Hitting 50k newsletter subscribers isn't easy. But the Growth In Reverse podcast reveals how newsletters are doing it. Chenell Basilio has spent the past 2+ years and thousands of hours reverse engineering how the biggest newsletter creators in the world have grown audiences of 50,000 to 1M subscribers—and beyond. Join Chenell and her cohost Dylan Redekop every week to learn the most effective and unique newsletter growth strategies, hear from other newsletter experts, and figure out how to turn your newsletter into a profitable business. Check out the newsletter of the same name at growthinreverse.com →
AUDIO - 007 Best Growth Strategies of 2024
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[00:00:00] Chenell Basilio: I'm always looking for people doing newsletter or just written content that is like exclusive tips. Exclusives are so fascinating because you're the only person who has this content.
[00:00:10] Dylan Redekop: Optimizing for the internal share is like mwah.
[00:00:13] Chenell Basilio: When I was listening and doing the research, I was like, okay, wow, I am not on that level.
And can we just give her some props for being an older woman and being on Twitch? I think that's freaking awesome.
[00:00:23] Dylan Redekop: Suncost fallacy, like don't let that just keep you mired in this algorithm that is no longer serving you like.
[00:00:28] Chenell Basilio: I feel like he probably had this full checklist and notion, like, okay, an hour before post do this.
After a while, you're just like, I cannot wake up and do this again, unless your name is Justin Walsh and you just are a machine. The engagement, it matters, but it doesn't matter as much as you think.
[00:00:42] Dylan Redekop: That's the stuff that keeps you coming back.
[00:00:50] Chenell Basilio: Welcome back to the growth in reverse podcast. I'm Chanel and
[00:00:53] Dylan Redekop: I'm Dylan.
[00:00:54] Chenell Basilio: This is our first recording of January of 2025. Which is exciting. Yes. Whole new year. Yes.
[00:00:59] Dylan Redekop: It's, it is [00:01:00] a whole new year. Oh. Should not sing . Okay. Yeah. I love it. Do you
[00:01:04] Chenell Basilio: have any good plans for the, for the new year,
[00:01:06] Dylan Redekop: uh, plans for the new year?
Not nothing super specific. I am, I'm looking forward to, you know, the. What the year will bring, um, have some personal goals. I'd, I'd like to achieve and definitely some goals with, you know, this podcast and, and other things that we're working on that I'm really excited for. How about you?
[00:01:24] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Um, this year is going to be a lot of travel.
I think I'm going to like six or seven conferences, which is a lot, but it's exciting. Um, I always love getting to meet people in person and just hang out with fellow newsletter nerds. So
[00:01:36] Dylan Redekop: which ones are you going to, or most excited for?
[00:01:38] Chenell Basilio: Well, the one coming up soonest is a newsletter marketing summit, the one Matt McGarry's conference I'm speaking at, um, which should be fun.
I'm excited to jump in and kind of meet some of those other people that I haven't met yet. So
[00:01:50] Dylan Redekop: that was at the end of February, right?
[00:01:51] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. In Austin,
[00:01:52] Dylan Redekop: in Austin.
[00:01:53] Chenell Basilio: That'll be a good one. But then other than that, uh, CX, which is a creator. Entrepreneur expo
[00:01:59] Dylan Redekop: economy in all. [00:02:00] Oh, did they change the name? I think they
[00:02:00] Chenell Basilio: changed the name of it.
Yeah. Oh, dang.
[00:02:02] Dylan Redekop: Okay. So CEX,
[00:02:04] Chenell Basilio: the same, uh, same acronym hand. Yeah, exactly. Acronym. Um, but that one's in August. I was looking at my calendar and then, um, yeah, Justin Moore is having a conference in March, the sponsor games, which should be fun. Sounds like it's going to be a different thing where he's kind of like actually getting people to pitch sponsors live, which little nerve wracking, but that'll be fun.
[00:02:24] Dylan Redekop: I think that'd be really cool. I love that he's taking, he just, he takes different approaches to content, to everything he does, which is super refreshing.
[00:02:32] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So that'll be fun. Other than that, I'm just trying to get myself back on social media. Um, actually we had that podcast a couple of weeks ago about what I wish I would, uh, would have done.
And the biggest one was stay on social. So. In the growth and reverse pro community. We're doing like a 30 day LinkedIn challenge, which started today. Uh, so yeah, it's going to be good. I'm excited to kind of get back on the, on the train of posting daily. So
[00:02:55] Dylan Redekop: back, back on the social horse as it were today being also January 2nd.
So not the [00:03:00] middle of the month as people will probably be hearing this, but yeah, we're, we're going strong into the new year.
[00:03:05] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I'm excited. Get back on the wagon.
[00:03:07] Dylan Redekop: So what are we talking about in this podcast?
[00:03:09] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So the first podcast we did was the wildest growth strategies. And I thought that there was a lot left that we could have talked about.
