E356: A summary of how Avni Barman got her 70,000 newsletter subscribers in 8 months, how she grew her LinkedIn followers to 25,000, differences between LinkedIn and TwitterX, and best practices for posting to LinkedIn, X, Instagram Reels, and TikTok.
Tons of insights in this one.
Avni's socials: https://www.instagram.com/avnibarman_/ https://x.com/avnibarman_ https://www.linkedin.com/in/avnibarman/
Avni's newsletter: https://www.generationshe.co/
00:00 Avni Barman 01:05 LinkedIn Top Voice and Content Strategy 02:23 Insights on Growth 03:42 LinkedIn vs. Instagram: Content Strategies 05:55 Rating Audience Value: Instagram, Email, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn 07:47 The Reply Guy Strategy on X 09:53 Mastering Instagram Growth 11:52 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
#newslettermarketing #digitalmarketing #socialmediamarketing #linkedinmarketing
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
Last night, I recorded a podcast with Avni Barman. I got home from recording that podcast at midnight. I edited and uploaded at 3 a.m. As I was uploading, I was making a thumbnail. And to figure out what to do for the thumbnail, I was looking at inspiration. On the podcast yesterday, Avni, among other things, talks about how she grew her newsletter from zero to 70,000 subscribers in only eight months. So I searched on YouTube newsletter growth. I wanted to see which thumbnails have the most views and steal that, steal that idea, basically recreate it. And as I was looking through thumbnails, I noticed that the titles were way less impressive than Avni's accomplishment. The titles were zero to 10,000 newsletter subscribers in 10 months, or zero to 25,000 newsletter subscribers in a year and a half. Things like that, and Avni did zero to 70,000 newsletter subscribers in eight months. And I thought to myself, I wanna think more about what I learned from that podcast. And then this morning, I wake up and a top voice on LinkedIn. So people can get top voices on LinkedIn. If they are prolific enough with writing, if they get enough engagement, I think there's a way to game how to get a top voice on LinkedIn. I'll make an episode about that. But a top voice on LinkedIn rips one of my videos, removes my face from it, tags me though, but removes my face from it and puts it on his LinkedIn. And it's getting lots of views. He tagged me, but he still removed my face. But I talked to Avni about it, and Avni said how many followers does he have? I take a look, he has 14,000 followers. And Avni goes, that's not even that many. I have 25,000, and she really does. And I'm thinking, wow, zero to 70,000 newsletter subscribers in eight months, and 25,000 LinkedIn followers, I really wanna just think back, what can I learn from Avni? There's plenty of things that I'm doing way better than her. She even says on the podcast, my Instagram is very impressive. And in fact, I give her a lot of advice on Instagram, but she also gives me a lot of advice. And so on this episode of The Edward Show, I'm gonna do a bit of a recap on the things that I learned from Avni, the things that I learned from the podcast yesterday, and then things that we talked about outside of the podcast. We were together for many hours yesterday. We went on this great walk, and we had this super engaging conversation about social media growth. So I'm gonna talk about some of the things that I learned there, some of the things that we talked about there. Here's something that Avni said to me about LinkedIn that stood out in terms of content on LinkedIn, because I've posted content on LinkedIn, some that has done very, very well, and then a lot that has just flopped. Avni said something to me last night during the podcast that made a lot of sense. She said LinkedIn content is for people who haven't made it yet, people who don't have FU money. There's a concept of fuck you money. That means that you have so much money that you can pretty much just say fuck you to anybody, you don't need anybody. LinkedIn content is for people who are not there, and especially is for people who are trying to grow in their jobs, or who are trying to fundraise more money, but not so much entrepreneurs, X is more for entrepreneurs. LinkedIn might be for people who wanna start being entrepreneurs, but LinkedIn is very much for the working people, whereas you will commonly see people who have fuck you money on X all the time. You will commonly see them there. I thought that distinction content was interesting. Something else, she drives a lot of growth to her newsletter between Instagram, LinkedIn and X. And X and LinkedIn are very similar for the content, but the content between LinkedIn and Instagram are very different. On LinkedIn, she will write copy about learning something that maybe made her more money or got her a better job, something that was valuable to her, but she doesn't give away the actionable advice. She gets people excited about it with a copy of a post. She said that giving away the content cheapens the advice for LinkedIn. So she writes content about how valuable this advice has been, and then if you want it, go to this link, give your email, and then you'll get it. Once people do that, they get the resource, which she spent a couple minutes on, and then they also get added to the newsletter. Now with Instagram Reels, she actually gives all the subject matter to the actionable steps she gives it away in the video, and she's excited when she talks about it. And then she says, if you want to learn more, go to my link in bio to get this resource, the same resource. So on LinkedIn, she doesn't give the actionable steps away. She writes copy to explain to people why this is so big. However, on Instagram Reels, she is able to communicate the gravity of these steps and why they're great, because you're transmitting more data with video. Sean Puri of My First Million, great entrepreneur, great podcast host, he said good content is just energy transferance. And so she uses her energy to get people excited about the actionable steps which she is giving them, and then people want more of that. And so they get the resource, but they give their email in order to get the resource. But because you can't as easily do energy transferance on LinkedIn, you have to write more copy to get people excited to give their email to get the resource. The energy on Instagram makes people feel the same excitement as the copy on LinkedIn. But the copy on LinkedIn doesn't give away the actionable steps, but the Instagram Reel does. I thought that was very interesting. Some things