How to Use LinkedIn Newsletters: A Guide for Businesses

Want to know how top marketers are getting hundreds of thousands of newsletter subscribers on LinkedIn? Wondering why LinkedIn newsletters are outperforming traditional email marketing right now? 

Learn the exact strategies successful creators use to grow massive LinkedIn newsletters, including how to optimize for subscribers, create engaging content, and turn your newsletter into a lead generation machine.

The Value of LinkedIn Newsletters for Marketing

The opportunity for marketers publishing newsletters on LinkedIn is significant, with over a billion members on the platform but only about 100,000 active newsletters currently publishing. This relatively low competition, combined with LinkedIn's powerful built-in distribution system, creates an exceptional opportunity for marketers to reach their target audience.

First, you start with your existing connections and followers as potential subscribers, eliminating the need to build a subscriber base from zero. Over 500,000 members are already actively subscribing to newsletters on the platform, indicating a warm audience ready to engage with newsletter content.

Second, LinkedIn wants newsletters to succeed because they encourage users to return to the platform regularly.

Finally, the platform's domain authority adds credibility to your content, and LinkedIn actively supports newsletter success because it drives platform engagement. 

A key distinction between regular LinkedIn posts and newsletters lies in their content capacity. While standard posts are limited to 3,000 characters, newsletters can accommodate over 100,000 characters, allowing for comprehensive, detailed content. This substantial character limit enables you to create in-depth articles, include multiple sections, and thoroughly explore topics that matter to your audience.

LinkedIn Newsletter Case Study Success Stories

The effectiveness of LinkedIn newsletters is demonstrated through several success stories. Andy Crestodina, who maintains a traditional email newsletter with 16,000 subscribers, has grown his LinkedIn newsletter to over 250,000 subscribers in just a few years. He reports that it has become his primary source of leads and has significantly enhanced his personal brand.

Joe Cole, a technical industry professional, has built a newsletter with 17,000 subscribers in a highly specialized niche. He combines his YouTube content with detailed industry updates and event promotions, publishing comprehensive newsletters that can take up to 10 minutes to read. After 89 editions, his newsletter has become a crucial part of his business success.

In contrast, Kate Sotsenko takes a different approach with her Good Busy newsletter, which has attracted 18,000 subscribers in just 20 editions. She keeps her content brief, with most editions taking only 1-3 minutes to read, focusing on corporate productivity tips and using the newsletter to drive traffic to her email list and business offerings.

Social Media Examiner provides another interesting case study with their newsletter The Marketer's Brief. Despite being listed as a daily publication, we publish twice weekly, demonstrating the platform's flexibility with frequency settings. With 18,400 subscribers out of their 126,352 followers (representing more than 10% conversion), we've achieved significant success in just 19 editions. Our approach involves republishing full blog articles directly in the newsletter format, proving the effectiveness of repurposing existing content.

#1: Built-In Distribution: How LinkedIn Automatically Promotes Your LinkedIn Newsletter

LinkedIn newsletters represent a hybrid between traditional email newsletters and blog posts. Unlike standalone articles on LinkedIn, newsletters come with powerful distribution advantages.

When you publish a newsletter, your content is distributed through three primary channels:

1. Each edition of your newsletter is sent directly to your subscribers' email inboxes. Readers can create filters to organize LinkedIn newsletters in their inbox, though they cannot opt out of email delivery – a feature that ensures your content reaches your audience's primary inbox.
2. A post for your newsletter automatically publishesIn the LinkedIn newsfeed
3. Each subscriber gets a platform notification when a new edition is published

This triple-distribution approach ensures maximum visibility for your content. 

The newsletter format also enhances engagement by positioning comments alongside the content on desktop, making conversations more visible and accessible to readers.

Comments are aggregated from both the feed and article views, creating a unified discussion that builds community around your content. This engagement helps extend the reach of your newsletter beyond your immediate subscriber base.

#2: How to Set Up Your LinkedIn Newsletter

The process of creating a LinkedIn newsletter begins with writing an article.

