I'm Toby, I was a writer for the Morning Brew and now lead content at Launch House. AMA 🔥

@pradeeb28 Tips on Content: Constraints are your friend: Whatever platform you are creating on, set a target cadence for your content. If you commit to sending 3 times a week, the anxiety around writing fades away because you know that the content has to get out. It’s counterintuitive, but constraints end up freeing you up to be more creative. Trust your gut: We all consume content and have a barometer for what we do and don’t like. When it comes time to create yourself, create something that you would want to consume. Not only will it lead to better content but you’ll enjoy the process and outcome more. Tips on growth: Throw events/meetups: It’s really hard to get people to care about your newsletter. A good way to get a core group of users is to begin hosting regular meetups and signing people up manually. Developing these relationships and gathering subs manually is super time intensive but will pay off in the long run. Morning Brew gathered subs manually by singing up students in businesses classes while at college. Since we’re past college, you have to gather the people yourself but the same concept applies. Launch on PH: We gained around 2,500 subs from launching here. But don’t just throw up a generic landing page. Put in the effort to make your landing page unique, create some killer slides, and hammer all your channels for distribution and you should do alright.

@sandra_idjoski If you don’t have the time to create a newsletter, don’t do it! Newsletters are a lot of work—both to write and to grow. I would recommend tackling the lower hanging fruit first like LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok. Whatever platform you are most comfortable on, double down on that first to build an initial audience. Down the line if you have more bandwidth and/or find an awesome writer, then you can go the newsletter route using the audience you already built as a jumping off point.

@tom_orbach I definitely agree that the first sentence is important. I like using the lede of my story in tandem with my headline. By extending a joke made in the headline, it makes people reread both the headline and the first sentence which helps grab their attention for the rest of the story. There’s also the rule of 3 in comedy. Your first joke will likely be decent. Your second edit will be better, but most stop there. The people who fight to find that third edit are the ones who produce the best writing.

@stas_voronov Steven King's "On Writing" and Anne LaMonte's "Bird by Bird" are my two favorite books on writing.

@tobydoyhowell Nice, thanks!

@alexanderisora @jackbutcher @JessTheVC @MacConwel @xtinacomputes @tobydoyhowell :)

@viky_koval the only way to write better is to write more! its a slow and painful process but read a lot of good writing, then try to emulate it yourself do this process over and over again till you suck a little less. I'm just trying to suck a little less every day

@ryangilbert On writing days, my mornings are spent working on the copy for any partnerships/cross promos we have coming up. Then around noon I start really digging through the news cycle and getting a sense for what we might cover for that day. Then near 1 pm I go off into a writing hole and start cranking. I have a writer on staff that helps me out with stories so the next 4 hours are spent writing and editing the newsletter. On good days, the newsletter will wrap up around 5:30-6pm. On non-writing days, I batch some time to produce social content then work on some higher level strategy stuff. Right now growth is a big priority so I’ve been running some experiments (currently have an ad for Homescreen on Product Hunt so if you see it, give it a click!) Non-writing days are a bit more chaotic because there are a million directions I can go in. Been working on setting goals for the day and going deep on 1-2 tasks.