How writers, podcasters, and creators are building real communities on Substack
How writers, podcasters, and creators are building real communities on Substack
Tips from fellow publishers who have built thriving subscriber communities
More and more people are coming to Substack in search of direct connections with their readers, listeners, and followers. Here, writers, podcasters, and creators can build trusted relationships, distinct from the parasocial fans and low-intent browsers found in abundance elsewhere online.
Since launching Chat, as well as direct messages and surveys, we’ve seen a number of writers and creators find tremendous success using these tools to build real communities that fuel robust businesses. Publications with active chats are growing their revenue at two times the rate of publications without them. This week we also announced new improvements to Chat, including paywalling your entire Chat and improving navigation.
Read more: A guide to Substack Chat, Introducing Chat paywalls
We spoke to some of these writers and creators to inform this guide on how to cultivate a thriving community that helps grow your business and deepen your connection with subscribers.
In this guide, we look at the following strategies:
How launching with a Chat drives conversion
How paywalled Chat threads are boosting paid subscriptions
How regular Chat participation is increasing retention
Launching with Chat drives conversion
Publications that launched with a Chat strategy garnered total subscriber numbers that were 10% higher than those that did not.
Writers and creators are introducing a subscriber chat as part of launching their Substack to spark engagement and encourage paid subscriptions. One in four of our most successful launches in the past year employed Chat to welcome their subscriber base during a launch period.
This tactic works particularly well when you are moving a podcast or publication to Substack from a space that lacks robust community tools, such as a Mailchimp newsletter, a podcast distributed on Spotify or Apple, or an Instagram account.
When the creators of
, a publication that covers the beloved TV show Top Chef, moved their flagship podcast to Substack, they mentioned in their launch post and podcast episodes that community discussions were a key reason for listeners to sign up for their Substack. Soon after, they hosted a call to join their live Chat during an episode, explaining:“When we decided to launch the Pack Your Knives Substack, we wanted to expand our offerings beyond our flagship recap podcast episodes. One of our goals was to create a Pack Your Knives community, where fans of Top Chef could come together and chat about the show, because the two of us aren’t the only ones with strong opinions about who should’ve gone home last week.”
Their Chat drove more than 400 responses in an hour from fans around the world, helping establish their Substack as a destination for Top Chef fans that goes beyond their podcast feed.
More launch examples:
- migrated to Substack from a website without comments, and launched announcing that paying subscribers could now chat with each other. Longtime supporters were happy to migrate to the Substack for the deeper interactions. (They are also hosting mailbag requests through chat.)
When author
launched her Substack, she announced that she would be present in the publication chat once a week for free and paid subscribers, contributing to a very successful launch.- announced a paying-subscriber-only chat as part of her paid perks launch and saw a huge spike in subscribers.
Read more: A guide to switching your newsletter to Substack, How to switch your podcast to Substack, Switching from Patreon to Substack
Paywalled conversations boost paid subscriptions
Publications with active chats are growing their revenue at two times the rate of publications without them.
Some of the most remarkable spikes in paid subscriptions we’ve seen this year have come from writers and creators who introduced a paywalled chat.
In January,
launched a 30-Day Drawing Habit with her DrawTogether Grown-Ups Table subscribers. She wrote daily posts and offered a chat space—mostly behind the paywall—for participants to share their drawings and cheer each other on.Over the course of the month, subscribers posted over 25,000 drawings in the chat space, and her subscriber numbers doubled. Wendy reflects:
“It was a Herculean task to write, draw, publish, and moderate every day in real time for an entire month, but well worth my little team’s effort. Hundreds of Grown-Ups Table members said the 30 days of drawing was life-changing for them, especially the community element. It was for me too. I can’t wait to do it again next year.”
More paywalled Chat examples:
Lots of investors are using paywalled chats to present special insights and host discussions around them, including Citrini Research, Eliant’s Exploits, Left’s Newsletter, and Godzilla Trader (who gives paid subscribers a “24/7 chatroom” as a top perk for subscribing).
- and are both using paywalled chats for subscribers to get personal with the author and with one another. In her chat space, Elizabeth offers personal musings, invites subscribers to share the “letters of love” they’ve written, and communicates information about subscriber meetups, all via paywalled chats. Suleika encourages subscribers to respond to prompts in a paid-only chat.
- recently started a Year of Writing Dangerously project, which includes a mostly-paywalled chat.
Read more: Paywalling a chat thread
Ongoing chats increase retention
calls her chat “my favorite part of running my newsletter.” She initiates each conversation with short prompts about pop culture topics and live events—“the night of the Oscars, the early-morning hours after Netflix drops a batch of Love Is Blind episodes, or even the day everyone’s Spotify Wrapped drops.” The space is thriving, with some posts getting more than a thousand replies. Hunter says the chat “feels like the roped-off VIP section of a nightclub, or the group chat of all the kids who got cellphones early: you really just have to be there.”Writers and creators who have ongoing chat spaces are 12% more likely to retain paid subscribers.
More from Hunter:
“The chat is a rapid-fire conversation of memes, hot takes, unpopular opinions, ruthless inside jokes, and earned (and sometimes unearned) shade. There’s no better low-effort, high-reward way to engage with all my readers. Sometimes I use it as a scratch pad to work through some ideas (‘would anyone care if I wrote about this?’), sometimes it’s a highly customized well of inspiration (a polite way of saying my audience assigning me to write about a trending topic), but it’s always a meeting point for like-minded pop culture obsessives. ‘Starting the new drop of [Love Is Blind] episodes that released *17 hours ago* only to see 400 messages already in the chat,’ one person messaged. ‘We come to this place for magic.’”
If hosting chats regularly yourself feels daunting, consider letting your subscribers host their own conversations by visiting the Chat section of your Settings page and selecting “Everyone” under “Who can start threads?”
Here are some of the publication chats where subscribers are hosting their own ad hoc conversations themselves:
Many fashion writers, like Subrina Heyink, Meg Strachan, Leandra Medine, and Laura Reilly, have subscribers liberally sharing great finds and sales with one another.
Food writer
encourages subscribers to share tips and tricks in her Chat. has an ongoing thread called the Choy Love Club for paid subscribers to swap food knowledge.- ’s Footnotes and Tangents launched a “slow book group” for reading Leo Tolstoy and Hilary Mantel. Participants jump into the chat to share their reflections on each chapter and discuss them with one another.
Podcasters
offer an open subscriber chat where listeners go deeper on topics together.Superfans of the Knicks nerd out together in a thriving chat space around the publication
. Subscribers even use chat and DMs to host their own trivia challenges.
Read more: How can I moderate my Chat?, How to enable subscribers to host their own chat conversations
How writers, podcasters, and creators are building real communities on Substack