One of the very common ways that people grow local newsletters is by sharing in local subreddits. And I was disappointed when some early tries at this yielded nothing for Austin Business Review.
Like… It really didn’t work.
Other writers talk abut overwhelming positive feedback, and getting dozens – even hundreds – of signups. I used the exact same format and got precisely zero.
I have two theories as to why…
The first is that my local subreddit is actually pretty dialed. The moderators watch like hawks, and posts like mine get organized into clusters so that they’re only seen by the people looking for them. So the “drive-by” traffic on Austin’s reddit feels like it’s lower than it would be for other place.
Second, and probably more importantly, my newsletter is a little more niche than typical local sheets. I focus exclusively on business owners, and they may just not be searching reddit in the right place at the right time to see my stuff.
At any rate, it was initially a bummer. But now, I’m actually glad those didn’t take off because it’s got me thinking differently about how to grow in general.
The thing that you have to constantly keep in mind when building a newsletter is that bigger isn’t always better. And getting big fast is also not automatically best.
The value of the newsletter is determined by the calibre of the audience you build, and the trust & connection you have with them. That’s it.
If you have an email that goes to ten people, but they’re the VP of merchandizing at the 10 largest retail stores in the world, and they trust you, and read you, and take action around the things that you discuss, that’s a very valuable list.
So anyways, for me, the thing I’m thinking a lot about now is how to get 100 local business owners who love this email.
That’s it.
I don’t know how to reach thousands of people. And if I did, I’m not sure what they’d want to read.
But I could literally coffee my way to 100 people, and I gotta believe that if you did that – attracted one hundred interesting people who were building serious companies in your city – it would by default lead to some very interesting opportunities.
It’s slower to build. But as one of my favorite writers and founders, Chris Scwartz, is fond of saying, “growing the business slowly ensure[s] that it would be difficult to fail.”