And so with it being the new year, I figured why don't we just do something of like the best growth strategies I saw with the deep dives I wrote in 2024. So kind of like a yearly recap, but pulling out the most interesting ones or some of the most interesting ones.
[00:03:30] Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I love it. And, and I think with some of these too.
Um, just the unique nature of them. You don't see a lot of people doing, um, that's what drove me to, to chose the ones I chose. At least they, they were, they were good, um, in terms of like helping the, the newsletter grow. But I also thought like, you know, the most successful growth strategies might be like.
Pay growth with Facebook ads. But I mean, that's, that's tried, tested and true. That's boring to some degree it's been talked about. I thought these were a little bit more interesting than more of a unique angle and didn't necessarily need a whole [00:04:00] bunch of, um, spend in them either.
[00:04:02] Chenell Basilio: These are going to be good.
I'm excited to, uh, it's always fun to like go back to something I spent like 40 hours researching and like, it was like a whirlwind at the time. And then like, honestly, after I hit publish, I like completely forget about all these things until. Something like this where I'm like going back through and I'm like, Oh, that was so cool.
I forgot about that. So I'm excited to kind of relive those.
[00:04:21] Dylan Redekop: That's amazing. When you're, when you're done publishing these, is it kind of like, you know, they say the, the waiter, the waitress at a restaurant remembers everybody's order, they submit the order. And then as soon as that order is submitted, just like vanishes from the memory.
Are you kind of like that with these deep dives? Like, do you have
[00:04:35] Chenell Basilio: to really, yeah. Somebody I'll come back and be like, Oh, I remember that thing. And I'm like, Oh, kind of like, yeah, go look at what I wrote. And yeah. Oh yeah.
[00:04:44] Dylan Redekop: That's awesome. Well, we're gonna, we're gonna go look at what you wrote. So do you want to start or should I?
[00:04:48] Chenell Basilio: Um, why don't you take that first one that you were looking at?
[00:04:51] Dylan Redekop: Okay, cool. So some of you may be familiar with K. He, he writes, uh, rad reads, which he's been writing for, geez, I think close to 10 years [00:05:00] or so. And so, um, if you haven't, Go check it out. Um, but K he, he did something that you wrote about in your deep dive that I thought was really cool.
It was kind of like a lead magnet in disguise. So one of K he's things, um, one thing that he monetized quite well was he got really good at using notion and using notion for productivity. So he had a course called supercharger productivity. And so what he was doing was tweeting threads about how you can use certain notion features.
And in those threads. He would link out to loom videos. So he's using loom as the video capture platform. And he would have these loom videos on how to do them. That he'd walk you through them. They were free videos to access, and then he would throw a little badge in the corner of that loom video saying subscribe, which is, I believe a paid feature for loom.
And then I. I didn't look closely, but I assume he probably had somewhere also in like the comments or in the, um, caption for that video or the description for that video, a link probably as well. And that [00:06:00] would lead people to his, um, newsletter where they could subscribe. And I just thought that's really cool because it's like, I'm helping people accomplish this goal of, you know, or at least teaching them something where they're going to be able to, um, go from, you know, have, Transformation of not knowing how to do something to knowing how to do something.
And they're gonna be like, Hey, this guy's awesome. He helped me. And now I'm going to subscribe to his newsletter where it's full of this content as well.
[00:06:23] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. This was so fun when I saw this, um, because you know, like he's actually just share it. Like typically people, when they teach you something, quote unquote, they'll be like, Hey, go sign up for my newsletter and get the full video.
He's like, no, no, here's the loom video. Go watch it. It's free. I don't even need you to sign up. But then at the end, he would be like, if you want this actual template, go subscribe. So. Cool. I mean, it's still kind of like something similar to that, where you're asking people to sign up for their newsletter, but he did it in such a different way.
And honestly, when I saw these, I was like, I didn't even know that you could do that with Loom. Like, I did not know that you could add a custom button. And even on the free plan, I think you can do this. Oh, really? Wow, this is fun. Yeah, I think [00:07:00] so. I was like, this is fascinating. Um, and one of like the side things of this is like these tweets, people would just reshare them because he's giving it away for free right there.
Like he's not, they're not re posting him asking for someone to sign up for his email list. They're reposting like a full loom video, which was interesting. Um, I have a feeling this wouldn't work as well these days because. Yeah. Twitter links, not really one in the same. They don't do as well, but I wonder if there's some way to kind of rehash this.
[00:07:28] Dylan Redekop: I think it goes back to, even if you have a link in your, in your content, if it's good enough and people, you get the right people seeing it and sharing it, it's still going to,
So I think what he did was just provided such great value that people were just like sharing it and that's what, that's what helped it spread by like wildfire. So I love what he was doing. I love how it was kind of like a lead magnet in disguise, where he's giving you that basically free content and then preempting you with like, Oh, you can get that template where this is all done for you [00:08:00] as well.
