180: The One-Hour Newsletter Miracle: Streamline Your Content Creation Strategy

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of Digital Product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks constantly live launching or or worrying about the social media algorithms. I hope you enjoy our episode today. Hi there, Desney here. And in today's podcast episode, I want to talk with you about a challenge that I know a lot of you have and that is consistently producing high quality content and that will leave you struggling to find ideas or manage your time effectively. So what I want to talk with you about today is really something that has changed my life and that is my game changing content planning system that I use for my weekly email newsletter creation and content production in general. But before I get into all of that and to walk you through my particular process that I use, I really want to address the elephant in the room. And that is the challenge that all of us face when it comes to producing regular, engaging content for our email newsletter. And these challenges often include, number one, ideas, right? So we're constantly having to come up with fresh and relevant ideas, and that can be overwhelming, especially when you're trying to maintain a weekly consistent publishing schedule. The other thing is, we have time constraints. So balancing content creation with all the other stuff that we have going on in our business and life really does leave us pressed for time. It leaves us stressed about meeting the deadlines and they're like, oh, I met, I missed the deadline this week for sending out my weekly email newsletter, I'm just going to forget about it because the deadline's gone. The other challenge we have is quality, right? So we don't want to rush to produce content because you might worry about maintaining the high standards that your audience expects from you. And then if you rush through it and you, let's say you write it and you're like, oh, I don't really like what I've done here. And then you don't want to send it out, right? Because you don't feel like it's up to your quality. The other is just being relevant and being timely. So making sure that your content is aligning with what's going on in the industry, making sure that it's relevant to your target market and your ideal reader, all of that can be challenging too. And then just getting engagement, right? Consistently delivering content that resonates with your audience and keeps them coming back for more can be extremely challenging. Just getting them to open up your emails so if you are experiencing any of these pain points, let me tell you, you're in very good company here. So I would say that almost everybody probably listening to this has struggled with these issues. But I really want to walk you through a solution that I have found and have put together that really helps you overcome these challenges and will streamline your content production process for your email newsletter. And the good news is a lot of this, you can even take pieces of your email newsletter and repurpose it elsewhere, especially on social media, just to really kill, you know, two birds with one stone, if you would. Now, this content planning system that I'm going to walk you through today, I have set it up so that it is really only taking me about an hour, hour to put together my weekly email newsletter. So I worked on my hobby school one yesterday and I timed myself and I got it done in an hour. And it's a pretty, you know, it's a sizable newsletter. There's a lot of content in it. So I would say that this is a win, win because this system is definitely working for me and it needs to work for me, right? Because I have three email newsletters that I am writing every single week. Actually four when you count what I write for my newsletter profit club for the membership that we have. But I have the hobby school email newsletter, I have my creators MBA email newsletter and then I have the balance start email newsletter which we're just launching and just getting ramped up. So if you're interested in getting a behind the scenes on that particular one, I am going through and walking you through all the way from zero email subscribers how we are designing that email newsletter, how we are growing that email newsletter. I'm showing you all the behind the scenes for that particular brand from scratch. So if you're interested in seeing all that, definitely jump into the newsletter profit club and you can see all of that from the beginning. And then I don't know where that journey is going to take us. I'm thinking eventually we're going to sell that email newsletter, but we'll see where that goes. Okay, so let me go into a little bit more detail about this particular system now. This particular system, I have made it super, super simple. I have it in a Google Docs and I have the Google Sheet app on my phone. So whenever I come across anything throughout the week for any of my newsletters, I just open up the app on my phone or if I'm on my computer, I just open it up on my computer and I capture that idea right Then and there. Before I forget, so this particular system starts with you gathering content ideas all the time, like basically constantly throughout the week. It could be when you're, you know, listening to a podcast. It could be when you're at the grocery store and you're, you know, you see the magazines there and you're like, oh my gosh, that is a really cool headline. Capture it. Put it in your, you know, put it in your Google Sheet. It could be when you're reading another email newsletter or reading a book, or you're on somebody's website and you're thinking, oh, that is really cool. Or I could take that and, and make it relevant for my audience. So let me give you some very, very specific ideas here. And I will use the Balance Start email newsletter as an example. I actually have this particular planner. It's a Google Sheet up on my screen right now. So I'm actually looking at it right now. And in this Google sheet there are two tabs. One is a tab that says Content Ideas. And that is where I have any of the content ideas and writing prompts that I am looking at or gathering, kind of gathering information on throughout the entire week. And then the other tab is my newsletter and promotional calendar. Now on this particular sheet I have the promotional calendar. So this is where I capture anything that I'm going to be promoting for that particular brand. So if I am doing like a visibility collaboration or sponsor sponsorship or affiliate promo or selling something from one of our Shopify stores or digital products. So anything that I'm going to be promoting, I have that in column B. And then I have the various sections of this newsletter. Now if you have been around or reading some of my previous newsletters, you know that I treat these weekly email newsletters kind of like a magazine or an old timey newspaper, right? So I've different sections in my newsletter and the thought process behind this and the research that I have done is that when you have different sections in your newsletter, you are going to basically appeal to different people, right? So as an example for Balance Start, I have some different sections here. One's called Mindful Moments, one's called Career Boost, one's called like a weekly challenge that we're going to have in there. One's called Balance Home, there's some other ones in here. And I'm trying to figure, you know, we're still kind of testing some of this. One's a Book of the Month Club, one's Quick Win, one's a Productivity Tools and Apps. So these are different sections, if you would, in this email weekly newsletter that I can cover. Like I said, we're kind of still researching and playing around with some of this. But basically the thought process is when you have different sections in your weekly newsletter, you're going to make it relevant to a wider, broader base of your reader. Not everybody who's reading the Balance Start newsletter is going to be interested in career information. A lot of them will, but not every single person. The Balance Home section, will every single reader be interested in that? