What I learned from being on Substack for 3ish months…
This started because I’ve been reading Substack for years and I kept getting the itch to find a way to build community. And, really, I wanted to be able to direct authors to a place to get their questions answered.
I’ve been working with authors for over 15 years and I get a lot of the same questions all the time. I’m sure you get this too in your line of expertise. Instead of them having to hear me drone on and on, they could refer to this (my Substack) whenever they wanted!
Back to what I’ve learned and observed.
I was silly to think I could write 30 posts in 30 days. That was the original “challenge” I gave myself when I started. I thought it would be like writing longer Instagram posts but it wasn’t at all. Then I challenged myself to do 15 posts in 30 days. For a variety of reasons like being selected to be on a jury for over 10 days, I didn’t do that either. In my first 30 days, I wrote 5 posts.
I like that Substack limits the formatting options. This removes some of the decision fatigue of trying to make it look “nice” and designed. It’s more about the writing and the content.
People are here to really build community. The comment section on posts (not mine yet!) are full of thoughtful comments, questions and more. It isn’t just a slew of emojis and one word comments. I like that the comment section lets you get to know people and have a real conversation with people.
I have to take my own advice to connect with people and promote my own Substack. I am constantly telling authors that they need to connect and build relationships and also promote/share/repost their own work. People are so busy and distracted that they need to see something a few (actually 17 times) before they will recognize it and take action.
The publishing community is on Substack in full force. There is so much good information for authors here. I love that everyone share their own perspective on the publishing things. It reminds me that everyone’s experience is different and that every book is different. What works for one person might or might not work for you!
I am impressed by so many writers really robust paid offerings. As I’ve been subscribing to more Substacks, the creativity in the paid content is so good.
My growth on Substack has been a lot slower than I had hoped. I have so many thoughts on this. Substack is definitely more “saturated” than before. I have heard that from many writers. The other thing I’ve seen a lot of talk about is how Substack “changed” over the summer. I’m not exactly sure what the change was since I wasn’t on here before. But I’ve also read many Substacks saying that Notes is really important to grow as well.
In the beginning, I had a spreadsheet to keep track of how many times I shared the a link to The FAQs on Instagram, shared links to specific content on here and how many times I talked about it.
It took me a bit to get used to. I stopped keeping track of this because the dread of having to mark it down in a spreadsheet stopped me from doing it. Instead, my new goal is to share a link to one of my Substack articles on Instagram, to my email list or on Notes, at least once a day. Again, being honest. I haven’t gotten that consistent on it yet. But I will say that I’ve shared article links maybe 2-3 x / week… which is better than nothing.
What this mostly has taught me is that being new at something is hard. You don’t know what you don’t know. But, with every post I put up, with every new note I write, I get a little better.
If you write on Substack yourself, leave a comment and let me know what has been effective in helping you grow.
If you’re an author, let me know what questions I can answer for you.
Thanks for being here - all 30 something of you!!
This is great and I nodded along with every single line. I read something today about information overload that I will be thinking about for quite some time: “The challenge isn’t to locate a few needles of relevance in a haystack of dross. The challenge is figuring out how to deal, day in and day out, with haystack-sized piles of needles.” As a reader, this is exactly how I feel. As a writer, I wonder how to become one of the needles readers pluck from the stack.
Thank you for sharing. As a 'new' writer, it's always good to hear about the experience of others and I'm continually taking in information and adjusting my own behaviors to become more authentic while trying to build a base.