Um, just sign up for, for the newsletter and you'll get it.
[00:08:02] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, this was a very interesting growth strategy when I stumbled into it. And I think even he was on, um, like a YouTube video with Ali Abdaal, like during the pandemic, they were just like creating videos because everybody was at home anyway. I think in one of those videos, like Ali Abdaal linked to one of these loom videos.
I was like, ah, so good. It's almost like he's linking them to Kay's. Like landing page for someone to sign up for his email. So
[00:08:27] Dylan Redekop: basically, yeah, yeah, really smart. I thought that was cool.
[00:08:29] Chenell Basilio: So this next one is from Akash Gupta and he has over 150, 000 email subscribers on sub stack at this point. Uh, but he actually stumbled into this strategy.
Um, he wrote a piece, uh, he writes a newsletter called product growth. It's about growing with product, uh, kind of like a Lenny Richardson, but different. And so he wrote this piece called the ultimate guide to onboarding. And he. Kind of went viral with it in terms of like the new subscribers, the new paid subscribers he was seeing.
And on the back end, he realized that all of these subscribers were coming from Meta. [00:09:00] So someone on the product team must have found this article and shared it internally. And then he got a bunch of other paid subscribers through that. So from the company
[00:09:07] Dylan Redekop: Meta, not from Meta the platform. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, right. Yeah. From the company.
[00:09:11] Chenell Basilio: Yep. So these people in the product development team at Meta, uh, we're actually signing up and paying because they have an R and D budget, right? You can have, or an L and D I should say, uh, learning and development budget. So 150 a year subscription for them is probably nothing.
So they were just like, yep, I'll read this, uh, signed up. And so. He discovered this like after going through and looking at the data and he has this quote, he said, writing more pieces like that, that can potentially go viral within these big tech companies and learning with learning and development budgets is my number one goal.
And so we had this whole product growth flywheel of like, you know, the input is just him writing really good content that is geared towards someone sharing it in a Slack community or with their team at their large company. Um, and then they would sign up, people would share it. And it just kept like, Building this flywheel.
So I thought that was super interesting. Um, [00:10:00] especially for a B2B newsletter, it's like, yeah, how can you optimize for the internal share?
[00:10:04] Dylan Redekop: Yeah. And that's what that's, I don't know if he called it that, or if you called it that, but like optimizing for the internal share is like, just like, I love that.
[00:10:11] Chenell Basilio: Yeah.
He called it that I cannot take care of for that. Okay.
[00:10:15] Dylan Redekop: No, it was really smart. And I it's, it's challenging if you're writing more of a broad, uh, broad appeal newsletter or something that isn't necessarily, um, a B2B experience like his is, but that being said, if you're writing into a niche community or a really kind of, um, passionate community, you could gear content that that community will share with other people in their community.
Right. And I don't necessarily mean physical community, but even online communities and that sort of thing. So, um, It doesn't necessarily have to be something that people are going to be sharing in their companies, but company is in a way it's, it's a community. Right. And so just that mindset of creating content that somebody would want to share in their community.
Oh, check out what I found. Right. I think we've done that in the growth and reverse pro community. We [00:11:00] found great content online or great tools, and we've shared them there because we know it's, it's helping everybody else. Cause we're all, you know, striving to reach a similar cause.
[00:11:08] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, a hundred percent.
That's a great, uh, Great call out there. Nice.
[00:11:12] Dylan Redekop: We don't talk a lot about, um, at least I don't think we do talk a lot about short form or video content. And somebody who you wrote about, who's really done this masterfully, uh, in my opinion is Kyla Scanlon. Um, so she writes the, well, she writes Kyla's newsletter.
Uh, it is called, and it's on Substack. It's got 69, 000 subscribers. And she also has a number of paid subscribers as well. And Kyla writes about, you know, Um, basically the economy, um, mostly us based economy, um, and. She does really awesome short form content and has gotten her, I would assume a large amount of her subscribers and her followers.
Uh, Tik Tok, she's blown up. She has over 217, 000 followers on Tik Tok. She's got, I think, 270, 000 followers on Instagram where she can't [00:12:00] Be sure, but she's probably mostly posting the exact same content, short form reels, tick talk, um, type of content there. And she even has a pretty significant Twitter following over a hundred, over a hundred thousand.
And she's driving all these people to, um, her website that is really, really minimalist. Um, and it's really interesting that her content, um, that is quite creative, drives people to a very minimalist website that you can't even scroll on. But what she's done with this content is, um, Basically provided really, um, short form edutainment, I guess, on, uh, that's, it's both fun and you learn something with it, which I love.
I think, uh, we've quoted this as, um, or I've heard this quoted as like chocolate covered almond content. I think Kaitlin Burgoyne, shout out to her for that sort of reference where it's like, it's fun and you don't realize you're learning something, but you are. And I think that's really driven her a lot of subscribers, a lot of attention, a lot of followers, and it's been really successful.
