How I Grew This Newsletter to 10K+ Subscribers

A Bonus Edition ICYMI

If you’re reading this, you’re one of the reasons I was able to grow this newsletter. My profound thanks! It still means the world to me when someone tells me they read this every Friday.

Since the newsletter hit a pretty major milestone recently 🎉 10,000 subscribers 🎉 I wanted to share exactly how we got here, what it took and some of the specific people who reached out to offer tips and support along the way.

Now, let’s dig in. I’ve broken this post down into:

• general newsletter tips

• specific growth hacks

• areas where I could improve

• a timeline of growth

NEWSLETTER CREATOR TIPS

• Just start. It took me almost a year to get into the groove and find my voice. And I didn’t have a real logo, turn on paid subscriptions or start accepting sponsors for almost two years. But when my full time job came to an end in January 2023 and I decided to take the newsletter more seriously, I already knew where I was going and what the audience wanted to see. It was much easier to pick up the pace than start from scratch.  

• Know your audience. Having a specific audience in mind is helpful for knowing what to include and what to ignore. I’m happy to have as many people as possible reading but ultimately I write for people in the early stages of their career (or who are new to social media and influencer marketing). They don’t have mentors or large teams supporting them.

  I want my newsletter to be a resource for these creators and social media managers. I want them to read it and feel confident walking into a meeting or negotiation session. I want them to feel like they have the tools they need to succeed.

  Because of this, I don’t worry about being judged by peers or other marketing executives. Getting crystal clear on your audience helps remove impostor syndrome if you’re worried about friends or colleagues judging the content you produce.

• Be ready before you need it. I rewrote my About section and Welcome email a few weeks before breaking news about Instagram’s new app which resulted in a big boost in subscribers. I truly think my updated description helped create more clarity for people checking out my newsletter for the first time. I told them exactly what they were going to get and that helped convince them to subscribe. I see this as similar to the professionalization most creators undergo in moving from nano influencer (this is just for fun!) to micro influencer (I need to update my bio and create a media kit!).

• Write as if you already have 10K subscribers. Create for the audience you want, not the audience you have. I had about 900 subscribers when I started writing as if I had 10K subscribers. I stuck to a weekly schedule; looked at other newsletters to see if there were improvements I could make (Café Anne, Big Technology, Morning Brew and Publish Press were all sources of inspiration for tone, formatting and promotional tactics); and I kept refining the content I was creating even though very few people were reading at the time. 

• Set goals for yourself
  Subscriber growth can be a goal but it shouldn’t be the only one. I’m constantly updating the goals I have for myself, whether it’s consistency, trying to keep my open rate at 50%, getting mentioned in blogs or by media outlets, launching paid subscriptions or attracting sponsors.

• You get out what you put into it. I’ve doubled the time I spend on my newsletter since January 2023 and increased subscribers by 165%. It’s not necessarily a longer read but I am putting more effort into identifying unique trends and case studies and adding more thoughtful insights. The more original content I produce, the better this newsletter performs.

NEWSLETTER GROWTH HACKS

• Pick a newsletter platform with a recommendation feature
  There are a lot of good email marketing platforms (Mailchimp, Klaviyo, Hubspot, etc.). What attracted me to Substack was the built-in recommendation feature which enables writers to promote and support one another.

  Now, other ESPs (email service providers) like ConvertKit and Beehiiv are offering similar recommendation engines to help creators leverage the community aspect of their platforms.

  And getting on other people’s recommendation lists helps a LOT. My newsletter is recommended by 38 other Substack newsletters and I’ve gotten 3,000 subscribers out of those recommendations. 

• Promote other newsletters and newsletter creators 
  Along with automatic recommendation features, make sure you’re collaborating with other writers and promoting each other’s work. Cross-platform promotion is hard — it’s like getting people on YouTube to follow you on Instagram and vice versa. They don’t want to leave their current platform and find you somewhere else. About 45% of my subscribers come through other Substack newsletters because people are already on the platform and receptive to the format.

• Get your newsletter in front of journalists, bloggers, and key tastemakers
  As I mentioned, getting included in a ‘best of’ round-up was a major goal for me this year. It helps provide social proof, reinforces credibility and increases visibility, all key building blocks of social influence. Being included in Buffer’s best marketing newsletters' list in March has driven 548 subscriptions for me so far and is a bragging point I’ve added to my bio.

• Consistency AND quality is key
  You’re asking for people’s time and attention on the reg, make it worth their while to click in. As Katelyn Bourgoin recently pointed out, inboxes are getting very crowded. Make sure you’re delivering outstanding value if you want to keeping earning an open from readers.  

AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT

• For most of the first year I never shared the newsletter beyond letting my friends, students and some clients know about it. I’m a perfectionist and in my mind it wasn’t ready for prime time. I regret not building in public and letting people judge for themselves whether they wanted to subscribe.

• I’ve had several Twitter threads and LinkedIn posts go viral and I don’t use the opportunity to push my newsletter. I am my own worst marketer.

• Alice Moon recommended giveaways a while ago as an incentive for subscribing. I did my first giveaway in June but didn’t promote it well enough. So, I would like to do more to see if it has any impact. 

