The LinkedIn Newsletter Gold Rush Is Going to Backfire (Here's How to Get It Right)

It seems every man and their dog are starting a new LinkedIn newsletter just to get AI to cite them. Unfortunately, most are just damaging their brands. I've done 139 editions. Here's how to get them right.

G'day everyone, I'm Michelle J Raymond, and this week, listeners, we're gonna be talking about one of my favourite formats of content on LinkedIn. That is the LinkedIn newsletters. And I can only describe this right now as the newsletter gold rush, which was circa 2021, 2022 when they were first launched, and I swear to God, everybody had one. But as with most new features that happen on LinkedIn, when you're doing it for the wrong reasons, then these things tend to fall apart pretty quickly.

And in this case, most people are doing it because LinkedIn's out there pushing with all their might the hype around LinkedIn newsletters and articles get cited by AI. And of course, everybody wants that right now, so away they went. And I've even had some people reach out to me right now and say, "Michelle, there are so many invites that I'm getting, I'm just unsubscribing every which way." They're drowning in rubbish.

That is not how you get cited by AI. So in today's episode, I wanna talk to you around the common mistakes that I see, and of course what makes a great and successful LinkedIn newsletter that your audience will love. Oh, and by the way, hopefully you'll get cited by AI. But I promise you, that's not the reason you should be doing this.

That is probably the number one place where things come unstuck. Before I get into the most common mistakes, let's have a quick chat around why everybody's rushing into LinkedIn newsletters. And as I said at the start of the intro, I absolutely love them. I have done several podcast episodes on them over the years, and they have always been my go-to format.

I've done 139 editions on my personal profile. Not too many over on my Company Page. That's not part of my strategy. I've helped clients launch them, and I know exactly what it takes.

The thing that I love about them the most is that LinkedIn newsletters allow you to take advantage of the community that you've already built on LinkedIn. So they're native on LinkedIn, so you don't have to go to a third-party platform, so I love that. LinkedIn actually helps you build subscribers, so winning every time someone follows your Page or connects with you as an individual, they'll be automatically invited to follow the newsletter. So that makes it really easy to build subscribers.

In my experience, roughly 30% of connections or Page followers will subscribe from that first send, and of course, yes, there is the AI search results that are happening right now. LinkedIn are promoting articles. A newsletter is just a LinkedIn article with subscribers, so that's the only distinction between the two. Now that I've given you all of the upside, and there is a lot of upside to LinkedIn newsletters, let's talk about some of the common mistakes that I see with newsletters that your brand should be avoiding if you're starting a new LinkedIn newsletter or maybe you've got an existing one that you really wanna level up.

Number one, I'm gonna go with the ghost town newsletter, and that happens with Company Pages as well. But what happens with the ghost town newsletter, you get a big rush of excitement. Everybody wants to launch the newsletter. You send out a couple of editions, and then you're done because it didn't quite work out how you were expecting.

And then all of a sudden, you just ghost all of those subscribers that have signed up, and they're wondering, like, "What happened?" Now, I'm not saying everyone's sitting there waiting for every edition, although if it's valuable, you will build up that type of community. But it kinda says to the people in your community it's something you start but you never finish. And that consistency is what is going to continue to grow your positioning as a thought leader, whether that's a brand or an individual.

And for buyers, it kind of says to me also that you don't have that discipline, that you just jumped on the trend, and then you used it, and then you disappeared and jumped onto the next one. Mistake number two for me probably comes down to not having a clear promise. And I have both hands in the air that this was me when I started my newsletter because I did jump on the bandwagon. I did get all excited, and I just wanted to do them because I was a LinkedIn trainer, and I wanted to be able to show everyone else how to do them.

It was a little bit of everything. No real themes going through, no direction I was taking, and it was probably nice and helpful, but certainly not valuable and certainly not generating any opportunities for my business like it does today. So mistake number three for me is all about just recycling old posts that are dressed up as articles. Now, I'm not anti repurposing content.

In fact, I'm completely the opposite. But if you are just gonna recycle things and that's your whole strategy, then I think you're missing the point. I think there's a bigger opportunity that you can take to actually expand on those ideas. And after a while, if you're just doing the same thing over and over, then it can also feel a little bit stale to your audience.