And. I love it. I just, I can't get enough [00:13:00] of the short form. Like I don't, I'm not an economic nerd, but she does such a great job with it.
[00:13:05] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. Well, she'll take like, like very newsworthy topics at the time and be like, here's why that's happening. And it's like, how do you know that? Like, she's very, very smart.
When I was listening and doing the research, I was like, okay, wow, I am not on that level.
[00:13:20] Dylan Redekop: You're not like a macroeconomic, uh, Uh, expert or guru. No, no, not at all.
[00:13:26] Chenell Basilio: But I think it just like, it gets people to share the content too, because I mean, if, if someone's explaining something I was just talking about with my best friend and I'm like, Hey, you're like, look at this video.
This kind of like explains why this is happening. It's just like, it's not optimizing for the internal share, but you're optimizing for some kind of a share for sure.
[00:13:42] Dylan Redekop: Yep. Yeah. And it doesn't, it does a few other things too. It, it, um, One, she proves that you can convert people from video to written because a lot of the arguments is, Oh, publish on.
If you're writing a newsletter, publish and promote on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on these written platforms, um, cause you're going to have a better conversion rate, which might still be true, but [00:14:00] she's proof that people will see your video content and still want to subscribe to read your words potentially. So I think I love that she's kind of proven that, um, that you can do that and have success with it.
And. She's also doing something that I think a lot of us could, um, take a cue from, which is basically like having the short form content inform her longer form content, because if she's putting out, say a real or a tick tock every day, yeah, none of them all going to hit, but the ones that do, she'll know, okay, people are interested in this.
I can actually write a good newsletter piece around this. I could gate it. I could charge. Um, it could be like a, almost a lead magnet for paid subscribers. So I love how she's basically using this like short form, low production. She's not investing probably a ton, ton of time and effort into it. It helps that she's very smart and knowledgeable on the topic, but she's really letting that, um, also inform what she writes about too.
[00:14:51] Chenell Basilio: It's a good one. She definitely has the knowledge there. It kind of looks like she slowed down quite a bit with her growth. I'm wondering if she's like. Because she wrote the book and everything. I was going to say kind of like pivoted a little [00:15:00] bit into, you know, focusing on more longer evergreen type of stuff versus trying to grow the number of followers on Instagram and that kind of thing.
[00:15:08] Dylan Redekop: Yeah, it is possible. I did notice she did, I think as recently as mid December put out a Tik TOK, but I don't think she's been quite as prolific lately, but we did, I didn't even mention that she published a book called in this economy, which, oh yeah, I love the title because it's so it's so it's, it's a meme, like it's, it's so on point with her content.
Um, And it's just, yeah, it's great. I haven't read the book, but I think she spent the first, probably half of the year finishing it and promoting it. And then now it's published and she's probably doing more promotions for it.
[00:15:37] Chenell Basilio: Moving on to Yossi Levi, which is, we've talked about him a little bit before. Um, I think we talked about his like content planning strategy before, but this, this was actually, Interesting to me, because so you'll see runs the car dealership guy newsletter, Twitter account, et cetera.
He essentially finds all this interesting information around the car dealership space and shares that before most other people [00:16:00] know about it. So he's almost like the go to news platform for the car space at this point. Um, in the beginning, he started off anonymously and now he's grown. Uh, he's actually come out and told people who he is.
So this is still very interesting though, because he gets these like anonymous submissions and tips from like higher ups and like different car dealerships, car companies. And the one that really stuck out to me was, uh, this was March of 2024. So he essentially got a picture in his inbox of someone, I guess, An email was sent out to the entire corporation at Stellantis, which is like the company behind Jeep, Dodge, Ram, like Chrysler, it's like the parent company.
And so they sent this notice to all their employees saying like, Hey, everybody's working from home tomorrow. And Yossi posted this and he's like, uh, smells kind of like some layoffs are coming. Right. But this is before any of this happened, but somebody felt comfortable enough to send this to him anonymously and he posted it.[00:17:00]
Um, and sure enough, within 24 hours, he was like layoffs confirmed, 400 positions gone. Um, and it was just fascinating. He got comments on that post, like. Um, you are on the inside of the inside with this info. And so I am, I'm always looking for people doing newsletter or just written content that is like exclusive tips.
So one of the other ones that comes to mind was, uh, Gergay or Roz, probably saying his name wrong. He writes a pragmatic engineer, but he would also get anonymous tips from like startups, uh, different kinds of companies. And he would share that. He called it the scoop. And so he would share those tips in his newsletter and people trusted him not to like out them for sharing it.
So he had like this insider information. But I think exclusives are so fascinating because you're the only person who has this content. So like, if you go ahead and publish that, it's going to get shared. Like no one else has this information. Even if someone else republishes it, they're. Likely or probably going to, uh, you know, say like, Hey, I found this through Yossi [00:18:00] Levi or whatever.
So yeah, exclusives can be like a really interesting way to do content.
