Every Saturday, the best of STH is delivered directly to our subscriber’s inboxes. This weekly newsletter is something I do personally every week even when traveling (this week’s newsletter is being done from the beach as an example.) The goal of the newsletter that we started a few years ago was to update our readers with some highlights for the week. Especially during the holidays when folks are on vacation, not everyone has time to read STH every day. The newsletter is a way to quickly stay updated with what is happening.
What is in the STH Newsletter and how are features chosen?
You can check out a recent edition here for a flavor. The STH Newsletter has settled on a format that has three basic sections:
- Recap of the week
- Top five stories of the week
- A preview of the STH content plan for the next week
Each week I reflect upon what we covered that I felt had the biggest industry impact or the key theme(s) of coverage for STH that week.
Then there are the top five stories over the past seven days in the STH Newsletter. Over time, this section turned into my top 5 picks from the week. Usually, I try to highlight reviews and then also a few pieces of other content that I personally liked best.
We constantly have companies trying to advertise to the thousands of readers signed up for our newsletter, but I want this to be something that is just based on the STH team’s input from week to week.
Finally, I like to add a little preview of what is coming on STH the following week. Sometimes we cannot hint at embargoed news. Usually, at the end of the newsletter, I try to add a few hints about big industry events and upcoming content on STH.
The end goal is to provide a perspective for STH readers on topics that if they are away on vacation or for some other reason, they can quickly get caught up.
Subscribe to the STH Newsletter
Subscribing to the newsletter is easy. Here is the form.
We are not selling your e-mail addresses and MailChimp is managing everything at this point so you can subscribe and unsubscribe from the list as you want. MailChimp has a great system for managing it. The goal of our newsletter is to be an easy tool for our readers can use rather than being a burden.
Final Words
I hope this is a useful way to keep current on STH even if you do not have time to drop by every day.
We are not promoting the newsletter via overlays and pop-ups. Those are very effective, but they have a negative impact on the reader experience. I do not like them, so as long as I have a say, we are not going to have newsletter signup overlays. I run STH as something I would want to visit daily even if I did not work on it. Likewise, the STH Weekly Newsletter is designed to be something I would want to receive. It is a simple formula that all too often is disregarded in the tech website space.