So repurposing is fine, but putting no effort into that, not fine. Mistake number four is what I would call the Company Page bulletin board. Now you all know, listeners, that I'm a huge fan of Company Pages, but this with newsletters becomes the same problem that I see with Company Page content in general. And that is where the brand's newsletters really are just all the internal updates that you have that you wanna tell all of your Page followers because somebody in the business went, "Oh, you've got 10,000 newsletter subscribers.

Let's go and dump everything in there and tell them all about what we want to do." So it can quite often be like jam packed full of things that are like award wins. Sorry, nobody cares. It could be event announcements, company milestones.

And they have their place, don't get me wrong. But mostly people on the outside don't really care about that kind of stuff. There's no value to them. Might help you build your brand a little bit, and that's a good thing.

But if you do it too much and too often, like what's in it for me? Zero, nada, nilch, and we don't wanna do that. So how I can spot these ones, the company bulletin board newsletters, is essentially it's just written from the company's point of view. It's all about the company and it's like me, me, me, me, me, and you don't care what I take away from it.

So ask yourself the question, "What does our buyer need help understanding?" And that will really fix this problem. That's very different to what do we wanna say. So if you can reconcile those two things, that mistake will go away.

Mistake number five that I see is that people are just chasing subscribers instead of relevance to their audience. And quite often that can be because they create content that they know will be popular. It might be more fun But ultimately, is it getting you closer to your business goals? That's all I really care about, listeners, is whether you're an individual consultant or a big multinational brand that I work with, I want the same thing from you.

I want you to generate a return from the effort that you're putting in to LinkedIn, and in this case, the newsletters. So you can have lots of followers, but if it's not actually getting you closer to your business goals, what's the point? So growth is good, but we wanna make sure it's the right growth. Mistake number six is essentially there's no owner of the newsletter, and there's certainly no system, and there's no strategy behind it.

At best, you might have done a little bit of content planning, but I doubt it. Sometimes people come up with a name for the newsletter, and that kinda dictates what goes in there. And I know some people right now that are out there really reflecting on, what does the name of your newsletter actually, you know, say to your audience? And do they know what's going on with them?

And the answer is most of the time no. But when you don't have an owner and you don't have a system, then everyone starts with really good intentions. You know how it goes, until you get busy. And nobody owns the standard that goes in.

There's no consistency in format, and ultimately it just becomes wishy-washy and is completely diluting your brand or even damaging it and taking it away, which is exactly why I wanted to do this episode today. A newsletter needs one clear owner. It needs a cadence that you can keep up with, so how frequently are you gonna put the newsletter out? You need to be clear around what is expected of the people that have been designated to putting that newsletter out.

Like, do they have the time to actually do this? Do you need an approval process to get the newsletter out? Are there any boundaries around the topics that you can or can't cover? And how will you maintain that consistent voice if it's written by multiple people?

So a weak newsletter does not just underperform. I want you to understand that it also trains your audience in how to ignore you. What does doing a LinkedIn newsletter right really look like? Well, glad you asked because I've got a few thoughts on this one after launching so many with clients.

I think the very best place to start is what are you going to promise your reader? So before you even choose a name, before you even figure out how often you're going to be publishing your LinkedIn newsletters, what is the promise? And you can use this to try and figure it out. This newsletter helps, in brackets, who do what so that they can have what outcome.

So I'll say it again. You can use this filter that says this newsletter helps who do what so that they can gain what outcome. So it's one audience, one main topic, and one clear reason to subscribe. And if it's too broad, then people will automatically exclude themselves and pretty much your newsletter becomes forgettable.

What's the next thing that I think people should focus on? And I'm very clear around this one. I think you should serve before you sell. And a newsletter very much can support your business goals, and as you know, I'm not anti-selling on LinkedIn, far from it.

I am not part of the brigade that says, "Don't be too salesy." But I don't want the newsletter to come across like it's just a sales brochure. It doesn't mean you can't talk about your products and services, but it does mean that you have to earn that attention, earn that right to talk about how your product or service solves somebody else's issue so that they can have that outcome that you've promised. And I find that by teaching people, keeping them updated, giving them a different way to think or act, that's what's built my authority.

I always serve my audience with that newsletter. That is never ever something that I compromise on. Doesn't mean that inside every single newsletter you will always find something from me promoting my services. I've earned that right, and I am there to serve my audience and make it easy for them to buy from me.

