Substack vs. LinkedIn Network Effect

Why do Substack writers fail at lead generation? They don't put in the work.

Photo by Ben Sweet on Unsplash

Hey Everyone,

This is just a brief note, LinkedIn is no longer just for suits and aging male professionals. LinkedIn posts can be an incredible way for a Substack Newsletter creator to augment their personal brand and gain a following that’s global and highly diversified.

No “Twitter Clone” have invested as much as LinkedIn in getting actual journalists to start to share their work there. As Mastodon traffic dries up, Post News fizzles, BlueSky and Substack Notes are in vogue, but they don’t have a very large network effect.

But as prone to vanity metrics as LinkedIn is, what about their network effect?

While I can respect the 17k paid Creators in the Subscription Network of Substack, we need to think of multiple ways to optimize the top of the funnel of your Newsletter traffic including peer-to-peer recommendation inbound flows from more than one channel.

Substack Writers Just Don’t Get LinkedIn

But it’s not like algorithmic feeds have died either. Linda who covers Finance and Investing and a quasi sales-marketing person in my mind for Substack, recently asked the community about LinkedIn in a note: (I was not thrilled with the responses, considering how the top Technology Newsletters are driving revenue for Substack).

Let’s talk about how network effect actually works.