[00:18:04] Dylan Redekop: How would somebody get to that point? I just, I guess like that would be, it would be awesome. But how would you like, I don't know, start day one and do something that you probably don't fall into it. It's probably something that you're, you're like grown up in the car dealership, right?
Industry. And
[00:18:20] Chenell Basilio: well, yeah, so this side of this exclusives is kind of like the anonymous tips type of thing, but even like us having, um, Eddie Schleiner on the podcast, like that content with us three lives nowhere else. So if someone quotes that piece of content, It's still an exclusive piece of content.
Like you're still creating something that nobody else has essentially. Um, this is just like taking it to a whole nother level. It's like advanced exclusives, if you will.
[00:18:45] Dylan Redekop: Uh, you're kind of like the, um, you're kind of like in a way, like a gossip magazine, but not because you're, it's not gossip. It's actually, you know, insider info, but.
Um, and I don't want to conflate like gossip usually has a negative stereotype. I don't mean that in a negative [00:19:00] way, but you're like, you're kind of like the person everybody's going to, to like share information or get information from. So yeah, really interesting.
[00:19:06] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I mean, you could even say growth in reverse in the early days is.
It's doing exclusive content like you can still find it elsewhere, but because it was published first in my newsletter, like hypothetically, it was the first one. Um, sure. Come along and do the same thing.
[00:19:21] Dylan Redekop: Yeah, like a fully assembled backlog history of this person kind of thing was there, no one else had been doing that for at least the people you were writing about.
[00:19:29] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So maybe we can talk more about exclusives in the future episode. It's kind of an interesting topic.
[00:19:34] Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I really think it, it has a lot of legs, especially the. Again, the newsletter space is only getting more and more competitive. So you're going to need to probably stand out to really see some, some growth, um, in the coming years.
So having, being exclusive, having kind of the insider track on things is going to help.
[00:19:52] Chenell Basilio: Agreed. Do you have another one you want to, uh, jump into?
[00:19:55] Dylan Redekop: I do. I do. I'm going to say I've got two here. I think we've got time for both. [00:20:00] Why don't I start with, um, Dr. Julie Gerner. So, um, The thing that, that I thought was really interesting with dr, dr Gerner's, um, deep dive that you wrote was she had been trying basically, uh, she'd been popular and gotten found a lot of success with growth on a bunch of different channels.
But the interesting thing is she kind of knew when to pivot and switch from those channels. And I think this is really apt for the time we're in and I'll get to that in a second, but she basically started posting on Quora. Back in kind of the mid 2010s, like 2014, 2016 kind of timeframe. She was posting a lot on Quora.
She got the three time like top writer award on Quora. Um, and then she pivoted and she was, um, doing Twitch for a while. She was doing Twitch streams. Then she pivoted again in 2020 and she went to Twitter and really grew Twitter from like 7, 000 followers to now she has over 135 followers there. And so she seems to be really.
Um, in tune with basically going hard on a [00:21:00] platform, um, getting as much out of it as you can, and then pivoting to a new one when it's not really providing you the same returns. And so it almost makes you wonder she's been now, but four years, um, on, on Twitter, I wonder. If there's going to be a change coming there, if she's kind of tapped that out.
And the timing is interesting, just talking about this, because we see like this kind of mass migration of people going from one platform to the other. There's been a lot of talk about reach on Twitter and that sort of thing. And people are trying things like blue sky or threads. And I'm curious to see if, if she goes from one to the other, now that she's.
Potentially kind of tapped out an audience or maybe not seeing the same reach and, and success that she was originally on Twitter.
[00:21:39] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And can we just give her some props for being an older woman and being on Twitch? I think that's freaking awesome. Yeah, like, absolutely. Over 30 and on Twitch, like, okay.
And you're not gaming. Like, I think that's really cool that she was like, I'm going to try this out because that is, I I think that's the first time from any deep dive I've done that someone was on Twitch.
[00:21:59] Dylan Redekop: Yep. [00:22:00] Yeah. I was not
[00:22:00] Chenell Basilio: expecting that from her, but I thought that was awesome.
[00:22:02] Dylan Redekop: No, when you, when you hear the word Twitch, you definitely think a certain stereotype of a person.
Um, and not necessarily in a bad way, but just like, you don't think of somebody who, um, is maybe. Like her. So I think that's really cool. It was really
[00:22:18] Chenell Basilio: cool. Um, but yeah, definitely being willing to almost kill your darlings in a different sense. Like sure. You're not like killing your writing, but you spent so much time and hours and energy, like learning a platform and then to just be like, all right, I'm going to move my energy elsewhere.
And just like, let that sit props, like, and I think that comes back to like all of the research she's done on like high performance and like just being able to like cut the cord if you need to and that kind of thing.
