How I got 5,000 LinkedIn Newsletter subscribers in 6 weeks

Building an email database has been a marketing staple for not-for-profits for years. But many of you are yet to explore the new kid-on-the-block – the LinkedIn newsletter.

When I launched my own LinkedIn newsletter at the end of last year, I was honestly shocked by exactly how quickly it gained traction. With very little effort, I built an audience of more than 5,000 people – which certainly exceeded my expectations. 

So what is a LinkedIn newsletter? It’s a new pilot feature on LinkedIn that allows you to publish articles, but connects them together under one banner that people can subscribe to. Before the newsletter you could publish an article, but it was just posted to your timeline. 

When you make it a newsletter, your subscribers get sent push notifications each time you publish new content which increases the chance of people seeing the content and getting you new subscribers every time you share. 

You can create a newsletter with your individual profile account (great if you’re the CEO or ambassador for a brand) or as a business Page. 

There are pros and cons of both options. Doing it as a Page means the newsletter will always stay with the organisation, even if that key person moves on. But generally you have bigger networks on your individual profiles than you do on your Page. 

Ready to jump into the water of LinkedIn newsletters and build brand awareness, followers and get new opportunities for your cause? Here is what you need to do.

1. Not all accounts have the Newsletter feature enabled yet, it is still part of a pilot program. To see if you have access, go to your home page and click on write an article. Then select write a newsletter in your publishing tool. If the feature does not appear, you may want to try changing your personal profile into a creator account. When I did this on my profile, it unlocked this feature for me.
2. Give your newsletter a name and write a description explaining what it’s going to be about. Make sure you think about adding value to your community and subscribers rather than what you want to achieve.
3. Now whenever you click ‘write article’ you will automatically be creating a newsletter edition. The push notifications and other elements will happen automatically.

A couple of insider tips:

• You can only currently create one newsletter – so make sure it’s a good one. 
• You can only send out one newsletter in each 24 hour window, although I recommend you do less than that. I have experimented with one a week and twice a week and both seem to do pretty well for me. Even just once a month will help you get things started.
• Currently you can’t invite people to follow your newsletter, but you can share it to your feed regularly and remind people that they can subscribe to get your updates each week.