Up: [[Sharing]] Course: Start Substack with Passion and Purpose, Dan Blank for Jane Friedman Created: 2023-10-04 ### Why Substack Matters and How to Get Started #### What Substack Is - It’s an email newsletter platform; it’s a blog, although they call it a publication - Has a social network called Notes; a way to engage without having to do the newsletter all the time - Discovery tools are a big game changer. People can highlight a section of your newsletter, quote it, share it. Can mention names, share recommendations of other Substack publications. A huge way to grow readership. Half of audience can come from recommendations. - If you’re subscribing to half a dozen people, it’s like you’re building your own magazine of all of your favourite articles. - Free or paid newsletter; private features just for paid subscribers - Has a client earning over $40,000 a year from Substack - Lots of people like me saying we don’t care about the money, but even getting a couple of hundred dollars a month for writing can make you feel great about your writing. #### Advantages to Substack - A platform based on writing; about celebrating writers and readers - An audience of readers, not faceless ‘followers’. - Own the connection to your readers. Can download the list of subscribers and move it elsewhere if you want. - Reach readers when you want to reach them. - Have a public voice that you get to define. - You can express yourself how you see fit — not based on an algorithm #### Why Dan Recommends Substack - It’s focused intensely on writers and writing. - There are lots of ways to grow your subscribers within Substack. - Readers/writers are there. #### How to Get Started - Create an account. - Title your Substack and give it a description. - Post before you have any Subscribers. - Import your existing email list. - Subscribe to some publications - Take it slow and figure out what this ecosystem is like. - There was a seven month gap between Dan signing up for Substack and his first real essay. ### Defining Your Substack - Don’t make it a NEWSletter. As in News of the week - here’s what I’m doing. None of us have that much news. And people don’t want announcements from you. They want to hear about what you write about and why. They want to get inside the mind of the writer. - Show up as the person most curious about a topic. Don’t have to be an expert. - Your biggest credential is your focus, frequency, and passion. - Accept that people will unsubscribe. - A way to think about it is what would you love to have a conversation about if you were at a literary salon back in the 1990’s? #### Give Your Newsletter a Clear Purpose - Instead of “random thoughts and updates,” focus on themes you write about. - Go narrow in terms of topic and scope. - Be a resource on a niche topic. - Just be you! #### When You are Clear: - People know how you align to their interests/goals/challenges. - They know how to talk about your work. - They can easily recommend your newsletter to others. #### If You Write About More than One Theme As most people do - Think about the overlap in themes - People subscribe to your voice and ethos - You will be surprised by crossover readers #### Create an Engaging Title and Description for Your Newsletter Dan gave examples - Creatively Conscious — Your Creativity loves Courage! Updates from a slow-lived life on the Northumberland Coast, thoughtful journal prompts and tools to help enhance your creativity and wellbeing. Home to monthly ‘Notes from the Sea’ and my members community, ‘A Sort of Fairytale’. Over 1,000 subscribers - Dear Somebody — a short weekly note chronicling five things worth remembering, including a look into my process, reflections on motherhood, and creative inspiration. Over 5,000 subscribers - Tell Their Stories - Writer and editor Hannah Ray shares regular posts on storytelling, communities and the Internet. - The Publish Press — Creator economy news from the creator’s perspective - Beyond — Intimate conversations with today’s greatest heart-centred minds. Over 2,000 subscribers Want to infuse with fact that there’s a person, a voice behind it. Other examples that include logos - Write More, Be Less Careful — why writing is hard and how to do it anyway. Over 1,000 subscribers - Letters of Note — Nothing but history’s most interesting letters. The title of the site is done in script - The Clearing by Katherine May. Over 12,000 subscribers #### Create an About Page - Look at other people’s about pages - Go really deep. If people are on this page, they want to hear about you. - Tell them your story. Tell them the narrative of what you write about and why. Tell them your story as a writer. - Can include photos - Create a shared sense of connection on the themes you write about. #### In Terms of a Template, What Your Newsletter Looks Like Thankfully you don’t get a lot of choices. You get a few options: colours, logo, use of images, banners. People get so sidetracked with trying to make their newsletter look like them. Here you don’t have that option. Can use a