I think if I was to give you another tip, number three that would be choose the cadence that you can actually sustain over the long term. Cadence is just a fancy term for frequency. How often will you put your newsletter out? When you set the newsletter up, it will ask you options: weekly, bi-weekly, monthly.

You are not stuck to that, but it's a promise that you are giving to the people that choose to subscribe. So if monthly is a good place to start, then start there. Don't try and go too crazy on this stuff because most brands overcommit at the launch phase, which means they don't keep things going in the long term. So think about who in your team actually has capacity.

Is there an approval process, and are those people available to make sure that the newsletter doesn't get stuck in approval purgatory, waiting forever for somebody to you know, give it the little seal of approval? Are there quality standards that you need to write up first? And who are the people in the business that actually have the subject matter expertise that you can leverage to make this really valuable? And ultimately, for me, this is all about being sustainable over the long term and not something that you're just gonna go hard and then fall over and disappear in the next few weeks.

I do think as well, if I was to go to number four, my tip is you need to have an editorial standard, especially if I'm talking to corporate brands here. And I think that you should hold yourself to a much higher standard than maybe an individual that's listening to this podcast responsible for their own personal newsletters. And it's not about just hitting publish just to fill the schedule. I… that infuriates me.

I see that all the time. I want people to think what's a clear idea that each newsletter has behind it, and that includes strong titles, clear structures, practical takeaways, points of view. I love points of view in newsletters, and most brands avoid this area altogether. So if you avoid those kind of vague clichéd insights and move away from just having some kind of generic AI-generated blog format, a newsletter really should build up that body of useful thinking.

You know, the thought leadership that everybody throws around, you can build that thinking out over time, and that is one of my favourite things to do. At the end of the day, you can't just grow a newsletter by chasing every single subscriber. It is about making sure that the people who do subscribe, you deliver to them exactly what you promised. And making sure that the editions that you create are in service of that audience is the fastest way to grow because you'll have them not unsubscribing, and it will also start to become something that if you create it through the Company Page, I love when I start to see employees reposting, sharing, and sending that to their network because that's how everything really should come together.

Speaking of that, this has become such a big deal for me recently that I have created a one-hour programme where you can work directly with me. It's called the LinkedIn Newsletter Growth Lab, and ultimately, we will step through all of this for your brand. So if as you listen to this episode, you're like, "Yes, I do wanna launch this, and yes, I wanna get it right," then reach out. Honestly, spend an hour with me and you can learn from my 139 editions expertise, and I can tell you exactly what does and doesn't work.

The one last thing that I think people should pay attention to is measuring what matters. Now, there are analytics on the LinkedIn newsletters, and we're not just talking about subscriber count. I mean, that's nice because it goes up and up and up for the most part, but you can go in and take a look and see who it is that's subscribing, who's reading, who's commenting, who's replying, who's saving, and which topics are creating the most conversation. I want you to pay attention to this because when you do the work to pay attention to what's landing for your audience, honestly, the buzz that you can generate is just something that I love.

And I'm generating more impressions from my LinkedIn newsletters than what I am from my posts which totally makes sense because every time I do a newsletter, 11,500 people are notified that I've done it. And so I wanna make sure that I hold my promise to those people that subscribe. If you're not subscribed to my LinkedIn newsletter, please go across. It's on my LinkedIn profile in the featured section.

That's where you'll find it. If you wanna have a look and see how I do it as a place to start, then by all means, do that. Listeners, I believe that LinkedIn newsletters, when done well, really are a great opportunity for your business. But I equally believe that if they aren't done well, then that becomes a brand risk, and I want you to avoid that by going back to some of those basics of why are you creating it?

Who are you creating it for? What can they expect? What processes do you have in place so that you can remain consistent over the long term? Pretty much this is the way to succeed on LinkedIn full stop.

Another friendly reminder that just because you write a LinkedIn newsletter, if it's full of garbage and doesn't resonate and doesn't answer a specific topic and isn't laid out well, you are not going to get cited by AI. That is just more rubbish filling the feed that people are unsubscribing from. Listeners, I hope that you've really enjoyed today's episode on LinkedIn newsletters. I know that there's a gold rush out there, but I want your newsletter to be the one that people want to subscribe to, that they look forward to, and it contributes to growing your business.

So if you've been listening and wondering if your newsletter is really hitting the spot, or if you wanna find out how to launch one for your business with a tailored one-on-one session with me, my LinkedIn Newsletter Growth Lab is for you.