• I tried one collab newsletter and when it didn’t perform, I didn’t try again. Now that the newsletter is more visible, I’d like to try some version of this again. 

THE PROCESS

Here’s how I write my newsletter:

On Monday, I start dumping links and rough ideas into a Google doc. (I start a fresh Google doc each year, so by the end of the year it’s got about 90 pages of notes if I ever need to go back.) I don’t plan much ahead of time, unless it’s an interview and then I try to plan those about two weeks ahead of time.

On Wednesday, I write a very rough draft and start to prioritize what I think is most important that week.

On Thursday evening, I try to have the newsletter almost entirely written and transfer the text from the Google doc to Substack and then to LinkedIn. Typically, if there is LinkedIn-specific news I’ll try to surface that in the version on that platform. But the Substack newsletter is the most complete version of this newsletter. If I run a giveaway or any other type of promotion, it’ll be in the Substack version.

On Friday morning, I get up around 6am and check Twitter; do a final scan of Tech Crunch, Social Media Today and Tubefilter; see what other people are writing (I’ll check complimentary but not competing newsletters by others such as Matt Navarra, Lindsey Gamble, Amanda Perelli and Kaya Yurieff); I’ll make any final edits, try to remember to do a final spellcheck and then publish around 7am 💌

NEWSLETTER GROWTH TIMELINE

December 5, 2020 

• Day One. One of my former students Fernanda Sarmento deserves a lot of the credit for pushing me to send out social updates

January 1, 2021 

• Starting the year with 137 subscribers 

• The newsletter is a bullet point list of headlines with very little commentary

  May 26, 2021 

• Link In Bio’s Rachel Karten recommends my newsletter to her audience and I go from 357 to 686 subscribers overnight

• I begin to pay more attention to who’s recommending me and set up my own recommendations

January 1, 2022 

• Starting the year with 1,070 subscribers

• I start promoting the newsletter each week on Twitter and Instagram

• I start doing mini interviews with other creators and marketers to include in my newsletter, creating unique content that also encourages sharing

• I begin doing podcast interviews with other creators to reach potential new subscribers 

April 8, 2022 

• I do a collab newsletter post with (now defunct) The Splice newsletter. It doesn’t lead to any noticeable growth

November 4, 2022 

• I introduce paid subscriptions but I don’t really promote it because I’m not sure of how I want to monetize yet

December 20, 2022

• I pay Sarah McLerren to have my first professional logo created

January 1, 2023 

• Starting the year with 4,045 subscribers

• My full time job comes to an end so I double the amount of time spent on the newsletter, going from about half a day of research and writing to at least a full day

January 27, 2023 

• I launch a version of my newsletter on LinkedIn, thanks to Alice Moon’s encouragement. LinkedIn alerts your audience when you launch the newsletter and when you publish each issue. It also appears in people’s feeds. I worried about audience cannibalization but it doesn’t seem to be a factor. Based on consistent open rates and anecdotal evidence, people who want to read the newsletter in their inbox don’t sign up on LinkedIn and vice versa 

March 1, 2023

• Buffer’s Tamilore Oladipo adds me to a list of top marketing newsletters. Getting named on a round-up of best newsletters was a goal I set for 2023 so I’m thrilled. I wish I could take credit for this but it’s actually by accident. Based on the referral traffic I can see, it becomes a steady source of subscribers 

March 24, 2023

• I get my first recurring corporate sponsorship with Dash Hudson 

April 26, 2023

• I get interviewed by NPR about my teaching job and they mention the newsletter. All sorts of people let me know they heard the podcast. I have smart readers and friends 

April 28, 2023 

• A creator friend shares details of an exclusive TikTok UGC program with me that I think everyone is going to want to read. I can’t sleep, I’m so psyched. Nobody pays attention

May 15, 2023 

• I speak to someone at Substack (the newsletter platform I use) who encourages me to rewrite my About section to be catchier and provide a better description of the value of paid subscriptions

May 19, 2023 

• Another creator friend shares an exclusive look at the new Instagram app. Based on what happened the last time I almost bury the news. At the last minute, I decide to make Instagram’s new app the subject line 

• Overnight I get 800 new subscribers

• The newsletter gets mentioned in more than 20 articles and I’m interviewed by Bloomberg and CBS News

May 31, 2023 

• Business Insider adds me to their list of Top Creator Economy Experts to know 

June, 2023 

• PR people with all the major platforms begin to reach out and give me a heads up on new features being released

June 2, 2023 

• Substack puts me on their homepage as a Featured Newsletter 

June 13, 2023

• I get a tip that YouTube will give smaller creators earlier access to YPP. It’s the first time I put out two newsletters in one week because I think it’s that much of a big deal for nano and micro influencers

June 24, 2023

• I attend VidCon and decide to capitalize on the access and interviews I get, so I share back to back updates (Day One and Day Two) since there was so much coming out of the event 

July 2023

• When I think about what’s next, it’s probably growing the Corporate Tier subscription and offering even more resources at that level. I’m taking a page from Rachel Karten and using a modified version of her email template that people can submit at work to expense their subscription.

And as always I want to continue creating something every week that convinces you to click in, read and feel like ICYMI is your secret weapon for success at work! Thanks again!