Your step-by-step guide to planning newsletters

Read time: ~3 min

Required tools: Notion, Google Sheet

Hey, welcome. 🍫

After a long time, I’m sending an email from Beehiiv.

Beehiiv was my foundation, and it motivated me to start a newsletter business. Thank you, Beehiiv.

Well, the only reason to shift to Beehiiv wasn’t monetisation but to give you a better experience. Substack wasn’t fulfilling my needs completely. So here we are.

Without wasting any more time, let’s dive into today’s edition.

Previously, I would find ideas before sitting down to write every edition, which took a lot of time. It wasn’t sustainable for me.

So, I changed my system. And now I’ve 3 months’ worth of newsletter ideas and a calendar ready.

Today, I’ll teach you the exact system you need to follow so you never waste time thinking about what to write next.

Shall we proceed?

I call it a 4-step process.

First, start by picking your pillars.

Yes, only 3, not more than 3. Your content should revolve around these 3 pillars.

Let me give you an example of Insideletter.

A. What’s the goal of Insideletter? To help you build a 1K/m newsletter business.

B. What do I want to talk about? These are my pillars, for me, I want to teach you

So I picked these 3 and plan my newsletters in this way.

It helps your readers know what to expect, and it also helps you stay focused.

Action step for you:

Write down 3-5 areas you want to cover in your newsletter, and then pick the 3 you want to focus on. Or maybe merge those 5 to make 3. But don’t go too broad.

Now, whenever you get/find an idea, you can check: does it fit into one of my themes? If yes, add it to the sheet.

If you don’t want to follow my past self, then you’ve to build an idea bank.

What do I mean by this? Go to Notion and create a new page and name it “ideas bank”

Now what you need to do is, you’ve to block 30 mins on your calendar daily.

In these 30 minutes, you can check sources like

You can check one or 2 daily. Don’t make yourself overwhelmed.

And find the ideas for your newsletter and jot them down. Now, at the end of the week, move the good ones to the Google sheet under their respective pillars.

Notion app can be accessed from a phone, so don’t keep your ideas in multiple places. If you’re not good with Notion, use any app which works on phone and laptop.

I’ve more than 140+ ideas right now, you can have 500+ if you make it a practice.

This is where you move from “random ideas” to the newsletter plan.

At the start of each week, block out one hour to:

Open your Ideas bank.

Let’s say you’ll write 12 editions every month, then pick 12 ideas that fit your themes.

Assign them to future editions.

Batching always reduces your involvement time.

Finally, you need a content calendar to tie everything together.

I don’t believe in complicated systems. As a newsletter coach, my goal is to make it so simple for you.

That’s why I’d always suggest tools like Google Sheets, Docs, and Notion. Which makes it easy, and you’ll just build your calendar in a sheet.

Here’s how I set mine up:

This way, you always have a bird’s-eye view of your publishing schedule.

Well, I always give 100% of what I know and have.

So here’s the content planner you need to use.

Enjoy!

Just replace my pillars with yours, and you’re ready to go.

Do you want to try an exercise I ask my coachees to do?

Set a timer for 5 minutes and list as many content ideas as you can.

Reply to me with the pillars you’ve chosen for your newsletter, and I’ll correct them if needed.

See you on Thursday.

Ta-da 👋🏻

Anirban ‘your newsletter coach’ Das.