Substack is for many of us, a relatively new platform. Maybe me writing this article and sign posting it might be the first time you have heard of it? However it has been in existence in one form or another since 2017 and has recently tipped into having 2 million paid for subscribers as well as millions more people visiting and enjoying free content on the site. It’s big and it is growing.
So, how to describe it.
Many of us are looking for ways and places to create and house content, articles, images, audio and video, to get them in front of an audience. We want to be able to send things to people via email, create a podcast so people can listen to our thoughts. We want a water cooler place to go to chat with other likeminded souls, to find and grow our community and to be part of other people’s communities. We also feel a bit jaded by social media and don’t always feel good about the time we spend on those platforms.
Substack really does offer one place to do all of this for small business content creators. So let me break it down so you understand all the features and benefits;
Content
Once you have set up your Substack space, you can write and post articles, record and house podcasts/ audio content and embed video content. And like with other places where you might put some content such as your blog, social media, youtube, you can receive comments and chat to people.
When you have a few bits and pieces up, your page where people land starts to look like a lovely magazine or library of information depending on what layout you choose (you can customise your page with colour, layout etc but as this is a rookie guide I’ll keep it simple!)
This allows you to create a base for everything you want to say and share and an easy way for people to find all those things too.
The backbone of Substack is long form content like articles and honestly, this is one of the biggest joys. Being able to both create and to read longer form stuff, away from word counts, finding the perfect image to go with it, leaving behind the anxiety that you’re writing too much, because this is why people are coming to the platform. They want depth and know that this isn’t found in captions and soundbites.
Long form content also allows your audience to know and understand you better and more quickly. Which is lovely.
I’m also enjoying making and listening to people’s ‘voice notes’ type podcasts – like THIS ONE of mine.
When someone signs up for your content, they will get an email version of that content when you publish it, unless they actively disable email notifications. If they use the Substack app, they will see your latest content in their inbox when they next visit there. People will find you through the platform and you can build subscribers just from being there – I gained about 30 last week for example. Did your email list grow that much last week? Mine didn’t!
If you are someone who already engages with your audience through an email list, you can import your list to Substack and create and send content from there. You can of course also keep your list wherever it currently is too, which you will need to do anyway if it’s connected to an online shop, you rely on automations or do a lot of segmenting and tagging.
All this means that your content gets shown to your people and they won’t miss things. It also means if you decide to engage with podcasts, chat, notes etc, people who were simply on your mailing list previously, now have other ways to connect with you and get to know you.
Community
As well as being able to chat with your subscribers through your content and their responses, there are other features you can use to meet people and to chat in a shorter format – like we used to do on social media before it became complicated and heavy!
The newest community feature is called ‘notes’ which some have described as being like twitter or social media-esque. And it kind of is except for a few crucial differences. Firstly, you can very easily switch to only seeing updates from people you personally subscribe to. There are also no promoted posts, no adverts, no suggested posts from people the algorithm thinks you might like. Very little video content. Items in your notes feed appear chronologically which means there is no algorithm deciding what you’d most like to see. And rather like shares and retweets you can ‘restack’ other people’s posts and content – and folks will hopefully do that for you too, broadening your reach.
You can also start what are known as ‘chats’ which are private group chats for your subscribers where you can get a conversation going and create conversations both between you and them but also between your audience themselves. A great way to create community, get to know your people and have them get to know you. You can have chats that are only available to paid subscribers.
No social burnout
I think the reason why people, myself included, feel very jaded by social media, is how it just doesn’t feel under our control or really for our benefit anymore. It’s a very frustrating experience in many ways. Take the way that businesses on instagram suddenly were required to use the reels feature or risk falling behind in terms of views.
The way the different platforms try to mimic one another had made them all a less nice place to be. Facebook is a total mess now in my opinion and instagram’s anxiety around TikTok is making all of us nervous!
Visually, social media is very cluttered, lots of movement through videos, the endless scroll, the way content we haven’t chosen to follow is pushed at us. If social media were a building it would be a noisy bar with music too loud, videos all over the walls and no one able to hear each other speak let alone think. As an introvert who has issues around noise and light, it has an adverse affect on my mental health, leaving me anxious, drained and still wanting more because of the sheer addictiveness of it.
The business model of us all creating free content which then keeps us all online more so that we see more ads and paid for content honestly is a bit sickening. The platforms might be free to use but the fact that the money is made from ads and selling data on us and our behaviour is a problem. I’d rather pay a monthly fee to instagram, create the content I want and have it show to everyone that has asked for it but that simply is never going to be the model there.
Substack is absolutely the opposite of the above which is what makes it so brilliant.
Paid content
At the core of Substack is the ability to have paid subscribers and to create content for them. There are many ways of doing this in terms of what you offer to who. Some make everything free and just ask for subscriptions to support the work, others make various decisions about what does and doesn’t go behind the paywall.
Substack are absolutely behind the idea that great content deserves to be rewarded and that writers and content creators should have an easy way to monetise what they do and this is what their business model relies on, as they make money by taking a small percentage of paid subscriptions.
I think for those of us who have been giving away so much for free this is a real mindset shift – but an exciting one. Some creators are already making the equivalent of a salary over there and whilst I think for most of us that’s very much a long term vision, or not something that will ever happen, there is still something satisfying about the idea that you can create for people who want to invest in you, be that 10, 100 or 1000 people. And if you could even generate £500 a month from the kind of content you would normally give away for free on social media, blogs and email newsletters, why would you not want that?
So, those are my current thoughts and a rookie explanation of what can appear to be a complex platform but is actually just a very calm, beautiful and nurturing place to be.
I’ll be creating a lot over there going forwards. I still have this website here and my regular mailing list but I’ll also be offering the opportunity to look around my Substack by moving my list there too. If you don’t want to be subscribed there too, it’s easy to hop off the Substack train, no hard feelings.
If you’re not on my list you can find me HERE
I’d also love to encourage to use it both as a consumer and creator of brilliant things. If like me you’re a bit out of love with the socials and ready for something new, please do play around with it and see what you can make it into for you and your business.