LinkedIn just changed the online writing game 😲

Photo by Sabri Tuzcu on Unsplash

Good morning my loves.

Welcome to yet another Online Business newsletter from yours truly Tom Kuegler. 😊

We’re a little light on the news today, but that’s okay because we’re kind of dropping a bombshell..

LinkedIn Rolling Out The Newsletter Feature To Everyone?

If you’re a Medium writer, you should be rejoicing at this news.

LinkedIn is now rolling out newsletters to basically everybody (Peep Quentin Allums’ newsletter below).

Quentin Allums’ Newsletter

Newsletters on LinkedIn are essentially just articles. BUT they also land in the notification box of anybody who signs up for them.

Imagine on Medium that you got a notification wherever I posted an article. Pretty cool, right?

I’ve seen some creators get hundreds of likes on their newsletters (along with thousands of views), and I think it could be a game changer for long form writers.

As you know, I’ve been high on LinkedIn for a while. I got over 100,000 views there last month on my content, and they’re now rolling out the newsletter feature to EVERYONE.

If you want more insights, check out this post from Claire Caroll.

Also, feel free to sign up for my free 5 day LinkedIn course. I’ll teach you how to post every day for thirty days and I’ll also show you the basics of the platform.

Why This Newsletter News Matters

Let’s discuss the news, shall we? A few years ago, LinkedIn heavily promoted videos throughout their platform.

If I got 40 likes on a video, I’d get at least 3,000 views on it.

Nowadays LinkedIn’s moved away from promoting videos to promoting polls, short text posts, and picture posts in the feed.

ESPECIALLY POLLS.

A recent poll of mine

I’ve found if you post a poll, it’s pretty easy to rack up 5,000 views on it.

What notoriously did horrific in the feed, though, were LinkedIn articles.

They were hit or miss. You either got 5 views on them or 5000. 95% of the time, it was 5 views.

The only time I saw articles actually do well in the feed was when they were LinkedIn newsletters which, surprise, nobody had access to except for beta testers.

I saw newsletters getting 200+ likes and dreamed of the day when I might be able to share an article on LinkedIn that could do similar numbers.

Well, now I can.

It’s a game changer for Medium writers looking to go elsewhere for views because no other platform really does justice to long form content.

None.

Vocal is cool, but my problem with that platform is the lack of reach.

Substack is cool, but my problem with them is there’s no discoverability there.

With LinkedIn newsletters, you’d have both of these key ingredients to success that I haven’t seen for long form writers since Medium blew my socks off in 2016.

For the longest time I had to teach Medium writers how to change their content to fit LinkedIn, but now they might just be able to copy and paste their articles directly into LinkedIn to get some traction. This is pretty incredible news for Medium writers if you asked me.

What do you think of this news?

Let me know! And see you next week. :)

Tom Kuegler