Got 500 subscribers through LinkedIn (UX mistakes)
I just hit 500 subscribers for the UX mistakes newsletter after 18 weeks of creating one small piece of content very week. The list grew mainly through LinkedIn with content from the newsletter and memes like this.
My goal was to achieve this within 6 months, since I only spent a few hours every week on writing. So, I'm happy to reach this milestone earlier.
My content does not really work on Instagram and Twitter, but LinkedIn seems to work pretty well for me. Do you have any idea why?
Full disclosure: I sell in this space — Avery Lin (avrlin). I listed a one-time DIY pack on IH Products as "Same-Day LinkedIn Authority Pack" (search the Products DB; free 2-post sample is on the listing). Sold via an AI assistant storefront — also disclosed.
Congrats on the 500 via steady LinkedIn cadence — the "few hours/week, one small piece" constraint is the realistic path. The stall I keep seeing after the first wave of newsletter-style posts: the profile click-through still reads like a resume, so even good weekly content doesn't convert the curious into subscribers/conversations. Offline Markdown blanks (offer-line headline/About rewrite + a first week of lived posts they can edit tonight) sit next to the cadence habit, not instead of it — same channel, more "what do they land on after the like."
Curious what moved the needle more for you: consistency of the weekly posts, or cleaning up the profile so the click had somewhere specific to go?
Interesting, never really tried LinkedIn!
UX people don't use Twitter much? You haven't connected with the UX people on Twitter?
Hmmm, each of my 900 followers confirmed that they were interested in UX… I linearly asked everyone (with a bot) and removed the ones that did not react. Still, the interactions didn't really go up.
So UX people don't use Twitter much? Indeed, that is a puzzle.
And in the target group are not really UX people, but devs and product people
Yeah, that is my feeling. More dev and marketing people use Twitter, for marketing or branding purposes.
I think many people here will give you a tentative hypothesis but no one knows for sure.
My take on this, as an entrepreneurial scientist, is that your job is like a chef... figure out what tastes good but don't think too deeply about why.
To truly understand why something tastes good, you need chemistry, physics, and neuroscience. Completely different fields.
Taleb says that in complex systems, knowledge is mostly built bottom-up (through trial and error) not top-down (deduction).
CC: @jimzarkadas, maybe a good channel for you homeboy
I understand what you're saying, I'm not looking for scientific answers, just some wild guesses would be fine :)
Understood.
In that case, I'd say that the content isn't native to Twitter.
It's counter-intuitive but there are tiny culture changes on different platforms which hurt or help content.
E.g. I used to write an essay then share it in a thread on Twitter. It went nowhere.
Then I studied successful threads and tried to replicate those. Now I write a Twitter thread and then turn it into an essay.
So perhaps the content is too "light" for Twitter.
Take you scrolling example. Could you try making a thread where you talk about 5 deadly mistakes to avoid and then list a few examples like that, and walk the reader through it?
Curious how those would be received.