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Beehiiv launched in late 2021 with an ambitious mission: to pave the way for the next million creators, publishers, and companies to scale and monetize their audiences.
Just over three years later, the platform founded by ex-Morning Brew engineers has achieved remarkable traction:
- Sent over 50 billion emails
- Reached 400 million unique readers
- Helped newsletter creators earn over $45 million
- Empowered 135,000 publishers.
But growing a B2X newsletter platform isn’t the same as growing a single newsletter brand, especially when you’re up against established platforms like MailChimp and direct competitors like Substack.
Today, we’ll break down how Beehiiv’s founder-led, social-first strategy turns platforms like YouTube, X, and LinkedIn into customer acquisition engines. All this while simultaneously dominating AI visibility.
(Oh, and stick around for a look at how their social-driven growth strategy also impacts their AI visibility.)
Social Media is at the Heart of BeeHiiv’s Product, Brand, and Growth Strategy
In a recent interview, CEO Tyler Denk explains the central role social media played in the development of the Beehiiv platform:
“Because of the credibility I built at Morning Brew, and the people I had been connecting with on Twitter, I already had hundreds of people who I knew had a newsletter… and that became the initial outreach [for users].”
This social-first approach meant Denk’s Twitter network became a living focus group for Beehiiv’s product development . It provided real-time feedback on features, pain points, and opportunities in the newsletter space.
Looking at Beehiiv’s current marketing channel performance on SimilarWeb, the results speak for themselves.
The majority of traffic — roughly two-thirds — comes from mobile devices, showing that Beehiiv is meeting users where they naturally consume information. This mobile-first traffic pattern aligns perfectly with the platform’s focus on creator-friendly, mobile-optimized tools.
Unsurprisingly, direct search drives most of their monthly traffic, a natural outcome since newsletters hosted on Beehiiv use the brand’s domain. (Since newsletters are hosted on Beehiiv, people who visit a newsletter by directly searching it or revisiting it via bookmark would show up as direct search.)
But this traffic source reveals something more significant: the strength of the Beehiiv brand itself.
Direct search is inherently tied to brand recognition — people only search for sites they’re already aware of. The brand’s pull is further validated by search volume data from Ahrefs, which shows 21,000 monthly direct searches in the US alone, up 36% over the last two years. Yet people don’t become aware of companies through osmosis — they discover them through deliberate marketing touchpoints.
Beehiiv’s other top marketing channels reveal the various pathways people take to discover the brand and, eventually, visit the website.
And this is where social media’s impact becomes undeniable. The social foundation Denk built in the early days has carried the brand through its entire journey, from scrappy startup to dominant force.
Around 15% of the company’s monthly web traffic comes from social platforms. With over 9 million estimated visits last month, that translates to over 1.43 million people reaching Beehiiv through platforms like YouTube, X, and LinkedIn.
This multi-channel approach mirrors strategies we’ve seen work for other B2B SaaS brands.
The key difference is Beehiiv’s execution: relentlessly focused on creator education and founder-led authenticity.
The Social Channels Propelling Beehiiv to Top Brand in the Creator Economy
Despite a strong presence across multiple social platforms, they don’t all contribute equally. Understanding their distribution channel performance gives us a glimpse at Beehiiv’s strategic priorities.
- YouTube dominates the social referral mix, driving 33% of monthly social traffic.
- X (formerly Twitter) follows closely with nearly 24% of social referrals.
- LinkedIn captures 22% of social referrals and has the largest social following at 58,000.
Rounding out the social mix, Facebook contributes 11.71% of referrals and Instagram adds 5.77%, though these platforms play supporting roles compared to the top three.
From that we can glean that Beehiiv prioritizes platforms where their target audiences — creators, journalists, and businesses — actively seek educational content and professional tools. In other words, they’re focusing where it matters.
Let’s take a detailed look at the top three social platforms driving Beehiiv’s growth.
YouTube: 33% of monthly social referrals
YouTube isn’t exactly what most people think of as a social platform (take it up with SimilarWeb), but for the purposes of today we’ll treat it as such. And besides, video is one of the preferred content types on social media.
For Denk and co., they started a YouTube channel primarily to educate and empower creators with how-to content and new feature announcements.
The fact that YouTube is their largest social referral driver isn’t surprising, given their video content creation rate. In the last calendar year, they’ve uploaded 80 videos, pushing the channel total to 661 videos since the channel launched in February 2022 — that’s a publishing rate of 1.5 per week.
Creating this SEO moat of video content:
- Turns free-tier and trial users into power users who are more likely to pay for the premium service
- Unlocks the benefits of YouTube SEO, turning videos into major brand visibility drivers through both organic and AI-facilitated search
The result is a self-reinforcing growth loop where education drives product adoption, and product adoption fuels long-term visibility.
X: 24% of monthly social referrals
Former Twitter being a top-three channel for Beehiiv makes sense considering it was the training ground and launch pad for the product when it was still a side-hustle for Denk.
Now, according to SimilarWeb, it’s driving nearly 41,000 referrals to the brand site — and that’s just through desktop.
Two major accounts drive Beehiiv’s activity: the Beehiiv brand account and Tyler Denk’s personal account.
The Beehiiv brand account, with 34.4k followers and over 14,600 posts, serves as an amplifier and distribution channel. The brand uses it to:
- Distribute key marketing assets like their State of Newsletter Report
- And repost content from current users to showcase the popularity of the platform and amplify social proof
Then there’s Tyler Denk’s account. His X presence helped build Beehiiv’s early momentum and he hasn’t taken his foot off the gas.
