How to Turn Your Newsletter into Reels and Carousels (Substack, Beehiiv, Kit) in 2026

To turn a newsletter into Reels and carousels, treat each issue as the source for a small set of posts: one 30 to 60 second Reel on the issue's main point, one carousel of five to seven slides that summarizes it, and two or three 30-second quote Shorts, each ending with a pointer to the subscribe link in your bio. Substack publishes an RSS feed at yourname.substack.com/feed, Beehiiv generates one under Settings, then RSS, on every plan, and Kit does not document a public RSS feed, so Kit issues go in by their public web link. An AI tool can read the feed or the issue and draft the posts.

This guide is for newsletter writers on Substack, Beehiiv and Kit (formerly ConvertKit), and for niche-news operators who want social reach that turns into subscribers. It covers why short-form video works for newsletters, what one issue can become, how to find your RSS feed on each platform, how to automate Reels from that feed, the per-issue workflow, how to send viewers back to your subscribe page when caption links aren't clickable, cadence and cost, publishing, common mistakes and the limits of this approach. Platform details are current as of October 2026.

Related guides: RSS to Reels: turn any feed into short-form video, how to turn a blog post into a video, how to make news videos with AI and how AI creates Instagram carousels.

Why Turn a Newsletter into Reels and Carousels?

Because new subscribers have to find you before they can sign up, and short-form video is where people who have never heard of you are most likely to see your work.

A newsletter is a closed channel. Your best thinking goes to people who already subscribed, and growth depends on forwards, referrals and the occasional recommendation. Reels work the other way around. In Instagram Ranking Explained, Adam Mosseri wrote that Reels are designed to help people discover new things and that the majority of what people see there comes from accounts they don't follow. Buffer's analysis of more than 4 million posts found Reels reached 36% more people than carousels and 125% more than single images.

Carousels do a different job. Buffer's 2026 engagement report puts the median carousel engagement rate at 6.90% of reach, about twice the 3.31% for Reels, and carousels are the format people save for later. That suits newsletter content, which is usually reference material: a list of tools, a framework, the five things that mattered this week. Our comparison of Reels vs carousels for reach has the full data; the short version is Reels for discovery and carousels for depth.

There is also a production argument. Repurposing means re-cutting one piece of content into formats that are native to other platforms instead of pasting the same text everywhere. A finished issue already contains the research, the argument and the quotable lines, which is most of the work of a good script.

What Can One Newsletter Issue Become?

One issue can reliably become one Reel, one carousel and two or three quote Shorts, plus a LinkedIn post if your readers are professionals.

The main Reel is the issue's central idea told as a short story with a hook. It has to make sense to someone who has never read you, so cut the in-jokes and back-references, lead with the most surprising point, and end by saying the full issue is free at the link in your bio.

The carousel is the issue's three to five key points, one per slide, with a hook slide in front and a closing slide that asks for a save and points to the subscribe link. It gives a new visitor a reason to believe the newsletter is worth their inbox.

A quote Short is a 30-second vertical video built around one line from the issue: a surprising number, a sharp opinion or a one-sentence lesson. Two or three of them, posted over the following days on Instagram, YouTube Shorts and TikTok, keep the issue working long after the send.

How Do You Find Your Newsletter's RSS Feed?

Substack and Beehiiv both publish public RSS feeds; Kit does not document one, so Kit writers use each issue's public web link instead.

An RSS feed is a machine-readable list of your latest posts at a fixed URL, which other tools can check for new items without you doing anything. Here is where each platform puts it.

Substack: Substack's help center says the feed for your publication is at your.substack.com/feed, with “your” replaced by your publication's name. If you use a custom domain, the same /feed path works on it; we checked several Substack publications on custom domains in October 2026 and each served its feed there. Open the URL in a browser to confirm you see a page of raw XML listing your recent posts.

Beehiiv: Beehiiv's support article on RSS, updated October 1, 2026, says the RSS Feed option is available on all plans. Click Settings in the left panel, select the publication, click RSS, then New RSS Feed, and copy the unique URL it generates; every feed URL ends in .xml. If you delete and regenerate the feed you get a new URL, so update any tool that used the old one. Beehiiv's separate RSS Ingestion feature, on its higher plans, pulls outside feeds into your newsletter, which is the opposite of what you need here.

