Stats at a Glance
- Newsletter Name: ICYMI (In Case You Missed It)
- Platform: Substack
- Launch Date: December 4, 2020
- Current Subscribers: ~40,000 (Substack) + ~12,000 (LinkedIn)
- Cadence: Free edition every Friday; paid tier 2–3 bonus issues/month
- Team: One-person operation (design outsourced)
If you’re an influencer marketing industry professional, a creator, a social media platform, or somehow connected to the creator economy, you may have heard of Lia Haberman’s Substack: ICYMI. As both a creator and writer covering the creator economy, I’ve been following Lia Haberman’s Substack for some time. And I’ve been curious to learn who she is and why she started a Substack. I finally chatted with Lia to learn the origins of ICYMI:
From Class Notes to Industry Briefing
When Lia Haberman started her Substack, it wasn’t to chase trends or build a personal brand — it was to help her students.
“I teach at UCLA Extension, and one of my students said, ‘You need to be putting out a newsletter,’” Haberman recalls. “Once class ended, she realized she wouldn’t have access to all the updates and trend discussions we had every week.”
Haberman teaches social and creator marketing at the UCLA Extension. While she was initially sharing industry information on Twitter (X), she found that most of her students weren’t on that platform.
In addition to wanting to help her students stay up-to-date on influencer industry/creator economy news, while working for a high-profile influencer’s wellness startup during the pandemic, Haberman realized her newsletter could serve as a valuable communication channel.
“If I put something in the newsletter, she took it more seriously than if I sent her a Slack or an email,” she explains. “Once it was public, it became a way to influence what she was thinking.”
Haberman launched ICYMI on Substack in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. At first, it was informal — “a list of just bullet points… almost like notes you’d send in an email,” she says.
By 2022, she invested in professional branding, hired a designer, and began treating it as a serious media product.
That blend of teaching, communication, and industry commentary became the foundation for ICYMI’s voice and authority.
That simple classroom suggestion led to ICYMI, a weekly newsletter that’s become one of the creator economy’s most trusted resources. Every Friday, Haberman breaks down platform updates, the chaos of social media, and influencer marketing into sharp, digestible takeaways for nearly 40,000 readers — from students and early-career marketers to CMOs, brand leaders, and even platform insiders.
Who is Lia Haberman?
Haberman’s career has always sat at the intersection of media, marketing, and education. She began writing for teen magazines like Seventeen before joining E! on the digital side.
Today, she teaches social and influencer marketing at UCLA Extension, consults for companies like Google, Adobe, and Sprout Social, and speaks at industry conferences across the U.S.
She’s also expanding her newsletter brand beyond the inbox. “Brands [are] wanting to partner around events — brunches, dinners, even a weekend retreat for social media managers,” she says. “After years of remote work, I love the idea of bringing people together in real life.”
Her multifaceted career informs every issue of ICYMI, which is part industry briefing, part classroom recap, and part insider analysis.
Substack Positioning: Two Audiences, One Promise
Haberman writes for two primary audiences: students and executives. Both these audiences are seeking concise explanations and credible talking points.
“The students don’t want to read the textbook — they just want the TL;DR,” she says. “And executives need enough information to sound knowledgeable with their teams.”
Each issue delivers a quick, curated summary of the week’s social media and creator economy developments.
Her credibility comes from independence. Although she consults with major tech and marketing firms, she refrains from writing about projects related to her clients. One of the most important aspects of the ICYMI newsletter is its genuine evaluation of platform updates.
“Every [platform] update gets the same test,” she explains. “Who benefits from this update — is it the creators, brands, users, or the platform?”
That neutrality, combined with consistency, has made ICYMI a go-to for professionals across the industry.
How Lia Haberman Researches Topics For Her Newsletter
Behind ICYMI is a well-oiled ecosystem of teaching, consulting, and community. “Everything feeds everything,” she says. “The newsletter, my class, my consulting — it’s all connected.”
Today, Haberman is the sole person responsible for all the content of ICYMI. She’s embedded in the creator economy, staying ahead of trends through a mix of weekly classroom discussions with her students and evaluating the state of social media for her corporate clients. Additionally, platform PR teams now share updates with her under embargo. She also shared that she reads Marketing Brew, Morning Brew, Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio, and Casey Lewis’s After School newsletters, alongside Google Alerts for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and creator-related topics.
AI also supports her process — but doesn’t replace her judgment. “Otter records and transcribes my interviews, which saves hours,” she says. “I use Gemini and ChatGPT to structure and format text. But AI can’t capture my tone or think critically — it’s too generic.”
How Lia Haberman Grew Her Substack
Haberman has never used paid ads to grow her list. “I wanted to see how far I could go before even thinking about paid,” she says.
Instead, she has relied on earned growth — including interviews, industry recognition, and word-of-mouth. ICYMI has been recommended by Sprout Social, Buffer, and featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Ad Age.
“The best way to grow,” she notes, “is to cover people and stories others want to share.”
By featuring high-visibility interviews — like Microsoft’s influencer marketing team discussing their partnership with Alix Earle or Duolingo’s head of LinkedIn content revealing their “80% professional, 20% unhinged” strategy — Haberman ensures her stories travel far beyond her own audience.
As Haberman continues to expand ICYMI into real-world events and deeper analysis, she’s also watching how the creator economy itself evolves. “The disruptors eventually become the mainstream,” she notes. “The next generation of creators will need totally new skill sets.”
Whether the future of the creator economy lives in newsletters, AI, or immersive media, one thing remains constant: audiences gravitate toward clarity and credibility.
Haberman’s ICYMI proves that being a trusted voice still matters — especially in an industry built on constant change.
