Reconnect with Friends Through a Personal Newsletter
A few years ago, I was chatting with a friend who told me that he periodically emails his network of people to let them know when big milestones occur. As a type-A person who likes to systematize everything, my brain quickly evolved that casual idea into a quarterly newsletter that I send to friends and family.
To this day, this is one of my favorite ways to stay in touch with people. In addition to that, in general, it’s just good to stay in touch with people and this is an easy way that spans time zones and distance, people can read it on their own time, and it’s really efficient because you can contact a lot of people at once. (that said, it truly does allow for great one-on-one communication after the initial communication is sent that is more personalized. Have I convinced you yet?
I realize I made all of that sound very… strategic. But sometimes it takes a little bit of elbow grease to build and maintain meaningful connections. Interested in doing the same? Keep reading.
What do I mean by newsletter?
I say newsletter. Newsletter can be a production. You can use an email marketing tool to create a newsletter sign-up and can use a third-party tool to design a newsletter that pops every quarter. This is what bloggers and your favorite retailers do. I’ve done it before, too. But in this instance, I’m just talking about sending an email from your regular every-day email account. The maximum number of people you can send emails to on Google at a time is 2,000. If you’re sending this email to 2,000 people, you should probably go ahead and just get an email marketing tool.
Note: The reason that people use email marketing tools is to be able to track the number of opens and what links people are clicking on. The newsletter I’m suggesting is much more casual than that.
Why bother sending a newsletter?
This one’s easy. To stay in touch. Not sure why you should bother staying in touch with people? I’ve got a whole podcast episode (6 minutes, 35 seconds) about that for you. Here’s the fast summary:
The people in your life are important to you for a reason.
Getting older means fewer people know the real you.
Sometimes you will need someone to lean on.
Sometimes they will need someone to lean on.
Relationships make people happier.
If that wasn’t enough - as I mentioned before, it’s also a really easy way to contact a bunch of people at the same time from all over the world and allows people to read it on their own time. Not only that, but if you’re trying to find an update later, this is way more easily searchable than social media. Logistics of connecting can be hard, this is about as straight forward as it gets.
What are the steps to make it happen?
Gather your recipient list
Brainstorm what you want to write
Write the newsletter
Send the newsletter
Respond to the follow up messages
Super simple! Now, let’s give it a go!
Download Chrystina’s Free Newsletter Planner Worksheet
Submitting this form will sign you up for the Chrystina Noel mailing list. Emails are periodic and you can opt out at any time.
Gather your recipient list
You can really send your newsletter to whomever you want. I’d recommend separating out personal contacts and professional contacts. You can have two separate newsletters (I do - and some people are even on both of them). But in terms of personal life, for me at least I decided that everyone can kind of be mushed together.
Take out a sheet of paper (or download my free version) and start listing all of the different groups of people in your life. This might include: family, hometown friends, middle school friends, high school friends, college friends, work friends, church friends, sports friends, choir friends, book club friends, etc. Think of all the activities you do and how you spend your time and make sure to capture each one of those categories. Now write down each of your friends in those categories. Consider including those people on your list.
Take out your phone. Scroll through your calendar events, scroll through your text messages, scroll through your snapchat contacts - make sure all of those people are captured. Consider including those people on your list.
I’d suggest keeping it to people with whom you have relationships that you are trying to maintain, not build. Getting a newsletter like this could totally be overwhelming for someone you’re just getting to know. According to one study at Berkeley, it takes students 43 hours and adults 94 hours to turn acquaintances into casual friends. It takes students 47 hours to transition from casual friends to friends and adults need 164 hours. It takes students 119 hours to turn a friend into a best friend, and for adults it takes 219. So if you’re not at that casual friends mark, this newsletter might be too much.
I’d also recommend separating your personal and professional contacts. I actually have two separate newsletters for this reason. Sometimes in the personal one you’re going to want to talk about how your job is completely destroying your life right now, and it’s better if your co-workers read this. What do I use the professional one for? Mine only includes people at my current company and I like to talk about things that I had to learn the hard way, new company perks most people don’t know about, and sometimes random giveaways where I send people things in the mail.
And if there are people that you’re not ready to include, that’s okay to. It may mean that you need to limit which groups of friends to put on the list, but that’s okay. The other option is to not go quite as deep into your feelings in the newsletter and to keep it a little more general only getting deeper into feelings and experiences when responding to responses you’ve received.