[00:22:42] Dylan Redekop: Yeah. The sunk cost fallacy. Like don't let that. Just keep you mired in this like algorithm that is no longer serving you like, which a lot of people have, you know, mentioned Twitter is not kind of serving them the impressions and the views and the reach that they used to.
So I could see that changing, if not for her, for a lot of [00:23:00] people, uh, not saying that. You know, blue sky or another platform is going to be the answer. But, um, I think the whole point is realizing when you've kind of tapped one out and experimenting with others. So it could be a really interesting opportunity, even, um, you know, I was thinking about this going from a written platform to like, we talked about Kyla Scanlon with, uh, Video, uh, or going to Instagram, there could be a whole other audience who is consuming content, um, just in a different way that prefers more of the, the more visual or the video type of content.
And you could, you know, start really tapping into that audience as well. They still will love your content. They're just consuming it in a different way. So I think that could be an opportunity for a lot of people.
[00:23:38] Chenell Basilio: I like that. All right. I'm going to move on to, um, Ben Tassel from Ben's Bites. This one was fun to see because I actually saw it real time, but like going back and like rehashing it was exciting to watch.
Um, so Ben writes a newsletter called Ben's Bites and he started this when, like right before Chachi BT and everything came out, like when I was starting to get big and he was like, I don't know [00:24:00] enough about this. I'm going to teach myself. About AI and all these tools that are coming out because honestly, like 700 new AI tools probably hit the market every single day.
And so he was like, let me just try and figure this out. So he started a newsletter called Ben's bites and he did something called being the reply guy. And so he would go under, uh, if someone was mentioning any of these tools on Twitter, he would go under that tweet and be like, Hey, shouting this out in the newsletter tomorrow.
And just like super simple. But he would reply to all these people and then they're like, Oh, I'm going to get a shout out in the newsletter. Great. So he was already going to be publishing about these different, um, either the news for AI or the different tool. And so he would just like comment underneath, like going to cover it tomorrow, my AI newsletter.
And so he was just active in the space and telling people like, Hey, just saw this. I'm going to actually write about this tomorrow too. And so the big one that stood out to me, um, he replied to the CEO of Google at the time, Sundar, um, and he got. the reply alone by itself got like 26, [00:25:00] 000 views. Wow. Uh, and I think he got like probably hundreds of subscribers from that just from replying with a link.
Um, fascinating. So he did this over and over again to the point where. I would see it on Twitter, people being like, yep, there's the reply guy. And so it just became like a joke. Um, but he used to work for Ryan Hoover and Product Hunt. And so him and Ryan grew Product Hunt in the same way. And I thought this was fascinating because I didn't know this before.
Um, so Ryan tweeted for those that run a newsletter, what tactic had the biggest impact on subscriber growth? And Ben replied, having a tweet thread go viral or replying to tweets saying, I'll add this to my newsletter, the link. And he said, tactic taken from the product hunt days, wink, wink. And I was like, yes, this is so good.
Why reinvent this with the wheel? You've already done this and it worked.
[00:25:53] Dylan Redekop: You know, it's funny that you mentioned this because I was looking at talking about this one as well. When. Just doing some research for this episode. And [00:26:00] I was like, in part of me, it was like, this is really cool and really awesome.
We should talk about it. But then the other part of it was like, Oh no, I don't want to perpetuate the reply guy, people on, on these platforms, just like hijacking feeds, but it works though. Like, so that's the thing. Um, it, or at least it can work and it works for Ben. Um, and I just. Would like caution people, like if you're going to be the reply guy, like, um, I be strategic and not annoying, I guess, and don't use AI.
Like, those are like my main three things, because we, we have enough of that out there.
[00:26:30] Chenell Basilio: Yes. Make sure you're actually going to put it in your newsletter and not just like saying something about that. Yeah.
[00:26:35] Dylan Redekop: Yeah. So this would work really well if you're doing a industry niche focused roundup type of email.
It doesn't have to be just a roundup. type of email, but, um, at least you have it in like your curated link section. Uh, yeah, this would be, this would be a really great strategy. I use this a little bit to some degree when I was growing my newsletter. I'm going to saw other people doing something similar.
They very well may have gotten it from Ben too, because it really did work for him. Good stuff. [00:27:00] Yes. Uh, well let's do. Speaking of reply guys and comments and sort of gaming algorithms a bit. Um, let's talk about Tom Alder because I, I don't know, he's kind of like the LinkedIn wizard in my mind. Um, we've discussed him a little bit on other podcasts, so I won't go too deep into this, but, um, you know, some.
Some details that maybe are helpful is he's got over 107, 000 LinkedIn followers, and he's got 60, 000 plus subscribers to his strategy breakdowns newsletter. And he's really figured out how to, um, get the most out of the LinkedIn algorithm. And it all started with a challenge, a 30 day challenge, uh, which I don't know if we got inspiration from, from 30 day LinkedIn challenge, but I thought, uh, talk.