Kit: Kit's help center describes the newsletter feed as a “mini-blog for your newsletter content” on your Kit newsletter site (Kit help), but it documents no RSS output, and its RSS articles cover connecting a blog's feed to Kit so new posts become draft broadcasts (Kit help). We also found no feed at the usual /feed or /rss paths on a Kit newsletter site. The workaround is to publish each broadcast to the web and copy its public link, which Kit says takes the form yoursite.kit.com/posts/your-url-slug (Kit help). If you write on a blog and use Kit's RSS-to-email to send it, use the blog's own feed instead.

One check for every platform: open a few items in your feed or on the web and see whether they carry the full text or only a preview. Paid-only posts are not visible to a tool reading the public page, and turning paid content into free videos would undercut the paywall anyway, so build your social posts from free issues or the free part of each issue.

How Do You Turn Your Newsletter's RSS Feed into Reels Automatically?

Add the feed URL to an Auto Reels topic in Vidpal; a keyword that is a full https:// address is treated as an RSS feed, so new issues become candidate stories for your scheduled Reels.

Step 1: Copy your feed URL, such as yourname.substack.com/feed or your Beehiiv .xml address, and test it in a browser.

Step 2: In Auto Reels, create a topic named after your newsletter. In the Keywords field, enter the feed URL plus two to four plain keywords that describe your beat and actually appear in your issues, separated by commas. Plain keywords also pull related stories from Hacker News and web search, which is useful if you want Reels that comment on your niche's news, and a reason to keep the list short if you mainly want your own issues.

Step 3: Add the same feed to the topic list in Image Posts. Carousels have their own topics, so this is what lets the same stories become carousels as well as Reels.

Step 4: Turn on the schedule, or use Generate Now to run a topic on demand. Each run collects new items, writes a script grounded in the real article, picks among hook variants and renders a 9:16 Reel. An item that has already become one of your stories is not used again.

Step 5: Review the queue. On Pro and Business you can publish from there or let Auto Reels auto-publish; on Free and Starter you download the render and post it yourself.

Be clear about what automation does here. The curator picks the strongest story for each run from everything collected for that topic, so a given issue is a candidate, not a guaranteed Reel. When a specific issue must become a video, paste its public link into Studio's From URL input instead. Auto Reels topic limits are 3 on Free, 10 on Starter, 25 on Pro and 50 on Business. For more on feed-driven video, read our guide to RSS to Reels or see the AI Reels generator page.

How Do You Turn One Issue into a Reel, a Carousel and Quote Shorts?

Work from the issue's public web page: one video for the main idea, one carousel for the key points, and a short scripted video for each quote.

Step 1: Choose the angle. Write the issue's main idea as one sentence a stranger would care about. “Three things I learned this week” is not an angle; “Why small towns are buying back their local newspapers” is. The angle becomes the Reel's hook and the carousel's first slide.

Step 2: Make the main Reel. In Studio, choose From URL, paste the issue's public link and pick 45 or 60 seconds. Studio scripts are calibrated to about 150 words per minute, so 60 seconds is roughly 150 words, enough for a hook, two or three points and a call to action. Choose a video source (stock footage or AI-generated images in one of 20 visual styles), a voice and one of 75 caption presets. If Auto Reels already turned this issue into a Reel, skip this step. Our guide to how many words fit in a 60-second video helps if you edit the script yourself.

Step 3: Make the carousel. Image Posts builds a hook slide, three to five body slides and a CTA slide at 1080 × 1350 (4:5). Check that the closing slide asks readers to save the post and points them to the subscribe link in your bio.

Step 4: Make two or three quote Shorts. Pick lines that work without context: a counterintuitive claim, a number with a story behind it, a one-sentence lesson. In Studio, choose Full Script and paste a script of about 75 words built around the line, which fills the 30-second minimum. The Text Reveal hook intro can put the quote on screen in the opening seconds. Stock footage or AI images in one consistent style suit most newsletters; the Gameplay and Oddly Satisfying background loops suit younger, entertainment-leaning audiences.

Step 5: Keep it on brand. The Brand Kit applies your logo, brand colors, caption preset and font to Studio videos, so your quote Shorts look like they come from the same publication every week.

How Do You Send Viewers Back to Your Subscribe Page?

Put the subscribe link where each platform makes links clickable, usually your profile, and tell viewers where it is out loud, on screen and in the caption.

