To Grow Your Newsletter, You Need to Have Unique Content with Chenell Basilio
Jun 19, 2023
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Chenell Basilio, creator of the Growth in Reverse newsletter, shares her journey from zero to over 9,000 subscribers in just six months. She emphasizes the power of unique, well-researched content and explains her strategic approach to audience engagement. Chenell discusses effective note-taking techniques, using Apple Notes for quick idea capture while listening to podcasts. The conversation also dives into leveraging social media for visibility and the importance of treating your newsletter as a client project, ensuring productivity and connection with your audience.
Chanel Basilio achieved rapid newsletter growth by focusing on unique, deeply researched content that resonates with her target audience.
Her strategy includes identifying successful creators post-2018 to ensure relevance and applicability of their growth techniques in today's landscape.
Chanel actively engages her audience through promotional teasers and community feedback, highlighting the importance of interaction in maintaining subscriber interest.
Deep dives
Chanel Basilio's Newsletter Growth Strategy
Chanel Basilio successfully grew her newsletter, Growth in Reverse, to over 9,000 subscribers in less than six months by focusing on deeply researched and useful content. She emphasizes the importance of creating unique long-form articles that resonate with her audience, committing considerable time to research the growth strategies of successful creators. Chanel aims to feature only those who started their newsletters recently, ensuring relevance to today’s audience and avoiding dated tactics from creators active over a decade ago. Her method underscores the value of niche relevance in content creation while analyzing what recent strategies have proven successful.
Effective Research Techniques
Chanel employs a significant amount of research to derive actionable insights for her newsletter content, often dedicating 20 to 25 hours on a single topic. Her process begins by identifying creators who initially built their audience after 2018, as their growth strategies are more pertinent. Utilizing tools like Spotify and YouTube, Chanel listens to interviews and analyzes various sources like blogs and social media to gather comprehensive data. This detailed process allows her to uncover and highlight key growth levers used by successful creators in the modern digital landscape.
Content Creation and Engagement
Chanel outlines her content creation workflow, which includes drafting high-quality articles followed by promotional teasers shared on platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. She strategically crafts these teasers to engage her audience, providing value before linking to her newsletter. By facilitating a discussion around her content before its release, she attracts interest and improves click-through rates. Additionally, she shares key takeaways in post-release threads, creating continuous engagement and interaction among her subscribers.
Leveraging Tools for Productivity and Efficiency
Chanel utilizes an array of productivity tools to streamline her research and writing processes, including Apple Notes for quick idea capture and Google Sheets for organizing data. She values the speed of note-taking in Apple Notes to maintain an efficient workflow during her extensive research. To visually present data, Chanel employs Canva, allowing her to create appealing graphics that enrich her newsletter content. Her reliance on tools exemplifies the importance of technology in optimizing content creation and management for today's creators.
Setting Goals and Future Plans
Chanel outlines her intention to further develop her newsletter while setting clear goals for growth and potential monetization. In the coming months, she plans to enhance the existing community aspect of her newsletter and explore new ways of engaging with subscribers. By consistently analyzing feedback and performance metrics, Chanel aims to evolve her content strategy effectively and ensure it remains aligned with audience expectations. Her proactive approach to goal setting showcases the necessity for creators to adapt and be responsive in a rapidly changing digital environment.
It would be a dream of mine to grow a newsletter from 0 to 8,000+ in less than 6 months. But that’s exactly what Chenell Basilio did. The way she did it? Deeply researched, super-helpful content. See, she teaches people how successful creators grew their newsletters to 50,000+ subscribers. And today, she’s going to tell us all about her process. And in How I Built It PRO, we talk about money and goals for the next 6 months.
Top Takeaways
Creating unique, long-form content can be a boon to your website or newsletter; people want something good and helpful!
Quick capture is important. Chenell uses Apple Notes because that allows her to quickly open and dictate notes while she’s listening to podcasts.
Chenell will only do deep dives on creators who’ve built an audience since 2018. That way she can cover techniques that still work today, making the content relatable.