that we talked about during our long conversation when we were walking. So we talked about which audiences are the most valuable. And we both agreed that Instagram has the most valuable audience because followers on Instagram matters. The CEO said it doesn't matter. From our experience, Instagram followers matter the most. If you have Instagram followers, real ones, not fake ones, not bots. A lot of people just buy bots for their account. If you have real Instagram followers, then you will be able to get views on your reels and on your stories. A friend of mine just hit 350,000 followers on Instagram. When he posts the story, it gets 30,000 views. Instagram super valuable, having an email list, also super valuable. When you send out an email, lots of your subscribers see it. When you put out an Instagram Reel, lots of your followers see it. Okay, but what about TikTok? TikTok has the least valuable followers because if you put out a TikTok, a huge amount of your followers will only see it if it is good. If it is mediocre, not that many of your followers will see it. But if you put out a mediocre Instagram Reel, lots of your followers will see that. Same with your newsletter. If you put out a mediocre newsletter, lots of your subscribers will see it, though a bunch may unsubscribe. But the risk of being unfollowed or unsubscribed is always there. So there's very little loyalty on TikTok. Followers don't matter that much. More followers on TikTok does not necessarily equal more views. The Instagram audience, super valuable, email newsletter subscribers, also super valuable. What about X? X matters more than TikTok. However, its algorithm is starting to resemble TikTok more and I've seen people complain about that. Now, there is a way, I wouldn't say to game it, but I've been talking to a lot of people about this. I haven't done it myself because I don't wanna spread myself too thin across platforms, but there's this term, the reply guy. If you become the reply guy, if you do the reply guy strategy on X, you can grow pretty fast and you can get a lot of views per your posts on X. What is the reply guy strategy? Just means to set out 30 minutes to an hour a day, just replying to everyone and replying to lots of people in your feed or following top people in your niche, setting an alarm and being some of the first people to reply to them. And then the algorithm will start to associate you with these big accounts. You get followers from them, but your posts also get boosted. That is a reply guy method. I wanna make a podcast about that too, but it's really simple. It's reply to top people in your niche, and then also when people respond to your posts, reply to all of them. I'm pretty bad at that. I'm pretty bad at replying to people on X because I get so many comments on TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube now. I love responding to YouTube comments especially, but I don't wanna spread myself too thin because I am running a marathon, not a sprint. I'm in it for the long haul, and I believe that playing the long game is just the best game to play. What about LinkedIn? Typically, it's easier to make money off of an audience on LinkedIn, but if we're looking at the reported impression numbers on X compared to LinkedIn, X posts get more impressions per 1,000 followers than LinkedIn posts do. And in terms of content on LinkedIn, the most important thing is the hook because if you think about LinkedIn content, there's really only a small amount that people see for a written post, and you need to write the hook so well that people expand it to see more. And it's easier to market to people on LinkedIn than X, though X is good too. But overall, the Instagram audience is the best. How do you grow on Instagram? This is from my experience and the experience of my friends. This is something that I tell lots of people to do. I literally have a free resource on my site. You don't even have to give your email address to get it. I just put it on my site 'cause I want people to see it. I think it's one of my greatest works. I literally learned it from posting 1200 plus videos, 600 plus consecutive days without missing a day. And I learned these things. And so how do you grow on Instagram? The best way to post reels, post at least once a day, don't miss a day, don't batch record, you wanna make videos every day because that's the fastest way to get better. You wanna learn every day, fastest way to get better, post manually through the Instagram mobile app. Don't use a third party tool to post. Don't use a VPN to post, Instagram doesn't like shared IP addresses, post reels as much as you can manually through the Instagram mobile app. If you want your reels to show up the next day for keywords on Google, take a keyword, put it at the beginning of the description for your Instagram reel, add a lot of copy. And then if that reel gets a bunch of comments, there's a good chance that 24 hours later or less, it will show up number one on Google for the keyword that you choose. But the most important thing for Instagram growth is post a lot of reels, of course, focus on the fundamentals, the hook, having good subject matter, making the content engaging. But really if the subject matter is useful and the hook is decent, that's all you need. And then do that and don't miss a day. And then you'll grow very fast on Instagram. And the more you post in a day, the more you grow. But I thought all of this information was very valuable. I really liked the LinkedIn insights from Avni and Avni is crushing it. The newsletter insights as well. So I thought there was a lot of meat here enough to deserve at least a second episode on it. And that's what this is. This is episode 356 of my daily digital marketing growth pack and growth marketing podcast that I do every day, just like yesterday where I was editing until 3 AM. I don't think I'll do that on this one because it is 10 30 in the evening. So now I'm going to edit this. Hopefully it will take me 30 minutes. And I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed this episode so much here. So much to learn. I'm so excited about everything. I edited like I said until 3 AM. I went to sleep at 3 30 in the morning and then I woke up at 9 15 this morning because I was just so excited to make videos and podcasts. I love this stuff. SEO, videos, podcasts, I love this. And even with Little Sleep, I wake up excited every morning to do it again. So thank you so much for being my audience. Thank you so much for engaging with me. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you again tomorrow.