logo. Your brand is simply how you help people, how you make them feel seen, how you educate or inspire them, or make them feel. #### How Often to Send Your Newsletter - Quarterly - Monthly - Bi-Weekly - Weekly - 2-3 times per week - Whenever #### The Welcome Email Substack gives standard text which is adequate, but consider: what would make someone feel welcome? - Validate the reader. Make them feel good about their decision to subscribe. - Reintroduce yourself or consider the most common questions your reader has about you or what you write aobut. - Give them an unexpected gift. Maybe that is links to your best posts. Maybe it is a download to a free PDF. Maybe it is a sincere thank you. - Consider immediately value/engagement you can provide. This can be as simple as a question you ask. E.g. “Tell me about your biggest challenge.” - An example — Drawing a Blank ### Creating Newsletter Content (the less difficult way) #### Common Content Types - Long essays - Short updates - Quick tips - Curating the content of others. Curation makes you a resource - News/trends - Link roundups - Behind the scenes of your process You have full permission to write as you see fit. #### What to Share in Your Newsletter Identify your key messages - 3-10 statements that describe themes you write about. - These also help describe what you create and why you create it. - This is the foundation for what you share publicly, and what you keep private. An example. A historical novelist doing a weekly newsletter — Week 1: Underdogs in history because you like that theme — Week 2: Paris in the 1920s. Maybe a lot of your work focuses here. — Week 3: The arts. Maybe a lot of characters are in the arts — Week 4: Research and inspiration. Your own process. A great way to stay focused on the kinds of books you write without having to give away your books. - Key messages help you capture ideas all the time. - You learn to ‘see’ ideas around you all the time. - Keep an ideas file. - To manage, create an editorial calendar to ensure you cover your key messages regularly. Lets you stay ahead of schedule so you save your daily creative energy for your writing, not getting lost in churn of social media. #### People Want to See/Hear from You - Don’t be a faceless creator. - People resonate with your experiences, emotions and stories. - Make people feel a part of something — a shared mission and a community. - Introduce yourself again and again. Restate who you are. Restate your values. Restate why you love the people who subscribe. Restate your mission. Restate the challenges you know your audience struggles with. #### Reduce How Long It Takes to Create - Create repeating systems, like themes (above list of 4 weeks) or series: The four best books I ever read and why. The four quotes that keep me looking deeper at who I am. The four people who changed my life. All of these encourage engagement from readers. - Schedule the process. - Repeat core content. - Make some content super easy to create/share. E.g. a question post ### Getting Subscribers #### Be Specific about your Ideal Reader Name them. “Jen is my ideal reader.” - She’s drawn to messages like x. - She cares deeply about y. - Z keeps her up at night. - She reads books like b. - She would subscribe to these other ten Substacks. In other words - What subject line would draw them in? - What first sentence would immediately make them interested in this topic? - What would they love to feel or know after reading this essay? - What would get them to engage in a question? - What would get them to recommend this to someone? #### Don’t Hide Your Newsletter - All touch points should lead to it. - High placement on website - Link in your email signature - Reference in social media bio - Share about it frequently in social media - Friend - How you doing? You - Oh, I was writing my newsletter this week. I’m writing about x. - Convert people to subscribers who follow you on other channels - Share the process, not just the content. Tease upcoming issues. Do this on Substack notes, but on other channels as well. - Recommend other publications. - If you want more engagement, leave room for the reader. Ask questions — i.e. When did you start sharing your writing? - Reward people who do engage. “Last week, Chris said…. Means so much to me.” - Thank others by mentioning them. @ — tags of other Substacks - Comment on other people’s posts #### How to Get Subscribers - Include a call to action button — share, leave a comment, subscribe ### The Biggest Mistakes People Make with Newsletters - Send infrequently. - Trying to do too much in one newsletter issue. - A tone that is too professional, not authentic enough. - Assuming that great content should spread on its own. - Not building bridges to your newsletter. ### Give It Time. - It takes time to develop your voice. - It takes time to grow a list. - Organic growth happens day by day, one subscriber is fine. - Give yourself more time to experiment and learn. ### Q and A #### Analytics Substack is free. They only get a cut of paid