On this week’s Dear Katie, a listener asked me: “I’d love to do a weekly newsletter series like you, but I’m struggling to think about what topic to write about each week. Any suggestions? No one needs weeks of tax tips – that’d be boring! “

And I’m going to let you in on a little secret: you don’t need to come up with newsletter topics.

You can steal the same strategy that I’m using for My Dear Katie newsletter. I’m on episode 59 as I’m writing this, and guess what? I never have to think about what I’m going to write because I let my audience come up with the topics for me.

People submit questions – like the one you’re reading – and I take care of the rest.

But you know what the best part is? I get SO many comments from people telling me that my newsletter is their favorite.

(So, thank you to everyone who submits great questions and thank you to those who take the share kind feedback with me!). 

BEFORE you click off – there is a strategy behind it all.

Here’s how it works:

1. Start Requesting Questions

Your audience has questions, and as an expert, you’re uniquely positioned to answer them. But you need to ask people to send in their requests, which I do with a simple form (you can see it here).

Unfortunately, “build it and they will come” doesn’t really work, so you need to request questions, which I do by:

1. Adding the form to the bottom of this very newsletter
2. Posting the form link on social media each week and asking people to leave questions.

I also have a lot of client meetings, and as a note-taker, if a client has a really good question or one that I see popping up time and time again, I’ll add that to my list of potential newsletter topics.

2. Build Your Newsletter List

If no one is subscribed to your newsletter, it’s not going to be much worth to you, right? You need to find a way to keep adding new people to your newsletter and build it up – indefinitely.

How do I do it?

Every Friday, I post a teaser on social media for what I’ll be answering in my coming newsletter. I learned this strategy from Justin Welsh, and it’s a basic concept that everyone should be using:

• Give people just enough information to interest them in learning more
• But stop before giving away too much info
• Let the person know that to get the full details, they need to subscribe to your newsletter

You can see how I do this in the example below:

3. Send Your Newsletter

Every Saturday, I send out a newsletter that answers one question (see here for an example newsletter that answers the question above). 

At the end of that newsletter, I ask people to submit their own questions, which makes it easy for them to engage with my content and continue to feed questions.

Why Saturday? I’ve found that my newsletters have a super high engagement rate on Saturdays when people aren’t as busy.

However, you can do any day of the week that you wish. 

4. Repurpose the Content

You put so much time and effort into creating your content. 

Don’t let it be a “one-and-done” thing. 

Repurpose it.

With my newsletter, for example, I also share it as a blog post on my website (see here). This is also something I saw Justin Welsh do with his own newsletter. 

Then, I’ll turn that newsletter into several pieces of social media content in the upcoming months. I also will go live on these topics from time-to-time as well. 

When it comes to repurposing this content, the options are endless.

There you have it – you can have a weekly newsletter and never once have to think about what should I write about.

And, that’s a wrap on this Dear Katie question.

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Now I want to hear from you. Do you have a question? 

Submit it here

Until next time, cheers to your success!

Katie