Using social media to grow your newsletter

How social media can help you find the readers for your newsletter.

‘Subscribe to me and I’ll subscribe back.’

It’s an increasingly common ‘strategy’ on Substack to try and find new subscribers. Does it work? Well, it might give you some vanity numbers. Will it translate to genuine readers of your newsletter with good open rates? No, it won’t.

Unfortunately this is the old age problem for all writers who are trying to publish their own work and it goes far beyond just newsletters. Self-publishing a novel, running a literary magazine, writers who need to market themselves must find the audience that wants to read them from somewhere.

One of the small problems with Substack is that it’s a lot of writers preaching to other writers. For some publications, such as the Freelance Writing Network, that’s not really an issue. I want writers, because the newsletter is aimed heavily towards supporting writers to find work and continue their personal development. But for other publications, this is more complicated.

For Substack newsletters - and many other platforms for that matter - you have to do all of your own marketing work. You can spend hours writing and refining a piece of work, but without marketing yourself I’m afraid that the only views are going to be yourself, and if you’re brave enough to share with those you love, a few family members and friends.

So instead of just shouting into the ether, how can you find readers for your newsletter? And not just that, but readers who’ll actually open you emails, read them and share? Well, I’ve got a few tips for you specific to social media - many of which have helped with me (and not just for the Freelance Writing Network, but for other publications too).

I understand that there are other routes to promote your work and I’m looking forward to covering these in future editions of Grow Your Newsletter.

Whichever social media you choose to utilise, it’s so important to drive new connections you make towards your newsletter. Include links, reply with related posts of yours, send friendly DMs pointing people in the right direction. There are many ways to use them as a tool for growth, but driving connections is especially important.

Twitter

One of the first things I did when I started this newsletter was open up a Twitter account. Thanks to Mr Musk, you can actually pay to increase your engagement (though take the word ‘thanks’ with a pinch of salt, given the constant flood of pornography sent to me via bots). I quickly paid for the mid-tier subscription, which is around £10 a month. Nothing particularly crazy, and quickly worthwhile by the paid subscriptions to the newsletter I gained from readers who found me via the site.

‘Twitter Blue’ for my newsletter has meant that my replies to others go directly to the top of their feed. Visibility improved. I was pretty relaxed about who I followed, so I would follow anyone who worked in the freelance writing field to begin with, as well as other writers. To turn Twitter followers into subscribers, it’s firstly important to build credibility. This meant that I needed to publish regularly each week and consistently share my posts on social media when they happened.

But Twitter itself is again filled with writers talking about writing, and not always readers themselves. For me it’s the best platform to utilise, for others it might not be. So how can you find potential readers there?

Well, first you want to navigate to the big hitters in your specific genre. I went for editors who commission a lot of freelancers and then found users who followed them or retweeted their posts as they were often the exact audience I wanted. When people followed me at first, I’d send a very friendly DM with a link to my newsletter. Sometimes this worked, other times it didn’t. Perhaps it was a little shameless, but for a while it was a useful growth strategy.

The other thing I have tried to do on Twitter is create viral threads (as best as possible, even a few dozen retweets saw me gain a collection of new subscribers). This was easy for me because I could just share a load of relevant opportunities and encourage retweets. You might need to think about how you can do this, but perhaps any tricks, tools or interesting threads might go down well once you have a small audience? Lots of popular posts on Twitter these days are longer threads of unique and interesting insight.

You have to give users a reason to read, retweet and follow. Don’t just go on Twitter once a week to share a newsletter post - engage, comment, reply. Most of my time there now is doing just that. Build up your credibility. Show you’re an active member of the community. And to be honest, those last two sentences make for sound advice for promoting yourself on any social media.

Facebook

Facebook appears to be a good place for finding readers. There are tons of Facebook groups out there focused on the topic that you’re writing about. And I don’t even need to know what you’re writing about to know that. My 40 subscribers from there came mostly via a share in a single freelance writing related Facebook group, which has made me think I should probably branch out.

These groups will often have self-promotion rules so you do need to be a little careful of how you share yourself. You will probably need to engage in the community aspect of these groups first before shamelessly promoting yourself, or be careful not to over-promote. But you can probably include links to your work attached to helpful comments and replies, which often slips through the self-promotion rule anyway. Generally the self-promotion rules exist to stop groups becoming flooded with outside links and the actual community vibe being lost.