Yeah, I thought the timing of this would, uh, would be interesting talking about this, what we're doing. Um, but it's where his growth really started. Right. And he grew his newsletter, um, to 5, 000 subscribers before he had even published it. We've talked about that. Um, but really he has, um, basically laid out this formula, if you [00:28:00] will, on how he writes his LinkedIn posts, how he, um, engages with the algorithm beforehand, before he actually publishes his post, how he adds comments into his own.
Post when the time serves and, um, and then how he engages after and Chanel's written. She's like, got this mapped out really nicely in her deep dive. So I will point your attention to the deep dive to get this all listed out, but it's definitely something that, um, I know I'm looking to for this month as we're doing this LinkedIn growth challenge and something that I think more people probably could.
Benefit from a few of those, a few of his strategies as well. It's worked very well for him clearly.
[00:28:38] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. He was almost like, he was very strategic with this. Like there was, I feel like he probably had this full checklist and notion like, okay, five minutes before post or an hour before post do this, you know, and like all of this stuff to make sure, like, as soon as, I don't know, just that he executed it perfectly.
Um, and it really helped him in the early days. It's, it's funny though. He actually slowed down posting a little bit. I'm sure it was just because of the end of the [00:29:00] year. But, um, when he launched
[00:29:01] Dylan Redekop: his course too.
[00:29:02] Chenell Basilio: Yes. I'm wondering if he's taking a little break here to regroup and catch his breath after launching.
[00:29:09] Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yeah, it definitely could be, it definitely could be. I mean, there's, there's only so much stamina one can have for this kind of thing, unless you're starting to hire it out, of course. But, um, I'm not saying that's what Tom did either or is going to do, but that, that definitely will help with the, the burnout factor.
[00:29:23] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. And I speak from experience, which is why I'm doing this LinkedIn challenge, because I put myself out going too hard for about nine months after launching the newsletter. It works, but after a while, you're just like, I cannot wake up and do this again.
[00:29:38] Dylan Redekop: Day after day after day. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:40] Chenell Basilio: Unless your name is Justin Walsh and you just are a machine.
[00:29:43] Dylan Redekop: He is. He's a machine. It's uh, six ish years, seven years maybe of him just like crushing it every day. Um, yeah. Yeah. Hat tip to him because I don't think I have that in me.
[00:29:57] Chenell Basilio: Uh, yeah. That's a lot. Do you have any last [00:30:00] ones
[00:30:00] Dylan Redekop: you wanted to talk about Chanel?
[00:30:01] Chenell Basilio: Um, I feel like there are so many more, but yeah, I feel like that's probably a good, good place to end it.
Um, Just, uh, everybody get back on LinkedIn here and see if we can't grow this.
[00:30:12] Dylan Redekop: Yeah.
[00:30:12] Chenell Basilio: Yeah.
[00:30:13] Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Let's, uh, I think one of, not that we plan to talk about this, but one of my goals with LinkedIn is just to come at it with like a fresher, more fun sort of attitude and not always like. Post for, um, still be strategic about it, but not optimize every post for like the best hook ever and the absolute best formatting, because that's where I just push it off and then I don't eventually do it.
Cause I, you know, perfection is the enemy to some degree. So I just want to come at, come at this next month with, um, a little bit more of a, just kind of a, not a who cares attitude at all, but more of a open to. Not having, you know, a post absolutely take off or anything like that. Just less pressure and more fun.
[00:30:52] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I think it's actually pretty telling. Um, a lot of the people that we've seen grow super fast on LinkedIn or Twitter or any of these [00:31:00] platforms, this stuff stops working the same after a while. And so I think if you can come at it with a fresh perspective, kind of like you're talking about, just like have fun, see what's going on.
Like, enjoy yourself, be social on social media, like
[00:31:12] Dylan Redekop: instead
[00:31:12] Chenell Basilio: of just trying to make it a place where you market your newsletter, um, Um, I think there is a lot of new stuff that we can all learn. So I think it's, it's good to have these new, like reset periods where you're just like, let's try something different and see what happens.
Like, even if I don't get a single newsletter subscriber, like, Hey, I got a DM from this guy and like next week we're talking, um, like even this morning, I was like, I posted and this guy, Niall, who I had talked to year, probably a year and a half ago, um, through LinkedIn was like, Hey, it's so great to see you back on here.
We should catch up. And so I DMed him a link to my schedule and I was like, let's do it. And we already have a call book for next week. So like,
[00:31:48] Dylan Redekop: awesome.
[00:31:49] Chenell Basilio: It's just fun. I love that stuff. Like the numbers of like the engagement. It matters, but it doesn't matter as much as you think
[00:31:55] Dylan Redekop: the numbers are this like fading feeling of like goodness, [00:32:00] whereas something like what Niall reached out and said, Hey, great to see you.
And then you're chatting. Like that's the stuff that keeps you coming back. Right? Like you get some momentum from seeing all the charts kind of going up into the right in the beginning, but I mean, there's only so much that's going to happen. And for so long, and then that can start, if you, if you keep expecting that to motivate you, I don't think, um, you're looking at the right thing.
