Hey Reader,

Regardless of which social media platform you use to grow your audience, there’s always a struggle between what the platform wants and what you want.

Smart creators know that platforms change all of the time, and the only way to truly own your audience is to build an email list. As much as possible, you want to convert people from followers to email subscribers.

But getting someone to subscribe to your email list means getting them off the platform where they found you.

The algorithms that drive these sites deprioritize content that takes people off of the platform. For instance, if YouTube sees that a lot of people end their watch session with your video (because they’re leaving YouTube to go to your site), that video won’t get promoted as much.

LinkedIn works the same way: they want to keep people on the platform. Their algorithm likes to promote content that doesn’t link off of the site.

When you write up a quality piece of content, you might be tempted to conclude with a link to your lead magnet or email signup. But if you do, you’ll find your post doesn’t reach as many people. Had you left off the link, you’ll often find your reach increases by as much as a factor of 10 (assuming the content was good).

So what’s the solution?

Well, it’s always going to be a cat-and-mouse game, so no tactic is going to last forever, but something that works fairly well right now is this:

1. Post your content without any external links
2. Ask those you know with sizable audiences to react and comment to boost reach
3. Wait about an hour until the post gets some initial traction
4. Edit the post to add a link
5. Alternatively, experiment with editing the original post to say “Link in comments” and post your link as a comment on the post

Mix up #4 and #5 to see what gives you the best results. Things are always changing but in general, if you let the content get some initial traction, the algorithm will continue to promote it if people react well initially—even after you’ve added a link.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

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Have a great week!

—Nathan

P.S.

I'm in the middle of my busiest week of the year! I broke down the itinerary here if you're curious. It shows how I'm getting the most out of a 5-day business trip.