Newsletter Category Creator

Positioning work for the newsletter project, working through the category creator framework to find the right niche, problems, outcomes, and one-liner.

Newsletter Positioning Checklist

1. An Information Advantage: You should have picked a topic and industry you have experience in and know well. (Again, you don’t have to be an “expert” by any means, but you should have some level of experience.)

   • I have expertise in data engineering and data modeling with business analytics. I have delivered specific results from Attribution to Retention.

2. Genuine Curiosity: You also should have picked a topic you are excited to keep learning about, and writing about, for a consistent period of time. (Again, doesn’t have to be forever, but also shouldn’t be “3 weeks.”)

   • Yes, I enjoy practicing my craft. See 06-reference/concepts/analytics-as-craft.

3. Your niche topic “niched-down-further” in one of the 9 ways: By experience level, revenue level, platform/tool, digital or analog location, gender/age/demographic, event/status/identity, career path/job title, problem, or desired outcome.

   • Talking to data leads delivering for executives grounded in deliverables.

4. A list of Problems you’re excited to solve, and Outcomes you’re excited to help these readers unlock: And my recommendation is to pick 1 Problem and 1 Outcome to really anchor your newsletter around. (This doesn’t mean you can’t write about the others. But it helps to “lead with 1.”)

   • Yes - see below

5. All put together in a “1-Liner” description: Topic + “niche-down-further” + 1 problem + 1 outcome. (Or, you can flip them: Topic + “niche-down-further” + 1 outcome + 1 problem.)

   • I write about how business event data modeling can uncover the causal model of a company and unlock growth opportunities, cementing the data team’s place as a profit center.
   • I help data teams deliver the executive “most valuable meeting” weekly through business event data modeling.

6. Tangible, not Intangible Language: Now, do a couple rewrites to make sure your 1-Liner is as Tangible as possible. Don’t forget to use one of the 20 “Tangible” ways I gave you.

   • Done

7. Objective, not Subjective Language: After that rewrite, stress-test it by making sure your promises are Objective (not Subjective and “open to interpretation”).

   • Done - could iterate on again

8. Name Your Newsletter: Now, give it a main title that is CLEAR… not “Clever.” And make it as Tangible as possible.

   • Execute with Analytics

Niche Drill-Down

• Analytics
  • Event Analytics
    • Event Analytics for Data Leads

10 Problems

1. Spaghetti code / tech debt
2. Buried in stakeholder requests / ticket mill
3. Balancing priorities
4. Unreliable data sources / data quality
5. Maintaining stakeholder trust in the data
6. Inadequate data infrastructure
7. Data governance / rogue data teams / silos
8. Building and retaining the data team
9. Data documentation / discovery / dissemination
10. Data downtime / broken pipelines

10 Desirable Outcomes

1. WBR support
2. Marketing Attribution
3. Bookings / Sales Quota
4. Retention Analysis
5. Frequent usage of dashboards / reports
6. Uncovering the causal model of their business
7. Metrics and definition alignment across functional teams
8. Reliable data pipelines that alert data quality issues before being caught by stakeholders
   • Bonus - this protects stakeholder trust
9. Forecasting / Budgets / Annual Planning
10. Operational Support and analysis
11. Mastery of Craft
12. Promotion / Prestige / Organizational Impact

These problems and outcomes directly connect to the open knowledge sharing philosophy — sharing recipes, not secrets.

Alternate Name Explorations

• Business model teardowns
• Specific analytics workloads (Attribution, SaaS Retention / Cohorts)
• Puzzles / Board Games
• Signal Craft — Data Foundations & Use Cases