When we think about business connections and professional communication, usually, LinkedIn comes to mind first. It’s the most popular B2B networking tool that connects peers, colleagues, and leaders all around the world.
We know that it works: You can center your social media efforts around it, create posts, or reach out to potential customers. But lately, there’s been another function to explore—LinkedIn newsletters.
A mix of blogging and social media perks that can engage an audience for the benefit of your business does sound intriguing, doesn’t it?
Let’s look at newsletters on LinkedIn, how to use them, and why they can be a refreshing new way to reach your target audience and fulfill your marketing needs.
A LinkedIn newsletter works as any other email newsletter: You publish content dedicated to a certain topic, and it goes out to your audience with a notification.
One significant difference is that all of this happens on the LinkedIn platform.
A LinkedIn newsletter allows you to build and grow an actively engaged audience, raise your brand awareness, and manifest the value of your knowledge to potential customers.
When you invite all of your connections to subscribe to your LinkedIn newsletter, they will get in-app, email and web push notifications, and email notifications about all of your new content.
As a marketer, you should never let an opportunity go by to grow your audience, and that’s already reason enough to consider creating a newsletter on LinkedIn. However, there’s more:
Due to the social media algorithm, the more people engage with your content, the more often your content will be seen. Do you notice that sometimes you can see one LinkedIn post featured through many of your other connections? That’s because as soon as one person reacts to a post, it gets a whole new audience, and the reach of your content grows.
Despite having a wider reach and the possibility to become viral, newsletters can also get you a more invested audience. While a regular post can be ignored and forgotten, people who subscribe to your newsletter care about your content. If they care enough to receive notifications, they will take the time to read, engage, and share your content.
Among the key factors in the buying decisions are trust, credibility, and authority of the company. One of the ways to achieve that is through thought leadership. Creating valuable content that constantly gets shared (first point) among your niche (second point), is precisely what you need to establish yourself as a knowledgeable service provider.
If any of the benefits highlighted are among your marketing priorities, then you’ve got to start planning. Before actually creating a newsletter, ask yourself the following questions:
To arrange any marketing activity and then measure its effectiveness, think about what you want to achieve with it. Do you want to generate leads? Raise brand awareness? Or spread the word about your new product? Think of it, define your main goal, and establish the KPIs you’ll need to track.
Besides your plans for the newsletter, the content will involve your audience, colleagues, and potential customers. So think of the most considerable value that you can bring to the table. What will make you stand out and your followers stop to read it?
Once you’ve defined your goals and audience needs, you can then create a content plan. One of the benefits of newsletters is that you can use them to promote the content you’ve already created. This is also where you should do deep market research to see what is buzzing and trending nowadays.
First, you’ll need to check to see if you have the newsletter access with a creative mode based on the following criteria:
Note: Since the LinkedIn newsletter product is just rolling out, not everyone may have the access to it now. In this case, just circle back a few weeks later to see if it is available to you.
To find out if you have access:
1. Go to the Creator hub to turn on creator mode:
2. Click View page. If you have creator tool access, you will see the Creator tools section in the Creator hub:
If you see the Creator tools section and you meet the newsletter access criteria, it will say Available next to Newsletters. If you do match the parameters, you must go back to fulfill the necessary requirements.
Once creator gates are open, it only takes a few steps to construct a newsletter:
You can publish a maximum of one article daily and maintain only one LinkedIn newsletter at a time; you can also tag people or add hashtags. By default, your followers and connections will get an invitation to subscribe:
Note: You can create a newsletter on LinkedIn as yourself or as a separate page. If you want to do it as a page, you must be a super or a content admin.
Although the bigger part of your newsletter’s success depends on the quality of the content you post, there are some technical things you can do to maximize your efforts:
If you feel like you need some extra inspiration to start your LinkedIn newsletter, we’ve chosen three existing ones that have proven to be very successful:
CIENCE's thought leadership penetrates every aspect of our marketing strategies, so no wonder that we’ve hopped on this LinkedIn opportunity as well. Our newsletter focuses on data solutions, lead generation, current marketing trends, and our unique expert perspective on all of it.
This LinkedIn newsletter with over 300K followers focuses on “leadership, building capacity, and reaching potential.” Every week, Bob shares his insights on business, psychology, brain capabilities, and how the way we think is connected to our success. Besides that, he covers topics that are the talk of the hour (like the analysis of the marketing ROI collapse that happened last year).
Gary Vaynerchuk is an entrepreneur at heart, a public speaker, and a writer. He is so widely known for his drive and ambition that it’s enough to name the newsletter after him. Over 50K followers know that they will get to learn about new trends in the business world and Gary’s take on it.
An editor at LinkedIn News, Joseph Milord takes a highly targeted approach for this newsletter: The Hustle is predominantly for the frontline workers, and it covers the topics that bring the most value to them. He speaks on current problems, presenting the information in a concise manner.
While we are used to traditional marketing strategies like advertising, blogging, and emailing (all of which do work), it’s always good to explore other options. If you feel like your approach needs refreshing, a LinkedIn newsletter may be that creative outlet you’ve been looking for.
It combines the benefits of blogging, social media features, and carefully curated targeting. It is perfect for manifesting your thought leadership and providing valuable content to your audience.