There is one question I get all the time:
“I hate chasing the algorithms. Can I grow my newsletter without social media?”
And I get it – it feels impossible to build an audience without posting daily Twitter threads or LinkedIn carousels. The constant hamster wheel of posting and engaging just to get a few subscribers can be exhausting.
But the good news is that there are ways to grow your audience and newsletter without checking Twitter every 5 minutes.
Side note: This post came from a podcast episode I just hit publish on. You can listen here, or watch the full video below:
Start with Great Content That’s Worth Sharing
Before diving into growth tactics, let’s address the elephant in the room: your content needs to be exceptional.
Not just “good” – but so good that readers can’t help but share it with others.
When you’re not relying on social media’s built-in distribution, the quality of your writing becomes even more critical. Every share, every forward, every “hey, you need to check this out” happens because your content genuinely helped someone.
I feel like the 80/20 rule applies to this almost perfectly:
- Spend 80% of your time creating remarkable content; you probably only need to spend 20% on marketing
- Spend 20% on content creation; you’ll have to spend the other 80% of your effort on marketing and promoting that content
Think about it – if you spend 80% of your time creating remarkable content that stands out, you only need to spend 20% on marketing. But if you only put 20% into content creation, you’ll have a much harder time getting people to share and promote your work.
I like to call this the introvert’s guide to growth: you don’t have to talk about yourself as much if your content is so good that people share it for you 🙂
Alright, so let’s jump into some of the ways you can grow your newsletter without social media.
The Art of Strategic Partnerships
If you’ve been reading my content for a while, you know I’m a huge fan of building relationships. It’s been one of the bigger growth levers for my own newsletter, so this section should come as no surprise.
Partnerships can come in all shapes and varieties, but the most important piece is getting to know other people.
Finding Newsletter Partners
There are platforms that make it easy to find potential partners to do cross promotions and other swaps with:
- Lettergrowth.com
- Inbox Reads
- Platform-specific directories (Beehiiv, Kit, Substack, etc.)
Hidden Gems:
- Creator communities you’re already part of
- Your current subscribers (seriously – check their email signatures to see if they have a relevant audience)
- Industry Slack channels
- Reddit communities in your niche
The key is looking beyond the obvious ones. While everyone else fights for attention from the big names, you can often find more engaged audiences through mid-sized newsletters with hyper-engaged followings.
Lead Magnet Swaps
Bryan Harris, who recently shared insights in the Growth in Reverse Pro community, does two lead magnet swaps per week.
That’s it. He’s not on social media, he’s not out there running loads of paid ads to get people to find his work. He’s building his audience by strategically getting in front of other people’s audiences.
Instead of just promoting each other’s newsletters, partners swap valuable resources their audiences can use immediately. That epic lead magnet you created doesn’t have to just be something you talk about on your landing page.
You can give it away to someone else’s audience too. Which gets you in front of a whole different group of people who might find your work enjoyable.
SEO as a Growth Engine
When you think about SEO, you might imagine spending hours gaming the system and obsessing over keywords.
But the newsletter creators who’ve mastered SEO for growing their newsletter take a slightly different approach – they think about solving problems first, optimization second.
I’ll be the first to say that SEO is…changing. It’s no longer the simple “everyone Googles their questions” type of market.
We now have multiple AI tools and apps people can use to search. But that doesn’t mean this is no longer a good strategy. People will always be looking for answers to their questions, whether it’s on Google or elsewhere.
Create Content Around Questions People Have
Ben Collins grew his Google Sheets newsletter to over 50,000 subscribers primarily through search traffic. His approach was strategic – researching keywords around Google Sheets, identifying common questions, and creating content that answered those queries.
The fascinating part? He’s not particularly outspoken in his niche. He simply shows up in search results whenever someone has a Google Sheets question, slowly but steadily building his audience.
Ben Collins didn’t set out to “do SEO” – he set out to become the go-to expert for Google Sheets.
His approach was pretty simple:
- Find real problems people are struggling with
- Create the best possible solution with detailed examples
- Package it in a way that naturally includes the terms people search for
The result? Over 50,000 subscribers who found him primarily through search.
The fascinating part is that Ben isn’t particularly active on social media or known for personal branding. He just consistently shows up in search results when someone needs help with Google Sheets.
The Lean SEO Framework
Pat Walls drives over 1.6M visitors to Starter Story through his unique “lean SEO” approach:
- Create minimum viable content around target keywords
- Wait 30 days to see which posts gain traction
- Double down on the winners with expanded, in-depth content
Instead of spending weeks perfecting each post, he tests multiple pieces of content quickly and lets the data guide his efforts.
Build a Killer Referral Program
The best referral programs don’t just incentivize sharing – they make your readers look good for recommending your newsletter.
