Do Meta ads for a newsletter also grow your Instagram followers?

A guy in my hometown has about 12,000 newsletter subscribers that I've helped him get in roughly a year. He also has about 6,000 Instagram followers. He has zero posts.

"Half the people subscribing are also clicking follow on a blank page, and we don't ask them to."

How does it work?

The flow is subscribe, survey, Instagram. After someone submits the survey, the redirect drops them on the brand's Instagram page. No ask, no button saying "follow us." They're just there, and a lot of them tap Follow.

On many of my brands there's nothing on the Instagram page, and they still have 500, 1,000 or more followers purely from that redirect.

How many subscribers will follow?

My estimates have ranged from about one in three to 30% or 40%, and on that hometown brand it's closer to half. The more active the page, the more likely people follow. A blank page still works. A busy one works better.

"One lead is really a newsletter lead and an Instagram lead."

Why do the followers matter so much?

• They're free. You already paid for the subscriber.
• They close the loop. With an auto-DM tool on Instagram, new followers who aren't subscribers yet can be invited to the newsletter. See how I use ManyChat for that.
• Advertisers love them. In the local newsletter space, I want way more Instagram followers.

Businesses love Instagram more than the newsletter even though it's clearly less valuable. You don't control it, and you don't know who's going to see a post. But the follower count is public. It's status. A newsletter could be crushing it and nobody can see it.

I talked to the founder of the Cincy Scoop, whose Instagram has 60,000-something followers, and asked how big a deal it is for advertisers. He said it's their number one priority, the first way in the door, with the newsletter secondary. I've heard the same from numerous people.

One caveat: to really crush it on Instagram, you need custom video content, not posts copied and pasted from your newsletter.

Should you run newsletter ads only on Reels and Stories?

This is a tactic a podcast guest shared with me, not one I've run myself. Pick placements manually and show the newsletter ad only in video placements, Reels and Stories, instead of Facebook feed or Marketplace.

• The people are more engaged. His cost per subscriber was slightly higher, but the subscribers were much more engaged. He said it can sometimes even be cheaper.
• You get a follower too. They saw the ad on Instagram, so a lot of them follow you there.

Meta runs your ads everywhere by default, so you have to switch placements off yourself. Don't just turn off Facebook without thinking, though. Running everywhere is how we did it originally, and where your audience actually is should decide it.

Can you pay for followers directly?

Yes. I've seen a local brand's video ad, a woman in the corner talking about all the cool stuff the brand covers with video playing behind her, bring in Instagram followers for around 20 cents each.

A young one-person publisher I know, with six newsletters and roughly 23,000 Instagram followers in a town of about 150,000, does the math like this:

Step	His numbers
Cost per follower	About 25 cents
10,000 followers	About $2,500 per location
Ad packages sold	$500 a month for six months, to several businesses
Payback	One to two months, by his estimate

He does the sales himself, which is a big part of why it works for him. It got me thinking about growing a brand's Instagram to 10,000 first, letting lightbreak run the newsletter in about 20 minutes a week, and using the advertisers that brings in to fund newsletter growth. That's an idea I've worked through, not a result I can show you yet.

Where should the redirect go: Instagram, donations or nothing?

Survey first, always. The survey gets you 10 or more data points from half your subscribers. The follow is a bonus on the way out.

When I set up flows for news organizations that don't have a paid plan, the choice after the survey is usually the donation page or Instagram. A lot of mine go to Instagram, because a lot of times those people will then follow. If donations or a paid plan matter more to you than followers, send them there instead.

What should you set up today?

1. Create the brand's Instagram account, even if you won't post yet.
2. Set the survey's completion redirect to the Instagram profile URL.
3. Check your follower count in a month.