1. Click “Write an article” on LinkedIn
2. Look for the “Manage” dropdown menu
3. Select “Create newsletter” from the options

The platform offers several useful features for newsletter management. You can:

• Create reusable templates for consistent formatting
• Schedule publications up to 90 days in advance
• Manage drafts and organize content
• Copy and paste existing blog content (though longer posts may need to be copied in chunks)

Newsletters from Profiles vs. Company Pages: Publishing Strategy and Frequency

You can publish newsletters from either a personal profile or a company page. The choice depends largely on your team structure and content strategy. 

Company pages work well for frequent publishing with multiple team members, while personal profiles may be better suited for individual thought leadership.

LinkedIn offers specific frequency options for newsletter publishing: daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Fox recommends different approaches depending on whether you're publishing from a personal profile or company page.

For personal profiles, Fox suggests maintaining a weekly to monthly publishing schedule. This moderate frequency helps maintain quality while avoiding overwhelming your audience. She cautions that publishing too frequently on a personal profile might send the wrong message, suggesting you have unlimited time rather than focusing on your core business.

Company pages, however, can sustain more frequent publishing, especially with a team supporting content creation. Some successful company newsletters publish daily content without diminishing engagement, as subscribers expect and welcome regular updates from business entities.

Pro Tip: You can adjust your publishing frequency without notifying subscribers. This flexibility allows you to test different schedules or adapt to changing content needs without creating confusion among your audience.

#3: How to Grow Your LinkedIn Newsletter Audience

LinkedIn provides several built-in mechanisms for growing your subscriber base. 

When you launch a newsletter, LinkedIn automatically notifies your existing connections and followers. While you can't control the text of this initial announcement, you can maximize impact by publishing your first article simultaneously with the launch.

Additionally, every new follower you gain receives an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter.

These strategies will help expand the reach of your LinkedIn newsletter:

1. Feature your newsletter prominently in your LinkedIn profile's featured section, which provides a direct subscribe button
2. Promote your newsletter through other platforms, such as Instagram, using LinkedIn's subscriber pop-up link
3. Include your newsletter link in your email signature
4. Leverage your existing email list to drive subscribers to your LinkedIn newsletter

#4: Content Strategy and Best Practices

When creating newsletter content, consider these tips:

External Links: Limit the number of external links to two or three per newsletter to avoid overwhelming readers. Focus on your primary conversion goal, whether that's event registration, calendar bookings, or product sales. Fox suggests making auxiliary links in your signature less prominent than your main call-to-action.

Technical Content: For technical content, you can embed videos from platforms like YouTube and include key takeaways or summaries below the video. This hybrid approach works particularly well for those who already create video content and want to repurpose it for their LinkedIn audience.

Promotional Content: Make promotional content visual rather than relying solely on text links. Create eye-catching images, potentially including arrows or animated GIFs to draw attention to calls-to-action. For existing blog content, you can simply copy and paste into the LinkedIn article editor, though Fox advises breaking longer content into chunks if you encounter any issues with the paste function.

Engagement: Use the first comment on your newsletter to actively engage your readers. If your newsletter features content from a video, prompt your readers to let you know if they want a replay of the broadcast. If you feature content from a podcast episode, add the links to the first comment. Alternatively, offer a one-sheet instructional download of the newsletter article here.

Signature Closing: Consider including a consistent signature closing with key information about you and your business. This can include your name in a distinctive style, a brief bio, or a curated list of important links. For authors, Fox notes that some successfully include their standard book bio in italics at the bottom of each newsletter.

#5: Understand LinkedIn Newsletter Limitations

While LinkedIn newsletters offer significant advantages, they do have some limitations. The email versions may truncate longer content, though this can work to your advantage by encouraging readers to visit LinkedIn to read the full article and engage with comments.

Analytics are also somewhat limited compared to traditional email marketing platforms. While you can see impressions and engagement metrics for content in the feed, you won't have access to detailed email statistics like open rates or click-through rates.

However, these limitations are offset by the platform's advantages, including guaranteed delivery to legitimate business email addresses and the ability to reach a professional audience at scale without additional cost.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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