Brainstorm what you want to write
The purpose of my newsletter is to inform people about what’s going on in my life and to open the door for them to respond back to me with what is going on in theirs. This doesn’t need to be the purpose of your newsletter. Your newsletter could be much more focused than that if you’d like. It could just focus on the best restaurants you’ve eaten at in the last three months. It could just focus on television or sports or trips you’ve taken. However, I’ve found that I have success in keeping a broad focus because there’s always a certain part of the newsletter that resonates with each person. (Seriously, one time someone just commented back to me that they also thought that odd numbers sound bigger than even numbers.)
I usually try to think about life in a series of pockets:
Travel: Have you gone anywhere fun? Are you going to go anywhere fun? Do you need any travel recommendations? Is there anything you’re specifically nervous or excited about?
Family: How’s the family doing? I’m always surprised how this consistently comes up in conversation with people, so I just go ahead and include it. Any exciting milestones or traditions coming up?
Future Life Stuff: This usually includes things about getting a new pet, moving, buying houses, getting cars, getting engaged, getting married or being so utterly confused about what you want to do with your life that you really have no idea where to start.
Career Stuff: How do you feel day-to-day at your job? What do you actually do at your job every day? (It’s wild how many people have no idea what anyone actually does.) Have you hit any milestones? Any surprises there? Anything you need suggestions about?
Hobbies & Projects: Are you working on anything cool? Do you want to be working on anything cool? Are you crowdfunding your most recent idea? Have you literally had not a free second to breathe so all of your hobbies are on the backburner?
Wellness: This might seem weird, but I always like to think about what I’m doing to take care of myself right now and include that as well. Have you found a new work out class? Is your new journaling hobby really helping you out? Did you recently start going to church again? Are you just so grateful to have 5 free minutes in the bathroom to scroll Instagram?
Content: What are you watching right now? What are you reading? What are you listening to? I always think it’s fun to see who’s taking in the same content as you - and then you know who to text when the plots start to get wild!
Day-to-Day: This might sound mundane, but I always like to try to give people a picture into what the day-to-day looks like because this is what they would see if we saw each other more often. Are you in back-to-back meetings all day? Are you spending all day talking to toddlers and would do anything for some adult conversation? Have you been so busy you haven’t seen your partner in a week? Have you gotten a new puppy so your whole day is about keeping him off the furniture? It’s probably the most relatable part of the newsletter.
I don’t include all of these in every newsletter, but I try to run through them in my head to see if there’s anything specific I want to include. Also, if there’s anything else BIG going on in the world, feel free to touch on that if the mood strikes you. During the beginning of the pandemic my newsletters always started a section with how I was handling COVID-19 at that time.
Also, remember that the purpose of this newsletter is to tell your story. This isn’t a time to share the latest gossip or to share anyone else’s story or health issues or current life situations. Stick to your own story and you’ll be sure that all of the information you’re sharing is ready to be shared with the world.
Jot down some notes on which things you’d like to hit on during your newsletter.
Download Chrystina’s Free Newsletter Planner Worksheet
Submitting this form will sign you up for the Chrystina Noel mailing list. Emails are periodic and you can opt out at any time.
Write the newsletter
Now sit down to write. It’s actually not that daunting because you know all the answers already.
Take a casual tone
I suggest writing your newsletter in the tone in which you would normally have a conversation so that people feel as if they’re getting an update from someone with whom they are sipping coffee (or chai). Mine always have a lot of punctuation, italicized words, and exclamation points. It’s not as obnoxious as it sounds, I promise.
Not sure you can write how you talk? Feel free to open up Google Docs and use its Voice Typing tool. You can find this option in the Tools menu. You can actually just talk and it will do the writing for you. Don’t forget to say things like “period” and “question mark” to end a sentence though.
Choose the format that works best for you
I usually just write a bunch of paragraphs putting a header at the beginning of each one so people know what they are going to be reading about, but you can do anything that works for you. You could just make a bullet pointed list of items you want to let people know. You could go by month and just give a summary of what happened each month. You could select the top 5 photos from your phone in the last 3 months and tell a story about each one of them. Whatever works best for you.
Sometimes I also use highlights and formatting in the email to direct people’s eyes to the important parts in case they’re reading it quickly. This also helps if you have a long newsletter to allow people to focus on the parts that are of most interest to them. You can even consider putting a tldr at the top or bottom.
