Borrowing Audience Engagement to Generate Newsletter Ideas
If you're looking for validated ideas to write about in your newsletter (or for any content), one of the best ways is to follow audience engagement, i.e. questions and comments. But what if you don't have much of an audience and little to no engagement on your content?
Easy: borrow engagement from bigger accounts.
This is one of my favorite research methods for coming up with content ideas and one I still use even with enough of an audience to source ideas from. Here's how it works...
- Make a list of popular creators in your niche
- Regularly review their content, both on social media and other platforms
- See what questions are being asked but not answered — or questions that you would answer in a different way
Example: Nathan Barry's Deep Dive
If you could have me write an in-depth article on just one topic, what would you find most insightful?
— Nathan Barry (@nathanbarry) July 31, 2023
On the surface, this tweet may not stand out. It's not about newsletters specifically, but since I know Nathan writes about newsletters and the creator economy I should see what people are asking him to deep dive on. Which leads me to Sahil.
Newsletter monetization guide would be a cool one.
— Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom) July 31, 2023
All the different ways to think about monetization with a newsletter and some ballpark figures people have hit along the way.
This stands out for two reasons. One, this is something I can deep dive on. In fact I've already started with the 7 Steps to 7 Figures. Two, Sahil asked it, and people like him are exactly who I want to work with at Good People Digital.
Now I have a real idea, based on a specific question, asked by an ideal client, that I have the knowledge to answer. Time to get to work.
Other Areas to Research
Twitter is hardly the only place to research experts like Nathan. You can also go to LinkedIn and YouTube, really anywhere that knowledge experts tend to share and have lively comment sections.
Instagram and TikTok are also options, but I've found video platforms (besides YouTube) to be a little harder to filter quality content. Reddit is also a great option if you're looking for more user-generated content research. Sam Parr talks about that in detail during his interview at Craft + Commerce.
In the video below I used Bear Notes to create a simple list. I have a more elaborate system set up in Notion for capturing and developing ideas, you can watch more on my YouTube channel.
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