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it depends on what we have in that section for that week. Would everybody be interested in the book of a month? Maybe, maybe not. But when you have different, most likely there's going to be at least one section that's going to really resonate for that particular reader, and they're going to be like, you know what? This newsletter speaks to me. I like this newsletter. It's given me valuable information. So based on, you know, the research study that I did in looking at all of these newsletters out there that people were, you know, producing and people were interested in, they were subscribing to and the newsletter operators, like, you know, creators, call them operators, creators, whatever you want to call them, they're actually making money from these newsletters. They're treating them like a product. They're making money from them. This is how they design these weekly newsletters. Okay? So it's not just, you know, couple paragraphs and, you know, I'm wiping my hands and moving on. More than likely, something like that's not going to be valuable. People are going to stop reading them. But when you have them packed with a lot of information, really valuable information, they're going to be like, you know what? I'm going to save this particular weekly newsletter in a special Gmail folder because I want to go back to that weekly challenge or I want to. I want to go back to that tip that they gave me, really to my career, or I want to go back to that tool that they recommended. I might not be ready now, but I'm, you know, I definitely want to check that out. So you're making it your weekly email newsletter. You're making it. So people want to save it. You. They want to go back to it, they're finding a ton of value in it. So going back to what I was saying about curating these ideas, So I want to give you some very specific examples here. So here are some writing prompts and content ideas that I have pulled this past week for the Balanced Start newsletter. One is, if you don't choose how to use your time. Others will choose it for you. Now, this is a particular quote that I got from a source. I'm going to give them credit for it. And like I said, it doesn't always have to be stuff that you particularly are. You personally are creating. So what I will do with this particular quote here, I will use the quote I will give that author, but I will expand upon that idea for this particular newsletter. So it's really just given me a really great writing prompt for this, and I will use AI to help me with that and kind of refine it. So I'm not writing all of that from scratch. And that's another way that I can get these weekly email newsletters out in an hour. Because I'm, you know, curating this content throughout the week. I'm using this, and then I'm using AI to help me kind of refine my thought processes there. And it really makes it super, super easy to get this content, very valuable content out. And I want to give you some other examples here. So one is. Let me. I'm looking at it, right? Okay. This is. I thought this one was really cool. This a headline that I saw. It said, problems are just gifts in ugly wrapping paper. Isn't that so cool? Problems are just gifts in ugly wrapping paper. I was like, I could probably use this in several minutes, but definitely in the balance, start one. I can definitely take that, do something with it, and use it in one of the particular headings that I have. So, you know, that could go into a career boost, right? You could take that particular headline and make it, you know, give them some very valuable advice in the career boost session. So maybe somebody got laid off from their job, right? So that's a very, you know, could be a gift, an ugly wrapping paper, right? I could take that and, you know, spin it and make it applicable for them in their career booth. So maybe you just got laid off from your job, but consider this might just be a gift, you know, ugly gift. No, what. What did I say it was? Gifts and ugly wrapping paper, right? And then go into details about how they, you know, can approach their job search and what this might have forced them to do that they probably needed to do anyway. But if they hadn't gotten, you know, laid off in the job, they might not have pursued it. So you kind of see how I am gathering these ideas, how I'm tying it to each section of the weekly email newsletter. Okay, so like I said, I go into all of this in the newsletter Profit Club. And if you want to see me build this email newsletter from scratch, I'm doing this with the Balanced Life and I will go into detail about how you can curate all of these ideas, take them and build your weekly email newsletter, but most importantly, monetize it. So that's going to be a key focus in this membership, is monetizing this email newsletter. And one of the tools that I have, and I'm going to give you the link for this in the show notes is my newsletter profit calculator. With this newsletter profit calculator you can kind of you can estimate what you can make from your email newsletter based on your number of subscribers, based on your open rate, based on your click through rate, based on your conversion rate, based on your average revenue per conversion, and other ways that you can monetize your email newsletter like maybe some sponsorships or ads or affiliate marketing. So going back to the balance start, I have a section in there for productivity tools and apps. There are going to be some opportunities for affiliate marketing there, digital product sales, memberships, maybe even coaching and some other things that you're doing, maybe even some done for your services. There are definitely ways that you can monetize every single weekly email newsletter that you have going out to your audience, even if you're not doing a flash sale and even if you're not in the middle of a launch. So there you go. I've given you some ideas on how you can curate your content for your email newsletter and also how you can actually monetize that newsletter every single week. If you have any questions whatsoever about any of this, ping me. You know, respond back to my one of my emails. If you're not on the Creators MBA podcast, definitely jump on that, get signed up for it. We have over close to 11,000 people on that email newsletter and I would love to see you there. Respond back to any of my newsletters. Let me know what questions you have. I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you have. And bye for now. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you love the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.