5 Signs Social Media Is Sabotaging Your Newsletter Growth (And What to Do About It)
The hidden ways 'audience building' might be destroying the very thing you're trying to build
Last week, I received a DM that perfectly captures the newsletter paradox plaguing thousands of creators:
“I have 6,000 social media followers but only 73 newsletter subscribers. I'm doing everything the experts say, but my newsletter growth has actually slowed down. What am I doing wrong?”
Maya, the wellness coach who sent this message, isn't alone. After managing social media for major companies and growing my own newsletter, I've discovered a disturbing pattern: the more successful creators become at social media, the worse their newsletter growth tends to be.
If you're experiencing any of these five warning signs, your social media strategy might be actively sabotaging your newsletter growth:
Sign #1: You're Spending More Time Promoting Your Newsletter Than Writing It
The Warning Sign: You track your time for a week and discover you're spending 3+ hours daily on social media but only 1-2 hours on actual newsletter creation.
Why This Sabotages Growth: From my experience managing corporate social media, I have learned that companies that obsess over promotion while neglecting product quality often fail in the long term. The same principle applies to newsletters.
The Reality Check: Track your time for three days, including posting, responding to comments, creating graphics, scheduling content, and scrolling through feeds. Compare this to the time spent researching, writing, and refining your newsletter.
Most newsletter writers are shocked by this ratio. The ones growing fastest typically spend 70-80% of their content-related time on newsletter creation and 20-30% on social promotion.
The Fix: Implement the "Creation First" rule: never check social media until you’ve finished your newsletter. This boundary directs your best creative energy to your most important work.
Sign #2: Your Social Media Followers Don't Convert to Newsletter Subscribers
The Warning Sign: You have thousands of social media followers, yet your newsletter growth is sluggish. Your follower-to-subscriber conversion rate stands below 5%.
Why This Sabotages Growth: You're attracting the wrong audience. Social media prioritises entertainment and surface-level engagement. Newsletter success demands depth, consistency, and genuine value, which often do not overlap.
In my corporate social media experience, I observed brands with large follower counts but small email lists —followers who never made a purchase and engagement that appeared promising in reports but yielded no business results.
The Reality Check: Calculate your conversion rate: (Newsletter subscribers gained from social media ÷ Total social media followers) × 100. If it falls below 5%, you are attracting the wrong kind of audience.
The Fix: Audit your social media content. Are you posting for likes, or is your content inviting deeper engagement? Create "gateway content" that showcases the value of your newsletter and encourages potential subscribers to sign up.
Sign #3: You're Creating Different Content for Social Media Than for Your Newsletter
The Warning Sign: Your social media content feels disconnected from your newsletter content. You're essentially running two separate content strategies.
Why This Sabotages Growth: This creates brand confusion, preventing people from understanding what your newsletter offers. It also doubles your content creation burden, leaving less time and energy for either to be excellent.
The Reality Check: Look at your last five social media posts and your previous newsletter issue. Would someone reading both clearly understand they come from the same person with the same expertise and value proposition?
The Fix: Create social media content that complements your newsletter. Share behind-the-scenes insights, preview key findings, and use social media to extend conversations from your newsletter.
This creates a transparent ecosystem that directs people toward subscriptions. Also, Substack Notes is a social platform for newsletter creators to share insights about writing and connect with others who can recommend their work.
Sign #4: Your Energy Is Drained Rather Than Energised by "Audience Building"
The Warning Sign: You feel exhausted and overwhelmed by social media, constantly comparing yourself to others and fearing you're falling behind on trends.
Why This Sabotages Growth: Authentic content creation needs creative energy and enthusiasm. When social media drains you, it impacts the quality and authenticity of your work. Readers can sense when content stems from obligation rather than inspiration.
Managing multiple corporate accounts taught me that a sustainable social media presence must align with energy. Brands that forced content into incompatible platforms struggled with authenticity and long-term success.
The Reality Check: Rate your energy before and after social media sessions for a week (1-10). If you consistently end with lower energy, your strategy is unsustainable.
The Fix: Audit which platforms energise or drain you. Focus on those you enjoy. For me, X feels natural and energising, while others feel forced. Eliminate activities that drain your energy. Your growth depends on energy management.
Sign #5: You Can't Clearly Explain How Your Social Media Strategy Supports Your Newsletter Goals
The Warning Sign: When someone asks how your social media strategy drives newsletter growth, you give vague answers like "building awareness" or "staying visible" rather than specific, measurable explanations.
Why This Sabotages Growth: Without a clear strategy connecting social media activities to newsletter outcomes, you're essentially hoping random activity will produce specific results. This leads to scattered effort and unclear messaging.
In corporate social media, we’ve never run campaigns without clear KPIs connecting activities to business outcomes. The same principle applies to growing a newsletter.
The Reality Check: Explain in one paragraph how each social media platform you use drives newsletter subscriptions. If you can’t be specific, that platform isn't serving your goals.
The Fix: Create clear pathways from social media to newsletter subscriptions, including platform-specific content, bio optimisation, and content series that encourage sign-ups.
The Path Forward: Alignment Over Activity
If you recognised yourself in multiple warning signs, don't panic. This pattern is pervasive because most social media advice wasn't designed for newsletter creators.
The solution isn't to abandon social media—it's to align your social media strategy with your newsletter goals rather than treating them as separate activities.
Here's what that alignment looks like:
Your social media becomes an extension of your newsletter value rather than a separate performance.
Your content creation becomes more efficient because everything serves the same strategic purpose.
Your audience becomes more aligned because they discover you through content that accurately represents the value of your newsletter.
Your energy becomes more sustainable because you're not maintaining multiple disconnected strategies.
Your growth becomes more predictable because every social media activity has a clear connection to newsletter outcomes.
Small Changes, Big Results
The newsletter writers I know who have successfully aligned their social media strategy didn't make dramatic, overnight changes.
They made minor, strategic adjustments that compounded over time:
They selected one or two leading platforms rather than trying to be present everywhere.
They have integrated Substack Notes as a platform for community building.
They limited social media use to 30 minutes a day to protect their creative energy.
They created social content focusing on their newsletter development process.
They focused on newsletter conversions rather than vanity metrics, such as reach and likes.
They removed activities that drained energy without yielding results.
These changes may seem small, but they are transformational. When your social media strategy supports newsletter growth rather than competes with it, everything becomes easier.
Your creative work gets the attention it deserves, audience growth is more sustainable, content creation is more efficient, and you remember why you started your newsletter.
Your newsletter has something valuable to offer the world. Ensure your social media strategy supports, rather than hinders, your mission.
Coming up
Keep an eye on your mailbox for another insightful article on Thursday. You’ll discover seven immediate actions to stop social media from sabotaging your newsletter.