A Trip Down Memory Lane...Or There and Back Again

On January 24, 2022, I published my very first LinkedIn article .

I remember the night very well when I wrote it. It kinda sucked. It was choppy, the grammar was all over the place, and every few paragraphs if you look closely enough, you may see a missing comma, period, or semicolon to separate the sentences.

But man, was I fired up about it.

And I was proud. Because, even though this first newsletter article was no stunner, it was a huge feat and marked my very first attempt to put myself out there in the tech world as a writer and start organically growing my network.

I was not aware of the latter at the time; I literally was just having a good time finishing up my portfolio one winter morning at 1am. I had come up with what I believed was an awesome title and content idea, and just needed to get it out of my head so I could sleep easy. I typed it up, and then asked myself:

Where do I publish it?

And then the follow up question:

SHOULD I publish it?

Luckily I still had a tab open on my computer from the previous evening, and it was open on the LinkedIn homepage. Something near the very top of the screen caught my eye: it was simply the word Article.

Ah-HA. So I CAN publish it here.

Then I caught myself. My brain did the very human thing of freaking out for no reason and smogged itself with pretty much every insecurity and fear I had following up to this point in time: I am not ready, I am not a published author so I had no credibility on the topic, I am not full time employed so why would anybody take me seriously or read anything that I had to say?

All questions that felt real in the moment. But in reality, none of them were.

It took me all of ten seconds to ponder each one, but my heart had already told me the facts: I had already written it, it was a great start, and heck, it was on a great topic too. Plus, this whole newsletter publishing thing was just for funsies; it wasn't like anything was going to come of it (turns out I was wrong about that).

And when you look at it that way, why the heck not?

So CLICK! I published it.

The next day? zero likes, zero views.

Ok. It's fine, though. This is just to get your creativity an outlet.

The next day, still nothing.

The third day, one like and 157 new views.

My LinkedIn following was still low, in the double digits at the time. So, I was like, oh ok cool 157 people saw it, I wonder if they read it and liked what they read? Better yet, what would happen if I just wrote another one?

So that's what I did, the very next morning. And I published it .

Within 24 hours of publishing that one, it had 264 views and two comments.

Hmm, ok...that's when the gears starting turning and the lightbulb switched on.

New people are somehow seeing my newsletter and reading it. I decided that I wanted to write more and see who else can be reached by this. Because even if it's just a random article about a topic they enjoy, then that would be enough purpose for me to keep on writing them. And simultaneously, get new eyes on my feed. And, at the time, also new recruiters on my page and reaching out asking for interviews as well.

I figured there was nothing to lose here. I decided to go full gung-ho on this crazy stupid love---eh, newsletter rampage---for at least four weeks before throwing in the towel. If nothing happened after a month of consistent writing, then so be it. Maybe it just wasn't the thing I thought it was after all. By the time I released an article showcasing the symmetry of computer programming and art graphics towards the end of January of that year , I had gotten the biggest audience response and interactions I had ever experienced up to that point. I had also learned, belatedly, that LinkedIn newsletters gave you subscribers. New ones, every single day, were coming in. I don't have the exact numbers pulled up along with the timeline from day one, but let me tell ya, from January 24th to the 29th alone, it was already just under one hundred. Just because I wasn't getting likes didn't mean that I wasn't getting subscribers, aka new connections.

So in response to all the wonderful people on this plartform asking me how a LinkedIn newsletter feature grows your network, that's how it happens:

1) You write the article. You just write it. Get it out of your life.

2) You publish it.

3) LinkedIn sends out push notifications in the app and to the email inboxes of either existing connections on LinkedIn, or people who have interacted with material similar to your articles' content.

4) They take a look, read, and subscribe if they like it, and BOOM.

And it's really that simple.

"But what will I write about?" you ask. "I don't have anything to write."

I can't tell you what to write. Ask yourself instead: what am I interested in? What am I thinking about constantly? What do I love? and then go and write that. The words come out on the keyboard twice as easily if you're passionate about a topic than if you are not.