What is it?
Growing your audience on Instagram involves sharing valuable, visually engaging posts to attract followers, who will hopefully opt to become newsletter subscribers over time.
As long as your target audience is active on the platform, this can be a really powerful strategy.
But how do you turn those Instagram followers into newsletter subscribers?
The key is to give your Instagram audience a compelling reason to want more from you - like exclusive content just for email subscribers. Or more thorough, long-form content to help readers go deeper on the topic.
Then it's a case of prompting your followers to become subscribers through a link in your bio or sign-up call to action in your bio.
The Good and the Bad
Examples of how to crush it
James Clear
Author and entrepreneur James Clear has built a massive following on Instagram by sharing actionable insights on building good habits and shaking bad ones.
His feed is full of "teaser" excerpts pulling directly from his 3-2-1 newsletter. Usually a concise tip or thought-provoking idea.
These teasers give followers a taste of the valuable material they can expect by subscribing.
To capture the people who enjoy the teaser, he includes a link to his newsletter landing page directly in his bio.
With a huge 1.4 million followers, this simple link gets exposed to an immense audience with each new post.
Downtime
With over 130,000 subscribers, Downtime has built an awesome audience around self-care, style, and life's simple pleasures.
Alisha taps into this community by sharing content designed to resonate with her newsletter audience.
Her feed is a mix of cozy imagery, inspirational quotes, and personal anecdotes that speak to relaxation and self-nurturing.
She uses Instagram as a subscriber acquisition tool by sharing snippets and teasers from recent newsletter editions.
Each teaser gives followers a taste of the useful, relatable content they'd receive in their inboxes as subscribers.
Her bio features a clickable link directly to Downtime's subscription landing page.
Naptown Scoop
Ryan Sneddon runs Naptown Scoop, a popular local newsletter based in Annapolis, Maryland.
He’s been growing an Instagram presence to help pick up new subscribers, mainly getting in front of local residents by commenting on posts from local businesses and events.
The logic is that if you’re a resident of Annapolis who keeps seeing Naptown Scoop under dozens of posts, at some point your curiosity is going to take over and you’ll click through to their profile.
From there, Naptown Scoop converts viewers to new subscribers through their link-in-bio, and occasional direct calls to action in their Instagram stories.
Health With Cory
Cory reaches new viewers by posting engaging fitness videos that consistently go viral, racking up millions of views each.
But with this many viewers being consistently introduced to your brand through high-quality content, you’re bound to pick up followers.
And Cory has done just that - 2.3 million of them.
Now it’s just a case of prompting people to sign up to his newsletter for deeper health dives through the link in his bio.