With a much larger audience reach than the Beehiiv account, Denk’s presence on X is the perfect example of a founder-led marketing and sales strategy.
Here are a few value-first posts shared with his 41,000 followers:
- Threads walking through the exact growth playbook he used to generate revenue as an early-stage startup
- Insights from his experiences as a founder that business leaders across tech sectors can apply
- Engaging key segments of the Beehiiv target audience with well-timed offers.
Denk’s personal brand has become inseparable from Beehiiv’s growth story. He’s created a blueprint for founder-led marketing that drives both awareness and conversions. But X isn’t the only professional network where Beehiiv rules.
LinkedIn: 22% of monthly social referrals
LinkedIn serves a different purpose in Beehiiv’s channel mix.
It’s not the largest referral driver, but it’s where Beehiiv reaches business and enterprise buyers — an audience that doesn’t spend time on platforms like X or Bluesky.
The Beehiiv brand (58k followers) and Tyler (58k followers) accounts both operate in a similar capacity as on X, but the employee advocacy is taken up a notch on LinkedIn.
Daniel Berk, Beehiiv’s Chief Evangelist and Senior Sales Manager, uses his interactions with prospects to showcase just how dominant their product is compared to competitors.
Beyond Berk’s humble bragging, other members of the Beehiiv team are also active on LinkedIn:
- Steven V. (product marketer) regularly posts shortform video of features in action
- Kanishka K. (content marketing manager) discusses her experience as a creative
- Francis Zierer (lead editor) shares his learnings from interviews with newsletter creators
Activating employees is a key part of a winning LinkedIn marketing for B2B. For instance, it’s a key ingredient to the approach brands like Dreamdata and Clarify use to drive pipeline.
But as important as asset distribution, C Suite thought leadership, and employee advocacy are to LinkedIn (and X), there’s another factor that elevates Beehiiv’s social strategy to the next level.
The Secret Ingredient to Beehiiv’s Growth: Social Proof
User-generated content (UGC) and social proof are central to Beehiiv’s brand visibility and growth on social channels.
As their users increase, so does the fraction of creatives who spread the word about Beehiiv being their top newsletter platform. Current users expose other creators to the brand and product, some of whom become evangelists themselves, and so the cycle continues.
Search “beehiiv” on LinkedIn, X, or Bluesky and you’ll find a steady stream of posts:
- People starting conversations with current Beehiiv users to learn the good and the bad of the product
- Newsletter milestone celebrations from current users who document their journey in real time
- Long-form posts from evangelists who discuss the Beehiiv brand and product with genuine interest
Our very own Dozie Anyaegbunam, Creative Director at Foundation, recently brought his newsletter and podcast, The Newcomers, over to Beehiiv. I asked him how he first came across the brand and what influenced his decision to move — the answer perfectly encapsulates how their social strategy drives awareness and decision-making:
“I came across Beehiiv about two years ago via Twitter. Their founder, Tyler Denk is pretty active on there and did a pretty great job of positioning them as the folks who understood what it means to build a newsletter compared to others.
As for what influenced my decision, I would say branded content, especially their last product drop. They did an amazing job of listing out their new features and how it helped any media business to create more value for itself and its audience.”
On platforms like YouTube, X, and LinkedIn, social proof compounds at scale, and turns individual creator stories into shared credibility. For other B2B examples, check out our breakdown of ShipBob’s billion-dollar social proof formula.
That same signal set increasingly feeds AI-assisted search and recommendation systems, extending Beehiiv’s visibility beyond traditional social discovery.
Beehiiv’s Social-Led Brand Dominates AI Visibility
While much of the conversation around AI visibility and generative engine optimization focuses on organic search, Beehiiv is a great example that brands that lead with social can win AI visibility too.
According to SimilarWeb, about 3.94% of Beehiiv’s referrals (20.7 thousand visits) come from ChatGPT. That pales in comparison to the impact of the social channels we just looked at (not to mention organic search), but AI influences decision-making in many ways, only one of which involves following a ChatGPT link to a website.
For instance, when a creator or journalist prompts ChatGPT to learn about newsletter monetization models, Beehiiv is one of the top brands that pops up. That’s visibility.
According to an analysis from Profound, they outperform competitors like Substack, Kit, and Ghost on key GEO metrics like visibility score (80.8%) and share of voice (13.5%).
The most popular LLMs tell users that Beehiiv is the go-to platform for making money from a newsletter. This, in turn, can lead the user to a number of different channels.
Whether the next step is search, video, or social, Beehiiv shows up with consistent signals that reinforce its position as the category leader.
In AI-assisted journeys, visibility and positioning collapse into the same moment. The way a brand is described determines how and where it’s evaluated next.
Build Your Social-First Growth Engine
Beehiiv’s rise from scrappy startup to creator economy leader demonstrates the power of an integrated social strategy.
They combined founder-led content on X, educational videos on YouTube, and employee advocacy on LinkedIn to build a growth engine that drives both direct traffic and AI visibility.
Social platforms now do more than distribute content. They supply the signals AI systems rely on to interpret brands, rank credibility, and make recommendations. Over time, the social proof a brand earns becomes part of how machines describe it.
Start building your presence now.
Get in touch with Foundation to see how our social media and generative engine optimization agency increases visibility across the channels that matter to you.