I think it's. True engagement, building these kinds of connections, uh, just with people and getting to know people. I think that's, that's where it's going to carry you forward. And you're not less likely at least to burn out.
[00:32:30] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I think the other thing people don't realize is like, once your follower account gets like over 50 K or like over a hundred K or your email subscriber list goes up, people stop.
Being as willing to like DM you cause they're scared and they think like you're this big person where, so you probably hear less of those people as you grow, but people don't think that they think like, Oh, I'm going to get more opportunities and all this stuff. And that's true. But also there's like this level of like, I don't know, humanness that you lose as you like become this mini celebrity online.
So [00:33:00] I think it's almost interesting in the beginning, just like lean into having a small following and like do. Like be social, like enjoy yourself, engage with others and meet friends.
[00:33:09] Dylan Redekop: I think some of my favorite posts that I've seen in the last few months have just been people like posting about more of their lives than their business or like business advice or anything like that.
So I'm trying to lean into that a little bit more as well. And, uh, if I don't have a great idea for a post that day, I'm just going to post about a story or, you know, some sort of anecdote experience that I've had. And, um, I'll be curious to see if that resonates with people, if they're interested in it, if that, um, just falls flat either way, it's, it'll be fun to see what happens.
[00:33:34] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I'm excited to, uh, kind of see where this 30 days goes.
[00:33:38] Dylan Redekop: Maybe it'll turn into 60.
[00:33:40] Chenell Basilio: Maybe, or maybe like Tom, it'll turn into, what was his like 900 or something?
[00:33:45] Dylan Redekop: Oh yeah. Uh, yeah, it was crazy. He had, he had posted pretty consecutively for a long time and like mad props. Cause Don't know if I don't know if I have that in me.
I also, I don't know what if I want us to be sitting on my, you know, computer on the weekends, [00:34:00] um, and not tending to my family and, and other things. So, um, yeah, I'm not saying that Tom didn't do that. Just, uh, I know I would probably have to sacrifice that time and it's not. It's not, uh, the trade off is not one I'm willing to make.
[00:34:13] Chenell Basilio: I, uh, published the newsletter on Monday this week and it was kind of insightful and nice to not have to worry about doing it on Sunday morning. Even if I like finish a deep dive or finish the post beforehand, like Sunday morning is always inevitably tied up with writing the sponsor ad or like filling out the rest of the email and like making sure the subject lines, like it's just all that stuff that you're like, Oh, I'll just do it Sunday morning.
And then it's like three hours in and you're like, Oh my God, why did I do this again? Yeah.
[00:34:38] Dylan Redekop: Why did I do this to myself again? Yes. Yeah, I feel that I feel that well, did you, I'm curious, uh, the Sunday, the Monday morning post, did it, uh, change anything in terms of open rates and engagement or was it pretty much all, um, same, same?
[00:34:53] Chenell Basilio: Um, it was similar. I got some replies of people being like, I didn't even realize that you send it on Sundays. So keep doing [00:35:00] whatever you want to do. It's like, okay, cool. Um, yeah, the open rates were about the same. So. Didn't impact it at all, which is interesting. Um, good to know. Good to know.
[00:35:12] Dylan Redekop: Yeah, that's cool.
I think the, unless your email or your newsletter's name is like Friday fines or Saturday, solo printer, or, you know, a day of the week is attached to the name, I think. We as publishers hold so much more like, um, clout, not clout, but just like, like cling on to like, no, I publish on Wednesday. So I have, like, if I deviate from that, everyone's going to be like, Oh, what happened?
Why aren't you publishing today? When the truth is nobody's paying attention to it that much. So
[00:35:40] Chenell Basilio: yeah,
[00:35:41] Dylan Redekop: you can stray.
[00:35:42] Chenell Basilio: You can definitely stray. I did not get a single email of someone saying where, like, why didn't you send this yesterday?
[00:35:48] Dylan Redekop: Did you think you would,
[00:35:49] Chenell Basilio: I don't know. I mean, I feel like there's always this feeling of like, I'm going to, I'm doing it wrong.
I'm like letting people down, but it doesn't matter. Like as long as you're showing up and you still send something, I think it's fine.
[00:35:58] Dylan Redekop: Yep. Showing up, [00:36:00] sending good, good quality content and helping people. That's what, that's what it's all about.
[00:36:04] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, for sure. Cool. Well, uh, I guess we'll wrap this one here.
[00:36:09] Dylan Redekop: As we've gone on a 10 minute
[00:36:10] Chenell Basilio: rant.
[00:36:10] Dylan Redekop: Yes. 10 minute rant. Uh, well, thanks for chatting about this. I hope everybody has a. Epic start to 2025. And, uh, thanks for hanging out with us. Yeah.
[00:36:20] Chenell Basilio: See you in the next episode.