Thinking About a Newsletter
A few days ago, I decided to play around with Ghost’s (the platform this blog is built on) newsletter platform. For the most part, it’s pretty simple. For anyone who’s a member of this site (of which I have none, more on that in a sec), I can literally take any post I write on here and send it as a newsletter. I think the only difference is I would want to dress things up just a little to make it more aesthetically pleasing, at least I think I would. Maybe minimal is better. But, if I wanted, I could make my weekly links have graphical previews and whatnot.
Truth be told, I already write a post every week that could be a weekly newsletter, and that’s my Thursday posts. It’s a recap of my week and a synopsis of what’s on my mind in the moment I’m writing it. The only caveat is the Apple Music embeds I post at the end don’t translate in the email version, which I’m guessing is due to a compatibility issue of some sort.
That last bit had me thinking if I were to do an email newsletter, do I split off those weekly songs into a separate post, maybe with some album reviews or something? That would be cool, but would I actually keep up with it? The list of unlisted albums written down in my notebook would point to “no”. Some things I just need to admit I’m bad at. But, making more work for myself isn’t really the answer to any of my issues, so no point in changing things up in the name of sending out a weekly email.
I also think about what if my newsletters just get lost in the flood of other emails people get. Not everyone is like me and has a special email alias for newsletters that I can use to filter them into a nice little folder, away from my inbox. Seriously, if your email client gives you this ability, look into using it, not only for newsletters, but for bills, web accounts, or whatever.
I think part of my aim is this thought of “good mail,” which I’ve written about in the past on here. I think it would be nice if our email inboxes and physical mailboxes had more mail we did want over the stuff that we never want, like bills and advertisements. If you’re like me, you dread opening up your mail, except when you’re expecting something nice. Would my Thursday posts be something someone would want in their email? Is it an option I should provide just because? We’ll see. I’d be curious to hear some feedback. Feel free to email me or hit me up on Mastodon.
