Substack, LinkedIn, Beehiiv, Medium—there’s no shortage of places to publish. But which publishing platform can actually earn its keep for your business?
At the latest Lioness Roundtable, our entrepreneurial community shared how they’re using newsletters, blogs and publishing platforms to grow their businesses, establish authority and create new revenue streams (even if they’re still figuring that part out).
Why founders start newsletters
Participants came to publishing with very different goals. For some, a newsletter supports client work. Others use it to build authority, test ideas or stay connected with their audience between projects.
Donna Mitchell, founder of Mitchell Universal Network, said her publishing journey began with a podcast that established her authority after decades working in technology. Over time, she realized the newsletter became just as valuable because it strengthened relationships with the people already following her work.
“I started realizing the value with those that were on my mailing list,” Mitchell said. “That was a relationship.”
Deborah Stine took a different approach. She publishes four LinkedIn newsletters covering science and technology policy, career advice, AI and community engagement. She said her career advice newsletter helped grow her coaching business “from basically zero to about 20 people,” while her other newsletters keep her visible to potential consulting clients.
For Dr. Lauran Star, the motivation wasn’t marketing at all.
“I didn’t build a podcast, write books or start a Substack because I wanted another platform,” she said. “I built them because I wanted an intellectual home for ideas that challenge what we’ve normalized.”
Others described newsletters more simply: a place to educate, build credibility and stay in touch with the people they want to serve.
Building an audience on your own terms
How much should entrepreneurs rely on platforms they don’t control? As Lioness Editor-in-Chief Bobbie Carlton pointed out, X, née Twitter, was once one of her favorite places to connect with audiences—until users began leaving in droves.
Several attendees said that they wanted a publishing home that wasn’t entirely dependent on changing algorithms or social media trends.
Author and researcher Ambika Devi said she’s maintained a personal blog for years because she wants control over her work. Rather than posting identical content everywhere, she writes different pieces for different audiences.
Star echoed that philosophy, describing social media as “rented space,” while her podcast, books and newsletter provide a place where her ideas can continue to live and evolve.
Making time to publish
If there was one challenge nearly everyone agreed on, it was consistency.
Most attendees already juggle client work, speaking engagements and running their businesses, making content creation one more task competing for their attention.
Orly Zeewy sends one newsletter each month because that’s the pace that works for both her and her readers. And as she said, newsletters that come at you every day tend to be more of an annoyance.
Productivity-wise, time blocking was the strategy of choice. Saundra Gilliard, for example, dedicates Sunday mornings to writing her monthly newsletter, using current events as inspiration.
Others treat writing like any other business commitment. Communications consultant Kate Bachman said content creation ranks just behind client work because it’s “the core of my marketing engine,” adding in the chat that she schedules writing time throughout the week rather than waiting for inspiration.
AI can help, but readers still expect your voice
Artificial intelligence came up several times during the discussion, though most participants viewed it as a tool for drafting or brainstorming, and not a replacement for their own perspective.
Stine said she uses AI to create an initial draft for one of her newsletters before heavily editing it and adding personal stories and commentary.
Others were far less enthusiastic about AI-generated writing.
“I CANNOT STAND reading an article that has no personal voice in it,” Devi wrote in the chat.
Star cautioned that AI-generated writing carries real risk. “There are now people out there that are looking at articles, running them through AI detectors, and then they call you out,” she said. “It is a nasty callout.”
So which publishing platform wins?
By the time the conversation turned to Substack, LinkedIn, Beehiiv and others, it was clear that attendees weren’t judging platforms by the same criteria.
Some cared most about discoverability. Others wanted stronger branding, built-in monetization tools or easier ways to grow an email list. For many, the deciding factor was simply where their audience already spent time.
For Stine, LinkedIn already has the audience she needs. She also pointed out that LinkedIn automatically invites your connections to subscribe when you launch a newsletter, making it easier to gain momentum.
Others preferred Substack. Bachman said she chose it because the platform is still growing and makes it easy to distribute content across multiple channels. Several attendees also praised its membership features and community-building tools.
Mitchell shared that she moved to Beehiiv because branding mattered to the executive and healthcare audiences she serves, though the discussion left her reconsidering whether LinkedIn should play a larger role in her strategy moving forward.
Ultimately, the “best” platform depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
What would they do differently?
With a room full of entrepreneurs who have launched newsletters and blogs, we wanted to know: what would they do differently if they were starting today?
The answers had less to do with technology and much more to do with mindset.
Several participants said they’d spend less time hunting for the “perfect” platform and more time publishing. Lidia Varesco Racoma said she’d “create a strategy first, not the other way around.” Zeewy said she’d do “less educating and more problem solving.” Stine is already moving toward video for her newsletters, so readers get to know her as a speaker and analyst, not just a byline.
But the most candid answer came from Robin Coles, who wrote: “I would change direction and focus more on what makes me really happy, not just what I’m good at.”
Register for the next Lioness Roundtable: How to Prepare for Crises
August 11 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm ET
Life doesn’t pause for business. A death in the family, a health scare, a loved one in crisis—these moments hit when they hit, and as a business owner, you don’t get to hand off the wheel. So how do you keep things running when your personal world is falling apart?
Join us for this month’s Lioness Roundtable, where we’ll talk candidly about managing a business through personal crisis: what to put in place before you need it, how to know when to lean on your team and how to give yourself permission to not be okay while still showing up for your work.
As always, this is a conversation among female entrepreneurs, for female entrepreneurs. Bring your own experience, whether it’s a crisis you’ve weathered or one you’re bracing for. The session will be recorded and turned into an article for the Lioness community, so your insights could be quoted and featured.
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