gm! 🎄
Everyone is taking a vacation! And we’re contemplating if a beach is a good idea.
Are you heading somewhere too? You should — but only after you check out our weekly round-up of happenings in the creator economy.
In today’s Going Solo
- How Gunnar S. Holm grew his newsletter
- Young users consume news on TikTok (??)
- What you didn’t know about YouTube
How Gunnar Got 11K Followers for His Newsletter: In Conversation
Gunnar S. Holm is a Twitter creator and runs a newsletter called The NAN - Newsletter About Newsletters.
His newsletter growth strategy is perhaps one of the most intriguing ones we’ve come across! He grew from 0 to 11K+ followers in six months through Reddit. Yup, Reddit and a few paid ads! 🤩
Wondering how? Well, here’s a glimpse of our conversation with Gunnar. 👇🏻
Thousand Faces Club: Is The NAN your first newsletter, or do you have experience launching and scaling newsletters?
Gunnar: No, The NAN is just a fun thing I do to help other newsletter creators learn from each other. I grew my local newsletter from 0 to 10K using Reddit and paid ads.
Thousand Faces Club: How did you get your first 1,000 subscribers?
Gunnar: By posting valuable content on Reddit with a subscription link. Every week, I’d post about cool events happening in my city — and every week a lot of Redditors would see that post and subscribe. It doesn’t have to go viral. A post with 10 likes can generate 100s of subscribers.
Thousand Faces Club: What does your content strategy involve?
Gunnar: Pretty straightforward as the newsletter theme is very simple! I check social media for what’s happening the coming weekend and then curate a list of the 5 coolest things and share it with the readers.
Thousand Faces Club: You have a pretty interesting content distribution format! You've been using Reddit to gain new users. Most creators don't tap into Reddit for distribution — is there a reason you picked Reddit?
Gunnar: Yes. Spend some time on Reddit and you will quickly learn what goes viral in specific subReddits. When I was practicing copywriting, my posts would routinely go "micro-viral" with hundreds of likes. If you know what to say and how to say it, you will be awarded traction and users will see your post. You can even gain 10s of subscribers on a post with 0 likes(!).
Thousand Faces Club: Are you planning to monetize your newsletter?
Gunnar: Yes, it currently has an ARR of $6,000.
Thousand Faces Club: Three newsletters every creator should read?
Gunnar: Psychology of Marketing by Abhishek Shah, A Media Operator by Jacob Donnelly, and JK Molina offers great content.
Thousand Faces Club: Any advice for beginner newsletter creators?
Gunnar: Don't spend too much time figuring out what your newsletter should be about. Let the market decide. Create a newsletter, test the response on Reddit. If you dont get subscribers, rinse and repeat until you start getting traction.
Thousand Faces Club: What does 2023 look like?
Gunnar: Scaling one of my own newsletters to 150K+.
Check out The NAN here. 👇🏻
GenZ Consumes News on TikTok…Whaaaat!
There are over a million users on TikTok! 🤯
Sure it doesn’t come as a surprise, but what comes as a surprise is that publishers are now learning to create and distribute content on TikTok. This is mainly because most youngsters prefer bite-sized content — but that’s not it; with content creators and some journalists reporting on TikTok, users are building a para-social relationship with creators. Which is why they use the app so avidly.
“Around half (49%) of top news publishers are now regularly publishing content on TikTok. A large proportion of these have joined TikTok in the last year,” a Reuters research says.
Top news publishers on TikTok include NBC, Vice, Yahoo News, The Sun, BBC, The Economist, Brut (obviously), Daily Mail, ABC News, and many more. Across the world, various subscription-based media and traditional media have joined TikTok, especially in 2022.
With publishers and journalists directly reporting on TikTok, misinformation surely comes down too. According to Reuters, Fact-checking and verification has also become a key part of the Washington Post’s strategy as the platform has matured.
What do you think about this? Are you a publisher or creator who’s willing to be on TikTok?
What You Didn’t Know About YouTube
This isn’t a here’s what you should learn video — instead, it’s a video where Arun Maini takes us through interesting tidbits about YouTube, including its humble beginnings. 📹
🔥 What Else Is Brewing?
- Creative Juice is offering two new funding options for its creators. Grab all the deets here.
- Pinterest shares its 2023 predictions that you can check out here.
- Is Instagram pushing your content to non-followers or are you shadow-banned? This new update tells you all.
- Did you know you could get newsletter subscribers through The Sample? Yup, this platform accepts newsletter submissions and forwards them to readers similar to your target audience. Of course, they do paid ads too! Check out The Sample here.