The Pickle Ball Strategy
Thomas Shields of The Dink created a brilliant referral program by partnering with pickle ball equipment brands.
Instead of offering generic rewards, he partnered with premium pickle ball brands to offer exactly what his readers wanted: free pickleball gear!
There are a few reasons this worked so well:
- Rewards are directly tied to readers’ interests
- Real value (these paddles cost $75+)
- Products his readers were already planning to buy
- Built-in marketing for the brand partners (making it an easy “yes” for them to give away free stuff)
- Each new subscriber was likely to be another pickle ball enthusiast – because why would you sign up for and share a Pickleball newsletter if not – unless you’re me and are just nosy. 😉
If you like Pickleball, go use my referral link to sign up and get free stuff – maybe I’ll play Pickleball one day! 🙂
Make Early Tiers Attainable
Aleyda Solis took a different approach with her SEOFomo newsletter, focusing on discovery-focused rewards:
- Refer 2 Subscribers: Get a shout-out on Twitter from Aleyda, thanking your support
- Refer 5 Subscribers: Get featured in the “Supporters” thank you section in an edition of #SEOFOMO
- Refer 15 Subscribers: Get access to 3 Actionable (exclusive) SEO How-Tos / Tips Videos
The genius? Each tier is achievable pretty quickly. Instead of dangling impossible rewards (like “refer 500 friends for a MacBook”), she created momentum with quick wins.
Many creators focus on big prizes for loads of referrals. But your first goal should be getting readers to refer just one person.
Make that first step so easy and rewarding that it’s harder not to do it than to do it.
Leverage In-Person Events
This is one of the more fun ones in my opinion. So many creators forget that not everything has to be hyper-scalable and done solely online.
The Morning Brew
Alex Lieberman and Austin Rief started Morning Brew by collecting email addresses with clipboards in college classrooms. Seriously.
They went around to different classrooms and asked everything to sign up by writing their email down on a piece of paper. Then, they would go through and manually enter these into their email provider so they could send out the newsletter.
This “old school” approach helped them build their initial audience before exploding into a multi-million dollar acquisition.
Industry Events
Ari Lewis of Payload, a space industry newsletter, grew his audience in the early days by attending industry conferences and walking around with a clipboard. Like Austin and Alex, he asked people to sign up by writing down their email address on a piece of paper.
Since the industry itself is a bit old-school, this worked much better than telling people to go to a website and sign up. This method can work well for reaching traditional industries that aren’t glued to social media.
Host Your Own Events
The GIST, a sports newsletter, threw a launch party where the price of admission was your email address. They partnered with local businesses for food and drinks, making it a free event for attendees.
At the event, the founders asked everyone to share the newsletter with a few friends.
The result? 1,000 subscribers in one night, plus strong word-of-mouth as people associated their brand with a fun experience.
Paid Growth Strategies
While these still technically use social platforms, they don’t require building an organic social presence:
Newsletter Ads
When most creators think about paid growth, they jump straight to social media ads.
But here’s what’s fascinating: sponsoring other newsletters can lead to significantly higher-quality subscribers.
Here’s why:
- These readers are already newsletter consumers
- They’re used to opening and reading emails
- They’re more likely to forward and share content
While the cost per subscriber might be higher, these readers are already newsletter consumers and will likely end up being more engaged.
Olly Richards is someone who’s spent a decent amount figuring out newsletter sponsorships. He said something similar:
He said that advertising in newsletters both worked well… and also didn’t always work.
“Success with newsletter sponsorship seems to be a lot like influencer marketing – you have to set a healthy budget for testing, throw money at the wall, and then aggressively cut your losses and double down on the ones that work.”
As with anything, test with your audience and see if these hold true.
Paid Social Ads
Once you hit 15-20k subscribers, organic growth often slows. Adding on some paid advertising can help with growth if you:
- Know your subscriber lifetime value
- Have a clear monetization strategy
- Track conversion metrics carefully
I’m not a huge fan of using paid ads until you find “content/audience fit” and know how much you can spend per subscriber without losing tons of money.
But once you do, you can build a huge audience.
Dan Ni from TLDR took his newsletter from 100k subscribers to over a million today. That’s an insane story for another day 🙂
Growth Without the Hamster Wheel
Growing without social media often means taking a slower, more intentional approach. You almost have to be okay with a slower growth trajectory, and let go of the comparison trap of seeing other creators’ subscriber count explode while yours grows at a more sustainable clip.
Which is something we should all honestly be doing anyway 🙂 But it can also be more sustainable, letting you focus on creating valuable content for your readers rather than chasing algorithms.
The key is finding the strategies that align with your strengths and audience. Whether that’s becoming the go-to search result in your niche, building strategic partnerships, or showing up in person – there are tons of creative ways to grow that don’t require being extremely online.
