I think one of the difficulties with starting a Substack community around a publication is outreach.
Substack defaults to offering a streamlined means of publishing to just Twitter, however (pending any changes by Elon Musk) Twitter is not a conduit of free speech, like many places that opt to engage in censorship. The ones that don't en…
I think one of the difficulties with starting a Substack community around a publication is outreach.
Substack defaults to offering a streamlined means of publishing to just Twitter, however (pending any changes by Elon Musk) Twitter is not a conduit of free speech, like many places that opt to engage in censorship. The ones that don't engage in censorship often look down even on relevant attempts to promote as being a type of spam.
Many Substackers draw in their audience from other, similar Substacks, and whilst this is great news for Substack readers as it means more content, it doesn't expand the audience pie, as it were, as breaking through the behemoth takes time and resources. The primary growth factor from what I can observe is through word-of-mouth and direct link sharing, however for new beginners this is painfully slow.
Many Substackers who are new are inexperienced at marketing and advertising (myself included), especially for people on budgets of very little or zero (myself again included), finding the most cost effective means of advertising is difficult. Perhaps Substack can do an article or PDF explaining the most effective means of advertising?
Additionally Substack might want to create a sort of primary page akin to YouTube where you can see a list of (free) posts recommended by some transparent system reporting on today's topic, based on a user's previous browsing history (if they consent). That way natively expanding internal reach and discoverability.
I recognise Substack is in the early days and will improve as time continues, so I look forward to see how it turns out!
I agree with you! I would so love if the front page, Substack.com, was like "Hacker News" and listed text links of all the latest individual posts being published by Substack writers, plus a tag system per post so that readers can search Substack.com based on a category or topic, e.g. "humor" "comic strip" "movie recommendations" "life hacks" etc.
I think one of the difficulties with starting a Substack community around a publication is outreach.
Substack defaults to offering a streamlined means of publishing to just Twitter, however (pending any changes by Elon Musk) Twitter is not a conduit of free speech, like many places that opt to engage in censorship. The ones that don't engage in censorship often look down even on relevant attempts to promote as being a type of spam.
Many Substackers draw in their audience from other, similar Substacks, and whilst this is great news for Substack readers as it means more content, it doesn't expand the audience pie, as it were, as breaking through the behemoth takes time and resources. The primary growth factor from what I can observe is through word-of-mouth and direct link sharing, however for new beginners this is painfully slow.
Many Substackers who are new are inexperienced at marketing and advertising (myself included), especially for people on budgets of very little or zero (myself again included), finding the most cost effective means of advertising is difficult. Perhaps Substack can do an article or PDF explaining the most effective means of advertising?
Additionally Substack might want to create a sort of primary page akin to YouTube where you can see a list of (free) posts recommended by some transparent system reporting on today's topic, based on a user's previous browsing history (if they consent). That way natively expanding internal reach and discoverability.
I recognise Substack is in the early days and will improve as time continues, so I look forward to see how it turns out!
I agree with you! I would so love if the front page, Substack.com, was like "Hacker News" and listed text links of all the latest individual posts being published by Substack writers, plus a tag system per post so that readers can search Substack.com based on a category or topic, e.g. "humor" "comic strip" "movie recommendations" "life hacks" etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com