Make sure there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end
At the beginning, I usually include an introduction of some sort - hello, how are you, how’s the world treating you, man what a wild time we’re living in, where the heck has the year gone, etc. In the middle I include the content I want to share with others. Then I usually end it with a call to people to ask them how they are doing or reminding them that I’d love to schedule a phone call or in person coffee hang out if they reply with dates.
The “first time” disclaimer
If it’s the first newsletter you’re sending, you can say right at the beginning that some girl on the internet gave you this idea and you wanted to give it a try as your opener. Maybe even include why you wanted to give it a try - you missed them, you feel like you’ve lost touch, you stink at responding to text messages, etc.
Also, if it’s your first newsletter, you may want to bring people up to speed on what they may have missed in the last few years. Did you move? Did you get a new job? Did your life completely change in someway? Let them know right up front as part of your reintroduction. As ever-evolving humans, it’s totally okay to not be the same person you once were when you knew them.
Send the newsletter
You’ve done it! You wrote the whole thing! Now get ready to send it.
Write the subject
I always try to make it something short. Previous titles have included: The Best Season Is Here, Back to the Real World, Happy 2021!, Exciting News!, and Wtf is 2020. I also always write in parentheses at the end of the subject (love, Chrystina) so that people know it’s my newsletter hitting their inbox.
Add everyone to the BCC line
My guess is that all of the people you’re sending to don’t know each other. I recommend putting them on the BCC line so that no one can reply-all and you’re not giving out email addresses of people you know to others without permission.
Click send
Honestly, sometimes this is the hardest part. It’s always been worth it to me though!
Respond to the follow up messages
This is the fun part! They’ve read what you wrote! They liked it! They replied! Now you can keep the conversation going. You can even get more personal in the responses.
Even if you don’t get a lot of responses, my guess is people are still reading the newsletter. Why do I think this? Because of the amount of people I talk to at a later time who tell me that they really like the newsletter and they’re sorry they never reply.
FAQ
How often should you send the newsletter?
I decided on quarterly. It works nicely. It’s not too often, it gives people a few weeks to respond, and there’s usually something that occurs in a three-month time block on which you can report. Feel free to do monthly, bi-monthly, semi-annually, or annually.
What if people don’t want to receive it?
In my first newsletter I put a comment that said if anyone wanted to be removed from the list, to let me know. No one responded. Another way to do it would be to send a first email asking people if they wanted to opt-in to this new idea you had.
How vulnerable should I get?
I fully believe in complete transparency and being vulnerable with other people. That’s the stuff that meaningful relationships are based on. HOWEVER, I don’t recommend writing about anything that you haven’t fully processed yet that you might not want others opinions on. This is a blogging 101 lesson it felt worth sharing. So if you’re trying to make a big decision about whether to adopt a child or go through another round of IVF, if you are thinking about leaving your job to take a few months off, or if you are in the middle of an argument with your partner - maybe don’t comment on any of those things until they have a resolution.
How is this different than the family holiday card I receive in the mail each year?
In some ways it’s not, I actually really love getting those holiday cards. There are two things that I think make this different - this communication is more consistent than just at the holidays. I’d recommend sending at least four newsletters per year to keep that communication going. More consistent communication also allows you to focus more on the day-to-day rather than just the BIG items that define your year. Also, the intention of this communication is to be more real than the perfectly-posed holiday card you receive. This newsletter is not only a time to let somebody in on the good things that have happened, but also the bad and the ugly.
Isn’t this kind of selfish, a whole newsletter just focused on me?
People are curious about what is going on in other people’s lives. That’s why social media has done so well. I believe what people don’t love about social media are the rose-colored glasses lens, how you can’t easily find what you’re looking for, and the ads. This is a more simple and direct version of the kind of communication people are looking for. Don’t believe me? You can read this New York Times article about the power of texting your friends (or really just staying in more consistent communication) and why it means more than you think.
You can also keep it short. And to try to talk equal parts about things that are going well and things that are maybe not going so well. In general, I’ve found that vulnerability begets vulnerability, which helps relationships deepen.
Also, if people truly aren’t into it, they don’t have to read it and/or they can opt out of receiving your newsletter.
What if writing isn’t my favorite form of communication?
Eh, if that’s the case, this way of staying in touch might not particularly be for you. Maybe try phone calls, hosting parties, sending photos or care packages, or making some art to share with the world.
