The fast-paced evolution of social media platforms has led us to a point within the digital world where content creation is at an all-time high. LinkedIn is no exception.
There are plenty of ways to engage with your audience on LinkedIn, such as creating text posts, sharing photos and videos, setting up polls and writing articles. Another great way to capture your audience’s attention is newsletters.
But be warned – over-utilising a platform’s features just for the sake of it can do more harm than good! So, here’s a quick overview of LinkedIn newsletters to help you decide if they could be a valuable tool for your business.
What are LinkedIn newsletters?
LinkedIn describes its newsletters as “a set of regularly published articles, typically about a specific topic”. All LinkedIn members can discover, read and share these, and by subscribing to specific newsletters, they’ll receive a notification whenever a new edition is published.
Who can create a LinkedIn newsletter?
All personal LinkedIn profiles can create a newsletter, but LinkedIn pages must meet the following criteria:
- Have more than 150 followers and/or connections
- Have recent shares of original content (text, images, videos, etc.)
- Have a good standing record of abiding by LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies
What to include in a LinkedIn newsletter
As a company, your audience will respond best to content related to your business. It could concern your products or services directly, or relate more widely to the industry in which you operate.
Microsoft’s LinkedIn newsletter, The Monthly Tech-In, combines updates on Microsoft’s own products, as well as industry-wide updates that its audience can benefit from knowing.
The University of the Arts London (UAL) produces a LinkedIn Newsletter called The Early Creative, which focuses on helping students and graduates navigate the early stages of their artistic careers. This content appeals not just to existing and previous students, but also people attending other creative universities, or working towards a creative career in other ways – a great way for UAL to expand its reach on the platform.
If you’re already creating content on LinkedIn that’s getting a good reception from your followers, analyse what topics bring in the most engagement, then start formulating these ideas into a regular newsletter.
The latest updates to LinkedIn newsletters
LinkedIn reported that the volume of members publishing newsletters has increased by 59% over the past year, and engagement of these newsletters is up 47%. In response to this, the platform recently introduced some new features, aiming to make it even easier for creators to grow their newsletter audiences and engage their readers.
Here’s a quick rundown of the latest features for LinkedIn newsletters:
- Microsoft’s AI-powered Designer tool has been integrated to allow creators to design custom newsletter covers from inside LinkedIn
- Creators can now embed links to other LinkedIn profiles and pages directly into newsletter articles
- Creators can now access a staging link to preview the newsletter URL before publishing
- Comments are now displayed alongside newsletter articles, making it easier for users to participate in discussions while reading the content
- Subscribers now receive email alerts and in-app notifications when a newsletter is published
- New followers to a page or profile that has a newsletter will be automatically prompted to subscribe
If your brand is already creating content on LinkedIn, consider whether a newsletter could bring even more value to your audience. Now would be a great time to utilise LinkedIn’s poll feature to get first-hand feedback from your audience. You could ask whether your followers would be interested in subscribing to a regular newsletter, and if the majority answer ‘yes’, you can hone in on more specific questions, like what topics they’d like to see covered and how often they’d like to receive editions.
We have these tools at our disposal, so be sure to make the most of any features that can best support your business and audience.
