Growth in Public
Chenell Basilio
Chenell BasilioWriter of Growth In Reverse

Email growth challenge · Social media only

Can I get 3,000 subscribers in 90 days?

I'm finding out in public. Every new email subscriber I get from posting on social is tracked here and updated live.

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new email subscribers from social

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    What's working, what isn't, and the numbers behind it. (Signing up here doesn't count toward my goal.)

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    Previous 90-day benchmark

    “3,000 is going to be easy for someone like you, isn't it?”

    For context, I have not posted much on social in the last 12 months. Looking at LinkedIn alone, I posted 43 times over the year. And over the last 90 days, I've only posted 8 times (like once every 11 days). This is far from a well-oiled machine 🙂

    8posts on social in the last 3 months
    313subs from social in the 90 days before

    The leaderboard

    Which platform sends the most people to my newsletter.

      Day by day

      New subscribers from social each day. Hover a day to see where they came from.

      See the numbers as a table

      How I count

      Only new email subscribers who came from social media make the board.

      Tagged links

      Every link I post carries a tag (like utm_source=linkedin). If someone signs up through it, that platform gets the point.

      Shares

      When someone shares my site on a platform, my site notices where the visitor came from and tags the signup for them.

      Nothing else

      Newsletter recommendations, search, direct visits and signups I can't trace don't count. Neither does signing up on this page. Once someone joins, they stay counted, even if they unsubscribe later.

      Why I'm doing this

      93% of the creators I've studied have used social media to grow their email lists. And I did too.

      In the early days of Growth In Reverse, I was posting constantly, mostly on old Twitter (RIP). The newsletter grew to 21,000 subscribers in 10 months, and social media played a huge role in that.

      Then I "got busy" and stopped posting. In the last 12 months, I've posted just 43 times. That's about 3.5 a month, and most of those were me checking the "I posted today" box.

      My newsletter growth reflects that. It's been flat for a while, and I want to change that.

      So for 90 days, I'm trying to get 3,000 new email subscribers from social media. Only social. No recommendations, no referrals, no other sources. I'm only counting people who came through social media.

      3 questions I want to answer

      1. What's working on social right now to drive subscribers?
      2. Can I turn social back into a reliable growth channel?
      3. Do I want to be back on social media long term?

      The plan

      I'm still figuring it out. What I do know: I'll create mostly for LinkedIn and repost to Substack, X, Threads and Facebook. The goal is to post daily (maybe more if it's working).

      Will I hit it?

      Honestly, probably not. I haven't posted consistently in a while, so this feels a little like starting over. That's why it's an experiment.

      Chenell

      93%of creators I've studied grew with social
      21,000subscribers in my first 10 months
      43posts in the last 12 months

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      A live snapshot of the board, sized for LinkedIn, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X and Bluesky.