How to Get More Substack Subscribers from LinkedIn®

Leverage your LinkedIn profile to grow your Substack Newsletter

I am new to Substack but I’ve been on LinkedIn for 20 years.

So I feel qualified to share with you all the ways I plan to leverage my own LinkedIn® profile to grow my Substack newsletter.

Everyone can use some of these ideas, and others are only relevant if you have a Premium or Sales Navigator account (paid LinkedIn features).

There are multiple places on your LinkedIn® profile that you can mention or highlight your Substack newsletter:

1. Header Image

This is now a slideshow of up to 5 images, that change every three seconds, so mine is a combination of me speaking and training, and now I’ve added one image in, with a call to action to subscribe to my newsletter. If you don’t have this new feature yet, it’s on it’s way and being rolled out to everyone. If you don’t have the slideshow version yet, then you can use your static header image in the same way.

2. Custom Link

   This is available on Premium only, and is visible his in the above picture too. You can add a button to your profile, choose ‘View my Newsletter’ and point it to your Substack. Alternatively, you can choose a link instead of a button with a call to action. If you have the button it will appear on your profile and at the top of every message you send and every post you add to the newsfeed. This is what it looks like in the newsfeed.

   

3. Your About Section (Free and Premium)

   This is where you can write 2600 characters about yourself. Here is my current About Section. I talk about my Substack and give a call to action to subscribe. There are no hyperlinks in the About section, so someone would have to copy and paste it to go there, but at least there is a place to mention it. I do this in the section called ‘Resources’.

   

4. Featured Section

   On the desktop version of LinkedIn®, you can only see the first 3 media types in the Featured Section. I have chosen my Substack to be the first part of my Featured section, as this will also show up on the mobile version as the only media there, and it highlights it to every profile visitor.

   

   I’ve chosen one of the images provided by Substack for us to promote our newsletters, or you can add your own thumbnail. If you don’t have a Featured section, you can go to the top of your profile and choose ‘Add Profile Section’ and you will find this in the ‘Recommended’ section.
   

5. DM’s and Your ‘Away Message’ (Premium Only)

   This is like an ‘out of office’ message for LinkedIn®. I am close to 30,000 connections so when I hit the maximum this will be the main way to move people who request to connect, to go to my Substack.

   
   Now with all of my existing connections, an ‘Away Message’ goes to anyone who sends me a DM. It looks like this:

   

   If you don’t have this feature because you are on the free version, then I would also recommend using the DM’s and outreach to grow your subscriber base.

   
   You can send messages to new and existing connections to let them know about your Substack and what they can expect. I will definitely be using DM’s aswell as my Away message to drive up the awareness of my Substack newsletter.

6. LinkedIn Newsletter

I haven’t used this yet, but later this month I’m going to share my Substack with my current LinkedIn® newsletter subscribers, I have over 10,000 subscribers there… and it gets very good open rates. So I expect to add quite a few people to my Substack from this, I will update here on this post in the comments once I have created this

7. And Finally… Content

I post content on the newsfeed on average 3 times per week. If it’s anything related to social selling or LinkedIn® tips, I post and then go back on the post 24-28 hours later I will add a link to my newsletter. Posts are running for a couple of weeks now. A link will detract from the post when it first launches, so I leave it for a while before adding a link. You can also add it into the comments underneath your posts (and other people’s posts when appropriate). This is what it looks like when you add your Substack link, it turns into a short link.

So I add ‘To become a social selling superstar, access the latest LinkedIn updates, chat with me in my community, and get resources in one place, go here (my Substack link).

Obviously, it’s early days for me, but after only 2 days of applying all of the above, I have gained 8 followers (🥳) and they already know from the platform so conversion is good. Multiply that by 365 days, that’s 730 new subscribers at the current pace, but I believe that this is going to gain momentum as my profile views, content views and messages all do the work to drive people across from LinkedIn® to Substack.

I hope this helps you in some way. I am not going be writing much more about how to grow your Substack as I don’t feel qualified to do so. Plus, there are many people here who dedicate their time to this.

One thing I do know extremely well is LinkedIn® and I can see it’s going to be an amazing source of new subscribers for me and hopefully for you too!

Let me know in the comments which tip you found helpful.

And remember… if you’re not LinkedIn®, you're totally Linked out!

PS: Hit subscribe to get more LinkedIn® tips from Sam Rathling.