I’m going to try starting a page on Facebook soon and promoting my newsletter that way. I have absolutely no idea if it’s going to work, but I’ll give it a go and report back. For my novel writing Substack, I’m pretty sure that I’m not reaching the right people, so I need to branch outside of Substack & Twitter to find more readers.

My plan will be to create a Facebook page named the same as my publication, which I’ll use as a link host. My personal account will then join and engage with relevant communities and I’ll use that to share posts from the page over to the groups. I might pay for ads at some point, though I’m reluctant to do so right now. Advertising on social media seems to have little impact unless you can spend significant amounts of money, which I can’t.

Reddit

Reddit is a great place for finding readers because it’s another place where people want to read and discuss the topics they are interested in. Say for example that you run a newsletter about healthy eating, well there are various subreddits that focus on exactly that.

You have to be a little careful of self-promotion on Reddit because certain subreddits do prohibit it, so I’d recommend checking subreddit rules on that before sharing main posts. However, just engaging with the communities on there can help build a readership. You don’t have to promote yourself with every comment, but the occasional ‘this is interesting and I wrote about something similar *here*’ can go a long way for finding subscribers. If it’s within a specific subreddit, anyone who clicks that link is going to be interested in your content at the very least.

I had a lot of success in writing related subreddits because that’s specific to my genre. But there are so many communities on there that I’m certain you can find at least a few that are specific to you. I would recommend having an explore of Reddit if you haven’t already but want to branch out your newsletter. Don’t expect thousands of new subs, but it might be the ideal place to find at least a few dozen highly-engaged readers.

Other platforms

I’ve recently branched out to Bluesky, though this is incredibly similar to Twitter in terms of use (except I can’t pay anyone for more engagement). It’s useful in the exact same way that Twitter is, so I won’t say much about it. The key difference is that Bluesky doesn’t kill the visibility of link attachments like Twitter does, so if you can develop a following it means you can share links directly and not lose potential post views because Elon is terrified that someone might need to use an internet browser.

Instagram is a platform that I’m thinking of expanding to soon. I do have a relevant account on there but I haven’t really used it yet. It’s good for visual work, and for my main publication I just don’t see how it would be of much use. I am tempted to try sharing my other publications on there, I just don’t know if I have the time to devote to another platform right now. I’d rather focus on Twitter, Bluesky and Facebook.

I find Threads impossible to use and so I haven’t really bothered. The algorithm makes no sense and it’s hard to get any kind of visibility. It might be useful for you if you know how to use it, or are a regular poster on there, but for me it’s some way off that. Again, I also don’t really have the time to devote to finding an audience on there again.

If you have had success with Instagram and/or Threads for finding readers and subscribers, please do share your thoughts in the comments! I’d love to hear about what works for you.

How to choose which social media to use?

As you can see, I haven’t mastered every single social media platform. For a start: I simply don’t have the time. I’m working as a freelance writer and running this newsletter as well as trying to remain active on social media professionally, I can’t invest the necessary time in each platform to grow a relevant community.

I knew that writers were active on Twitter primarily and therefore this would be the best place for me. While they are on other platforms, it felt easier to find and engage with them there. But now that account has grown and doesn’t require tons of work to maintain, I can expand to Facebook to see if I can encourage new subscriptions from there.

My suggestion is to not wear yourself too thin. Pick one or two that you feel are best for your audience and run with them, ideally those that you know well enough to grasp the best ways of finding and engaging with the right people. But I wouldn’t suggest opening an account on six different platforms and trying to run all of them because not only will it be too much work, you’ll simply burn out.

Social media can be a valuable tool for growing subscribers to your newsletter. But it takes time and commitment. If you start one and give up after a week, or become discouraged because growth isn’t immediate, that’s not going to be productive for your long term success.

After all, what is a potential new subscriber looking for? A topic of interest that is worth their time investing in. If an attached social media account contains only the bare minimum and appears mostly inactive, is someone likely to sign up to a link attached to that account? Probably not.

The principle of promoting yourself on social media is exactly the same as for the newsletter itself. Invest in the time to grow the social media that grows your newsletter. And, of course, with an already established personal account, you’re already halfway there on visibility.

Any questions?

Any questions or thoughts about using social media to grow your newsletter then please let me know in the comments. I’m going to reply & engage with every single person who comments.