Instagram: links typed into a caption don't become tappable, which is why “link in bio” is the convention. Every account can add up to five links to its bio, a feature Instagram added in April 2023 (TechCrunch). Put the subscribe page first, since it is the link people see without tapping again. Our Instagram bio ideas post has wording that makes the link worth clicking.

YouTube: YouTube's help page on sharing links says URLs in Shorts descriptions and comments are non-clickable, to reduce spam. Channel profile links are clickable, so add your subscribe page there, and use the Related Video link on a Short to send viewers to a longer video if you have one.

TikTok and LinkedIn: TikTok only shows a website link in the bio on eligible accounts, so check Edit profile; until yours has one, point viewers to your Instagram or YouTube profile, or say a short, memorable address and show it on screen. LinkedIn is the exception in this set: a link in the post text is clickable, so put the subscribe URL in the copy.

Good calls to action are specific about what readers get and when:

• “The full breakdown is in this week's issue. It's free, link in bio.”
• “I send one of these every Tuesday. Subscribe at the link in my bio.”
• “Part two goes out to subscribers on Friday.”
• “Save this, and get next week's list in your inbox: link in bio.”

Measure it. Give each platform its own link or UTM tag on the subscribe URL, so your newsletter platform's sign-up data shows which channel sends readers. Without that, you will be guessing which posts are worth repeating.

How Often Should You Post, and How Many Credits Does It Take?

Match your posting cadence to your issue cadence: a weekly newsletter fits comfortably within Pro's 40 credits a month, and a daily one needs Business's 100.

In Vidpal each Reel, whether from Auto Reels or a Studio Short, costs 1 credit, each carousel costs 1 and each quote Short costs 1. Publishing costs nothing; only the optional Social Scheduler preparation, which writes per-platform copy and makes one thumbnail, costs 1 credit per post. Here is what common cadences add up to.

Plans as of October 2026: Starter is $19 a month for 15 credits, Pro $39 for 40 and Business $69 for 100, with annual billing on the pricing page. Starter can export videos but cannot publish from Vidpal, so Starter users download and post by hand. The Free plan includes 4 one-time credits and renders Auto Reels and Image Posts only, with a “Made with Vidpal” watermark; Studio quote Shorts need a paid plan.

On the social side, spread a weekly issue across the week rather than posting everything on send day: the Reel on send day, the carousel two days later and the quote Shorts on the days in between. A daily newsletter can carry one Reel a day with a carousel recap of the week's best stories. Post at consistent times; our best time to post guide has platform benchmarks to start from.

How Do You Publish Everything Without Doing It by Hand?

On Pro or Business, every finished video has a Publish panel that posts now or schedules up to 90 days ahead to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn, carousels publish to Instagram the same way, and Auto Reels can publish on its own.

Publishing itself costs no credits. The Social Scheduler adds a planning layer: it picks from your finished renders, writes per-platform copy from the transcript, makes one 16:9 AI thumbnail and suggests posting times based on platform benchmarks rather than an analysis of your own audience. That preparation costs 1 credit per post and is optional. The Scheduler publishes to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn only, not Pinterest, X or Facebook pages.

A typical week for a weekly newsletter looks like this:

• Send day: the main Reel on Instagram, YouTube Shorts and TikTok, plus a LinkedIn post with the subscribe link in the text.
• Two days later: the carousel on Instagram, with a save prompt and a link-in-bio pointer on the last slide.
• The remaining days: one quote Short a day, rotated across platforms.
• Day before the next issue: a teaser Short for what's coming, which gives followers a reason to subscribe now.

If LinkedIn matters to your readers, our guide to LinkedIn videos with AI covers specs and formats there.

What Are the Most Common Mistakes?

Most failures come from treating a video as a narrated copy of the email.

• Reading the issue aloud. Newsletter prose is written for the eye. A Reel needs a hook in the first two seconds, short sentences and one idea.
• Giving away the paywall. Build posts from free issues or the free section, and keep the paid insight as the reason to subscribe.
• Expecting caption links to work. Instagram captions and Shorts descriptions don't make links tappable, so always point to your profile.
• Using one untracked link everywhere. Without per-platform links or UTM tags you can't tell which posts bring subscribers.
• Repackaging other publications' reporting. If your newsletter curates news, add your own analysis and credit the source; Instagram's creator FAQ says original content gets the best reach and distribution.
• Posting a burst, then going quiet. A steady cadence tied to your issues beats ten posts in one week and none the next.
• Skipping the carousel because it is only text. For a newsletter audience, the carousel is often the post that gets saved and shared.