subscribers so it’s in their best interests to give you lots of analytics so you can convert to paid subscribers if you want to. So, for example, you can see how many new subscribers you got from a post and you can see the open rate for a post. There’s a pile of stuff and they’re adding more all of the time. Actively improving the platform constantly. #### People who already have a blog but no Substack; have an archive of posts sitting there. Should you move the blog to Substack even if blog has become inactive? Substack provides a basic tool where you can suck in a blog from WordPress. Dan didn’t want to spend his time with that. Wanted to start fresh. You don’t own the platform. Lots do cross-posting to their sites to avoid that problem. #### Should you have one newsletter or a couple for two different topics? Please have one. Difficult to be consistent and do it well in multiple newsletters. Exception would be a very clear business one and a separate personal one. But be careful about giving yourself twice the amount of work. #### There is a limit to how much we have time to read through. So many Substacks it’s overwhelming. Is the market not saturated? No, doesn’t think it’s saturated. Worrying about that kills creativity. We each have people who we love to hear from. What they say really means something, really changes our life. There’s a market for everyone. #### Any tips for naming your Substack? Lots of people use their keywords in their name. A lot of the titles aren’t amazing. They’re just the right tone. I could do Profound Journey. Encourages making url on Substack your name so you can change your title if you want. #### What about the money part? Some feel guilty for not subscribing and paying. People also have a hard time asking to be paid. Stretches across all walks of life. When is the right time to ask for money? Jane’s feeling is that asking for money is master mode on Substack. Make sure you have foundational skills in place first. Default setting on Substack is giving free subscribers option to pay. New writers click this without even cluing in to that then are amazed a few months later when they get a paid subscriber. Substack is normalizing it. Totally flexible. Can change how you do it at any time. #### Podcast options Lots of audio tools and there’s an advantage to people being able to hear your voice. Should think about how you want to use that. #### Does Substack feel like it takes up a lot of time? To Dan, Twitter’s implosion has had a huge impact across social media. People don’t really know where to go now. Dan has been making Substack the first place he goes to. It’s focused on writing and reading and they’re doing a lot of things that feel good. So Dan prioritizes his time. Has helped him focus on writing more. In the land rush right now. People will wake up and realize they’ve subscribed to 94 Substacks and will need to cut it down to 15. That’s okay, a necessity. (That happened to me. I’m much more discerning now.) #### Substack generating revenue from subscriptions. Are writers pressured to monetize? If continue to offer a fully free newsletter, do they get lower placement in recommendation algorithms? Yes generate revenue - take10% cut. Highest level of confidence is that we pay someone money for a newsletter. So that newsletter shows up highest in my feed because I’ve paid for it. So yes, the paid newsletter is getting rewarded for being paid. Could have impact in the future. #### On Medium, why should I switch to Substack? Unlikely to do both. Dan would discourage from doing both. His problem, and Jane’s problem, with Medium is that they’ve gone from revised promise to revised promise over and over. Dan and Jane are convinced the platform is always on the verge of shutting down. There’s been too much pivoting in Medium and they don’t trust it. #### Substack as Website Absolutely can be. Dan and Jane afraid of that because all eggs in a basket that doesn’t belong to you. Wouldn’t matter to me. #### Publishers would like seeing big numbers of Substack subscribers because that indicates interest in a book, but would they frown on reusing Substack content in the book? Dan can’t speak for agents and publishers, but we are so far into the era of Gretchen Rubin blogging her way to happiness and then writing *The Happiness Project*. In general there’s always ways to modify the content enough. Substack really no different from what we’ve been doing the last 15 years — blog to book phenomenon. Publishers, say Jane, can often see additional audience for a book and know there are lots of people who want the tangible product. She says when publishers and agents reject, they do sometimes use “you publish too much of it online” as an excuse because they don’t want to say why they are really rejecting the work. #### Can you include a lead magnet on Substack? Yes through the welcome email. Have to host the lead on a private Substack page or on your website. However, can’t do the “when you sign up, you get my free five day course.” Substack doesn’t do that yet.