THE 20
SOMETHING
NEWSLETTER

overview

Life in your twenties can sometimes feel like tiptoeing carefully around a dark room, to avoid stubbing your toe on a forgotten fork. This is the first line of The 20 Something Newsletter's About page, and it captures the promise I wanted the publication to make: if you are figuring adulthood out in the dark, this newsletter will be a flashlight.

What began in 2022 as a space for me to write honestly about being a young adult has grown into a 15,000+ subscriber publication, with readers across 140 countries. But what I'm most proud of is that I've built something people actively choose to read, share, and engage with. Something brands want to connect with.

This is the work that has taught me the most about writing, audience psychology and content distribution.

01 — the bet

For years, I made other people's content travel. Eventually, I felt an itch. I wanted to understand what would happen if I ran the entire machine myself. The 20 Something Newsletter became an experiment for some questions I knew I couldn't answer from inside a tech content team:

• What makes a person click on an opinion piece?
• What makes an idea more attractive than another?
• Can an audience built around good writing become commercially valuable?

The answer, I would come to learn, begins with editorial instinct.

02 — knowing what people want to read

Half the job of writing a newsletter is knowing which idea deserves to become a newsletter in the first place. Over time, I've learned that my audience — which consists mainly of people in their twenties — responds particularly strongly to questions around identity, relationships, curiosity and the strange experience of becoming an adult.

Three pieces illustrate the range:

• Be the Leading Lady of Your Life — 2,166 likes · 391 restacks
• Should You Sleep With Your Friends? — 1,282 likes · 237 restacks
• Curiosity Is a Form of Love — 918 likes · 237 restacks

Each piece takes something the audience already thinks about and gives them a sharper, more interesting way to look at it. This has become an important part of my editorial instinct: finding the right question underneath the topic, then writing a piece that answers it.

03 — making an idea travel

Writing something good isn't enough if nobody sees it. I built the newsletter as a small media ecosystem, using different platforms to reach my audience.

• Substack is where the deepest relationship lives: the long-form essays and notes.
• On Instagram and TikTok I turn the newsletter into visual excerpts, introducing the publication to a wider audience.
• LinkedIn is for career and work-related pieces, since they resonate most among people who use the platform.

Instead of copy-pasting the same content everywhere, I understand what role each platform plays in getting an idea to the right person.

One Substack Note is a strong example of this: 25,290 likes · 177 replies · 3,005 restacks.

The idea I shared travelled far beyond my existing audience, appearing in thousands of other feeds and creating new paths for people to discover the publication. I've learned to think about distribution as part of the creative process itself. The question isn't just "Is this a good idea to share?" but also "how far can this idea travel?"

04 — building an audience people care about

Growth tells me that people are discovering the newsletter. Engagement tells me whether they care. When a reader replies to tell me a piece changed how they thought about something, or restacks an essay because they want their own audience to see it, it shows me that audience building goes beyond "growing followers." You have to repeatedly give people a reason to care.

05 — turning attention into commercial value

Once there was an audience, I wanted to see whether it could create value beyond vanity metrics. Today, the newsletter has attracted partnerships with brands and organisations including Zikoko, Inclusively Remote and Lagos Model United Nations, with sponsored editions reaching thousands of readers while maintaining the publication's editorial voice.

• A Guide to Job Hunting in Your Twenties — Inclusively Remote · 5,860 recipients · 39% opened
• You Need Identity Capital — Lagos Model United Nations · 6,700 recipients · 41% opened
• Serendipity Farming — Zikoko · 10,753 recipients · 41.39% opened

results

what I've learned

Building The 20 Something Newsletter has taught me to think about content as a complete system. I have learned to find the tension, to figure out what the audience is thinking about and turn it into an idea. I have also practised distribution and audience listening, and in all this, I am glad I have been able to build something people can trust.

The newsletter has ultimately become my own laboratory for understanding why people pay attention to things — and what makes them care enough to come back. And this is knowledge I now bring to every brand, campaign and content problem I work on.