Where Does This Workflow Fall Short?

Automation drafts and schedules the posts, but it does not replace editorial judgment, and a few setups need workarounds.

Feed-based curation is selective. Auto Reels chooses the strongest story for each run, so it will not turn every issue into a Reel; use Studio's From URL when a particular issue has to go out. Kit has no documented RSS feed, so Kit writers add each issue by link.

Vidpal is not an AI avatar or talking-presenter tool. If your newsletter is built on your personality, record yourself on your phone and run the clip through AI Editing, which removes silences and filler words and adds captions and auto zooms; it costs 1 credit at upload and 1 per export, and export needs a paid plan. For non-English newsletters, Studio narration captions are English; the editor's Translate panel adds captions in 30 languages and voice dubbing in 8, without lip-sync, and Vidpal does not narrate natively in other languages.

If your main channels are X, Pinterest or Facebook pages, a dedicated scheduler will serve you better than Vidpal's, which covers Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn. And social video amplifies a newsletter; it does not fix one. If issues don't have a clear point, the Reels won't either.

How Does Vidpal Fit a Newsletter Workflow?

Vidpal turns the same issue into every format in this guide, from automated Reels to quote Shorts, and publishes them on Pro and Business.

• Auto Reels: your feed URL as a topic keyword, with scheduled 9:16 Reels whose scripts are grounded in your issues.
• Image Posts: carousels with a hook slide, three to five body slides and a CTA slide at 1080 × 1350.
• Studio: From URL for a specific issue, Full Script for quote Shorts, 30 to 90 seconds for Shorts and 1 to 10 minutes for long videos.
• Brand Kit: one logo, color set, caption preset and font across your Studio videos.
• Publish panel and Social Scheduler: post now or schedule to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn on Pro and Business.

If you already repurpose videos rather than text, our guide to turning one video into a week of content covers that side of the workflow.

Start free on Vidpal and turn your next issue into a Reel and a carousel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you turn a Substack newsletter into Reels and TikToks automatically? Yes. Substack publishes an RSS feed at yourname.substack.com/feed, and tools that accept RSS can turn new posts into videos. In Vidpal you add the feed URL as a keyword in an Auto Reels topic, and new posts become candidate stories for scheduled 9:16 Reels. For a guaranteed video from one specific post, paste its link into Studio's From URL input.

Where do I find my Substack RSS feed? Your Substack feed is at your publication's address followed by /feed, for example yourname.substack.com/feed, according to Substack's help center. If your publication uses a custom domain, the same /feed path works on that domain. Open it in a browser to confirm it loads a page of raw XML listing your recent posts.

Does Beehiiv have an RSS feed? Yes. Beehiiv's support documentation says the RSS Feed option is available on all plans. Go to Settings, select your publication, click RSS, then New RSS Feed, and copy the generated URL, which ends in .xml. Regenerating the feed creates a new URL, so update any tool that uses the old one.

Does Kit (ConvertKit) have a public RSS feed? Kit's help center does not document one. Its RSS features pull a blog's feed into Kit to create broadcasts, which is the opposite direction. To repurpose a Kit newsletter, publish each broadcast to the web, copy its public yoursite.kit.com/posts/ link and paste that into a tool that accepts a URL, or use your blog's feed if you send through Kit's RSS-to-email.

How do I promote a newsletter on Instagram when caption links don't work? Put the subscribe page first among the up to five links in your bio, then point to it in every post: say it in the last seconds of the Reel, show it on screen and repeat it in the caption and on the carousel's final slide. Use a separate tracked link per platform so you can see which posts bring sign-ups.

How many videos should I make from each newsletter issue? Start with one main Reel, one carousel and two or three 30-second quote Shorts per issue, which fills most of a week for a weekly newsletter. A daily newsletter can drop to one Reel a day plus a weekly carousel recap. Keep the cadence steady for at least four weeks before judging what works.

How much does it cost to repurpose a daily newsletter with Vidpal? A daily Reel plus a daily carousel is about 60 credits a month, and adding one quote Short a day brings it to about 90, which fits the Business plan's 100 credits at $69 a month. A weekly newsletter with five pieces per issue uses about 22 credits, within Pro's 40 at $39 a month. Publishing costs no credits.