Hello loyal readers of Josh!
I’m Trevor McKendrick — Josh was nice enough to invite me to “take over” the intro to his newsletter this week — he’s doing the same for my newsletter How It Actually Works.
If you like Josh’s stuff I promise you’ll enjoy my essay Why You Should Ignore Every Founder’s Story About How They Started Their Company — it got over 5,000 claps on Medium.
Thanks to Josh for putting out great work week after week, and for letting me show you just a bit of mine.
If you want to check out more of my work you can go here.
Now back to Josh!
1. How To Get More Out Of Your Newsletter
“Big things can be pulled apart into small things. Small things can be expanded into big things.”
Don’t be fooled — my recent interview on a real estate business podcast wasn’t about real estate.
Instead, I went on The Real Estate Crowdfunding show to talk about how to get more value out of your newsletter and in a 59-minute conversation shared my thoughts about how to structure your newsletter, create effective content, and write effective subject lines.
If you hit the link above, you’ll be able to consume it as an audio podcast, video, or browse the transcript.
Related: 40 one-sentence newsletter tips.
2. Six Steps Creators Can Follow To Make An Annual Plan
“I spend a couple hours clarifying what is it that I want and I realize that what I want is not what I thought I wanted.”
I haven’t done this exercise yet, but I’m definitely going to because I’m sure it can have a major impact on how things go in the coming year.
In a 19-minute video, Jack Conte shares six steps creators can follow to make an annual plan and reveals the questions he asks himself when planning, how he organizes his answers, and how he turns those into a vision statement and action plan.
Btw, I found this in the Modern Museum newsletter.
Related: How to increase your creative productivity.
3. 10 Types Of Tweets That Get Lots Of Retweets
“Take a common everyday thing we all know about and show why it’s wrong or off.”
Get ready to get more attention for your next tweet.
Trevor McKendrick spent 20 hours studying popular tweets on Twitter and turned them into this breakdown of 10 types of tweets that get lots of retweets.
He shares multiple examples of each format including inside info, first hand life lessons, and David vs. Goliath tweets.
Related: This is how I tweet five times a day.
4. How To Write An Effective Landing Page
“What these improved examples have in common is increased specificity.”
This will help you improve any page on your website where you want people to take action and/or better understand what you do or who you are.
Matt Maiale and Julian Shapiro explain how to write an effective landing page including examples of how to write headlines, add hooks, and speak directly to your audience.
Related: How to write headlines people will click, like, and share.
5. Six Productivity Apps You Probably Haven’t Heard Of
“Any important thing that I find myself typing out more than once, I will turn into one of these keyboard replacement thingys and it will just be synced across all my devices.”
The 15 minutes it takes to watch this might save you hundreds of hours in the years to come.
Thomas Frank and Ali Abdaal share six productivity apps you probably haven’t heard of including clever ways to save your tabs, find things quickly on your computer (or the web), and create screen-sharing videos.
Related: My most productive days are a result of these five choices.
The Blog Post Outline System I’ve Used To Reach Millions Of Readers
Want to know the system I’ve used to write blog posts every week for five years that millions of people have read? I put together a six-page PDF that reveals it all.
Get This Is How I Outline Blog Posts for a behind-the-scenes look at:
• How I decide what to write about
• How I develop headlines/key points for the post and write the first draft
• How this system enables me to write high-quality posts on a consistent basis without spending endless hours on them
Or, join This Is How I Do It for access to my complete library of 25+ resources (including the one mentioned above) to help you grow your audience or business.
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My Final Words Of The Week
There’s so much more value to be found on Twitter beyond just posting and reading tweets.
Increasingly, my Twitter direct messages have become a hub of valuable and interesting conversations.
This past week in my DMs I…
• Chatted with Justin Mikolay about his everything he’s written about writing and creativity
• Had an interesting exchange with Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia
• Connected with Jakob Greenfeld about how he turned my What To Tweet blog post into a cool tweet prompt site that became Product of the Day on Product Hunt
• Mapped out the newsletter introduction “take over” concept with Trevor McKendrick you saw at the top of this newsletter
And you know what these all have in common?
They’re interactions with people I’ve never met outside of Twitter.
When you use Twitter to connect TO people instead of just to talk AT them, you know what you get?
Connections.
Have a great week!
Josh
PS — If you enjoy this newsletter I’d love for you to tell others about it.
Thanks!