What to Know Before Launching a LinkedIn Newsletter in 2024

We produce a podcast called the Maintainable Software Podcast, where our CEO and podcast host, Robby Russell, interviews seasoned practitioners about topics related to legacy code and technical debt. We’ve been experimenting with ways to increase our listening audience. We have a website, a newsletter, and social media, but we wondered if a LinkedIn newsletter might help us reach new listeners.

Since this was new territory for us, we had a lot of questions, and most of the blogs we found had general or outdated information. So we compiled a list of our main questions, what we discovered, and what we decided to do for the next couple of months. We hope this helps you if you’re thinking about creating a LinkedIn newsletter of your own!

What are the pros and cons of creating a newsletter on our LinkedIn business page?

Pros:

• High engagement: LinkedIn newsletters significantly impact engagement, crucial for reaching a wider audience.
• No additional costs: LinkedIn covers the setup and management costs, making it a budget-friendly option.
• Fast list growth: LinkedIn automatically invites your connections and followers to subscribe, making it easy to grow a subscriber base.

Cons:

• Not great for SEO: LinkedIn newsletters do not greatly impact SEO, as they do not create duplicate content penalties, but they do not provide SEO benefits.
• Analytics could be more informative: LinkedIn Analytics are limited, and no testing or personalization is available.
• Limited to LinkedIn: The newsletter is limited to the LinkedIn platform, and you cannot reach subscribers through other channels. You don’t have control over the subscriber list and cannot collect email addresses.

How do we measure the success of a LinkedIn newsletter?

To measure the success of a LinkedIn newsletter, you’d consider the following metrics:

• Open Rate: This indicates how many recipients open the newsletter. A compelling subject line and first line of intro text can help improve open rates.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR measures how often people click on the links in your newsletter to visit your website. To increase CTR, improve the relevance and engagement of your newsletter content, and optimize the call-to-action text and design of the links.
• Forward to a Friend: This metric shows how many subscribers share your newsletter with others, indicating its value and relevance.
• Unsubscribes: While some unsubscribes are expected, a high unsubscribe rate may indicate that the content is not relevant to the audience.

Additionally, you can use third-party tools like Hootsuite or Buffer for more detailed metrics, including page engagement, video views, and amplification rate.

Do LinkedIn newsletters trigger emails and push notifications?

LinkedIn newsletters do not trigger email or push notifications directly to subscribers’ devices. However, subscribers will receive an email notification when a new newsletter is published, which can be accessed through their LinkedIn inbox or email client.

This email notification is a way for LinkedIn to notify subscribers of new content, but it does not function like a traditional email subscription service.

Subscribers can access the newsletter content through their LinkedIn feed or by clicking the link in the email notification. LinkedIn newsletters do not allow for the collection of email addresses, so subscribers cannot receive the newsletter via email outside of the LinkedIn platform.

Keep in mind, though, that if people have notifications or emails turned off, they won’t receive them.

What are some best practices for creating engaging LinkedIn newsletters?

Here are some best practices for creating engaging LinkedIn newsletters:

• Create engaging content: Keep it concise, with clean design and exclusive content. Incorporate compelling copy, clear CTAs, and provide more than just updates. Craft catchy headlines for each newsletter article to help the audience understand the article.
• Customize SEO titles and descriptions: Customize SEO titles and descriptions to control how newsletters appear on search engines and make it easier for others to find content.
• Include visuals: Use a clean, easy-to-read design that doesn’t overwhelm subscribers. Add a logo for your newsletter, a cover photo for each article, and images with faces and people that resonate more with audiences. (More about this a little later.)
• Establish an optimal publishing cadence: Maintain a schedule so subscribers can regularly engage with the content.

If you want to reach a new audience and get new clients, how can a LinkedIn newsletter help?

• Increased visibility: LinkedIn promotes newsletters by inviting your audience to subscribe and pushing content into their feeds at higher rates than other types of content.
• Thought leadership: By sharing valuable and relevant content, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and build trust with potential clients.
• Lead generation: LinkedIn newsletters can help you generate leads by including a call-to-action in your content and directing readers to your website or landing page.

Is there a limit to how many newsletters you can publish?

There is no limit to the number of newsletters you can publish on LinkedIn. However, LinkedIn recommends that you focus on creating high-quality content that resonates with your target audience and establishes you as a thought leader in your industry.

It is also important to consider the newsletter publication frequency and be consistent with the posting schedule. LinkedIn allows you to set your posting frequency daily, weekly, biweekly, or monthly, but you’re encouraged to do what you promise and be consistent.

Additionally, building your LinkedIn page followers and understanding the content that resonates before launching a newsletter is recommended to get the most advantage from this tool.

How do you use visuals to enhance a LinkedIn newsletter?

Here are some quick tips to help you create some visual components for your newsletter.

• Use high-quality images, graphics, and charts relevant to the content and professionally designed.
• Avoid clip art or generic stock images; instead, opt for photos with faces and people that resonate better with audiences.
• Use images with a resolution of 1920 (width) × 1080 (height).
• Make sure images are compressed to reduce file size without compromising image quality.
• Consider using infographics to present complex ideas or statistics in an eye-catching manner.
• Be consistent with the style and quality of visuals used throughout your newsletter.
• Place visuals strategically within the body of your newsletter to break up large blocks of text and draw attention to important sections.

Can you embed links? Images? Videos?

Yes! Here’s how:

• Embedding Links: To include external content like tweets or Instagram images in your newsletter, paste the URL into the Link field.
• Embedding Images: When writing articles on LinkedIn, you can add images, photos, and other rich media to the body of your article by uploading them from your computer or device.
• Embedding Videos: You can embed YouTube videos directly into your LinkedIn newsletter or article by copying the URL from YouTube and pasting it into LinkedIn’s insert multimedia video box. This allows you to include videos that play inside the newsletter or article, enhancing engagement and interactivity.

Can you boost your LinkedIn newsletter?

Yes, you can boost our LinkedIn newsletter to reach a wider audience and grow your subscribers by utilizing various features and strategies provided by LinkedIn:

• New Features: The New Features update was designed to help boost the discovery of newsletters both on and off the platform, address discovery challenges, and enable creators to reach new and existing audiences more effectively.
• Auto-Follow Feature: When a member subscribes to your newsletter, it triggers an auto-follow from our profile, expanding your community of engaged subscribers who have shown interest in your content. This feature helps grow your subscriber base and keeps them updated with your content, including Feed posts and LinkedIn Live events.
• One-Click Subscribe: LinkedIn allows existing and potential readers to subscribe to your newsletter directly from the platform or anywhere else you choose to share the link, such as social media or email. Also, when members search for you, they can see your newsletter in the results and subscribe with just one click!
• Host Multiple Newsletters: LinkedIn now enables members or Company Pages to host up to five newsletters in one place with different topics, designs, and posting frequencies. This feature allows you to cater to diverse interests and engage with a broader audience.

Can you collect email addresses?

Nope. Unlike creating an email list from your website where you have complete ownership over the email addresses, LinkedIn doesn’t give you access to the subscriber’s email addresses directly.

This means that if you want to collect email addresses from your LinkedIn newsletter subscribers, we’d have to encourage them to subscribe to your website, podcast, or blog separately.

What we decided…

We decided to set up a few newsletter issues for the Maintainable Software Podcast bi-weekly and experiment with some of our content and imagery. We’ll revisit this in a couple of months and let you know what we discovered along the way!

Written with help from perplexity.ai.