teaching you how to do science communication on social media (if you’re new to this series, start here).

This week is all about newsletters: how do you build a successful newsletter from the ground up?

Starting a newsletter or blog from scratch can certainly feel daunting, but it helps to remember that every successful newsletter starts out with zero subscribers. Imposter syndrome is a common hurdle (I nearly deleted my blog the day after I launched it!) — if you find self doubt is getting in your way every time you think about starting, go read this post again, then come back here.

Now, let’s get started.

Pick a niche. Most people who build successful newsletters focus their content on a specific theme. That theme can be somewhat broad, but you should be able to describe what your newsletter is about in one sentence. If it’s more broad than that, people don’t know what to expect from you, and they may be less inclined to follow along. Some examples from my own accounts:

For You Can Know Things, I write about health rumors and myths and how to talk about them
For The Public Health Roundup, I share my top 5 public health stories each week

Pick a platform. Last week we talked about the pro’s and con’s of different newsletter platforms including Substack, Ghost, Wordpress, and Medium. If I had to recommend only one for someone who is just getting started, I’d recommend Substack — primarily because of the built in features to help you grow your audience. There are cons of course, check out last week’s post for a deeper breakdown.

Pick a name. The name of your newsletter matters, as it’s the first thing people will see. When picking a name, make sure it:

Is fairly unique — you want people to be able to google it and find you. “Cardiology news” would be way too generic, for example.
Is memorable but isn’t too long — you want people to remember it after it’s said once so they can go look it up after you tell them about it.
Gives the reader a sense of what your newsletter is about — “Kristen’s thoughts” would be a terrible name, for example, as that newsletter could be about literally anything.

(In retrospect, You Can Know Things doesn’t fully meet these criteria, but I didn’t have this advice when I started out. At this point I’m fairly attached to the name, so I’m sticking with it.)