Substack Live Podcast

Live Substack Office Hours. Your Substack questions answered.

Become a paid subscriber to Substack Writers at Work: www.writersatwork.net/subscribe.

Yet another way SW@W is here to help you be your amazing self on Substack.

Who?

* Me, you, all of us.

What?

* Your Substack questions answered.

When?

* I’ll announce the day and time of each live Substack Office Hours every Tuesday in that week’s post.

* We’ll also have popup Office Hours.

Where?

* You’ll be notified in email and the app when we’re live.

* We’ll be live in the app.

Why?

* Imagine: Getting to ask me instead of the bot.

* Imagine: No more confusion. No more frustration. No more feeling alone.

* Office Hours are for paid subscribers.

What are they like?

* Watch the replay above to find out! (Great to listen to in the app or on Spotify or Apple. Timestamps are below.)

* Basically, come on, be with each other, connect, put your questions in the chat, and I’ll try to get to each one.

How?

* Join us by upgrading to paid.

Substack Office Hours, 11/8/24

[00:04:17] Niches vs. being a generalist—my signature Substack DNA paradigm

[00:07:35] Setting up subscriber challenges/workshops

[00:09:33] Understanding the activity tab & metrics

[00:14:18] Posting frequency - category differences & expectations

[00:29:56] Balancing posts vs. notes - social media strategy

[00:33:02] Monetization & subscription value

[00:39:01] Headers, footers, and banners - design elements

[00:42:02] Building audience—reality vs. perception

[00:44:21] Custom domains and URLs

[00:48:46] Selling/marketing without losing authenticity

[00:51:31] Writing calls to action effectively

[00:52:26] Community building among Substack Writers at Work subscribers

To upgrade to listen on Apple, go to www.writersatwork.net/subscribe.

How to Write an Opinion Piece on Substack

On Substack, most people doing any form of personal writing use three modes:

* rumination,

* narrative, and/or

* opinion.

Your posts may be a mix of all three, but to write Substacks that draw readers and create engagement, we need to know which mode we’re in and how each works.

Opinion writing may be one of the hardest:

* How do we do it without being moralizing, reactionary, or trite?

* How do we establish authority?

* How do we write something important to readers, not just ourselves?

By the end of this workshop, you’ll know the four keys to opinion writing online: 

* The difference between a hot take, a think piece, an opinion piece, and an op-ed

* The ideal structure for an opinion piece that doesn’t come out dull, sloppy, or disjointed or harangue the reader—brought to us by the great

* How publishing an opinion piece on Substack can perhaps take a different approach than writing an op-ed for a mainstream media outlet

* The 10 keys to a successful op-ed

Wow!

This workshop from the Substack data expert Amanda Hinton is packed with ways to use the data on your Substack dashboard to strategize your Substack growth.

01:39 Amanda's Journey and Approach to Data

04:34 Workshop Goals

06:00 Understanding Substack Data and Metrics

09:40 Analyzing Newsletter Performance

11:19 Addressing Data Anomalies and Subscriber Insights

14:42 Navigating the Substack Dashboard

27:44 Subscriber Page and Activity Ratings

32:39 Navigating Subscriber Metrics

33:44 Filtering and Analyzing Reader Engagement

34:58 Understanding Post Views and Shares

36:30 Email Segmenting and Targeting

37:34 Practical Demonstration of Filters

42:13 Identifying Key Reader Behaviors

50:03 Tracking Subscriber Actions

55:43 Final Tips and Resources

Join the Substack Writers at Work membership: For people who are ready to get serious about their success on Substack. www.writersatwork.net

I have such a treat for you. Today, my guest is the one and only Lucy Werner. She is the mastermind behind the Substack Hype Yourself, which is also the title of one of her bestselling books. I’m so happy to bring you this lightning-quick episode in which we look at why it’s okay to hype yourself and your Substack.

Hype Yourself is one of the top 50 global business newsletters. With over 20 years of communications experience, she’s taught hundreds of entrepreneurs through workshops and courses for creative spaces, like The Futur, Bayes Business School, and the University of Arts London.

She’s the author of two bestselling books, Hype Yourself and Brand Yourself, and has been featured in the Alt Marketing Power 100, The Dots Rising Stars, and Start Up Magazine’s Female Founders to Watch.

Please enjoy my interview with the great Lucy Werner.

Join Substack Writers at Work, the only all-in-one accelerated membership to get ahead on Substack fast: www.writersatwork.net

Watch the replay to

* Craft a customized, effective Notes strategy with viral potential

* Create a calendar that gets you results on Notes in less time

* Break out of your Substack bubble and attract new subscribers

I had the opportunity to sit down with Hamish McKenzie, co-founder of Substack. I’m so happy to bring you our conversation. It was really illuminating and feels like the best thing I can give you as a Substack writer or creator.

Many people don’t understand or know who the people behind Substack are. Hamish and all the people who work at Substack are some of the best, most idealistic people I’ve ever met. That goes across the board, everyone who works at Substack.

I’m very happy to bring Hamish to you today.

If you don’t know Hamish, he’s a New Zealander living in the Bay Area. He’s the co-founder of Substack and also a writer in his own right—like many people who work at Substack. He’s an incredible writer, author of Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil, which came out in 2018. Before that, he was a journalist, the former lead writer of Tesla, and a reporter for the tech blog PandoDaily. He’s written for publications around the world on technology, business, pop culture, and politics.

So please enjoy my interview with Substack Co-founder Hamish Mckenzie.

HIGHLIGHTS:

On Substack’s origins:

“The core realization [was] that you needed to make the reader the customer instead of the product…Substack’s real product is the Substack model... undergirding the entire ecosystem.”

On the idealism behind Substack:

“[We thought] maybe we can build something here that could be an alternative to that other system that we think is corroding trust and corroding goodwill in society.”

On Substack’s current vision:

“The vision is as pure as it was the day it was born.”

On the power of small, engaged audiences:

“Even if it’s fifty people.. it can be nourishing and rewarding where you really feel like you’re writing to real people who are really reading your stuff and engaging.”

On the Substack model vs traditional social media:

“This more genuine, deeper connection where the economics can be productive with lower numbers is transformative in itself.”

Advice for new Substack writers with an existing platform:

“Tell people that you’re doing your work over here. Consolidate your work here.”

Advice for new Substack writers without an existing platform:

“Don't overthink it. Just start publishing, get feedback from people. Don’t panic if you’re writing to a small audience for a while.”

On the current media landscape:

“This is the best time there's ever been to start a one-man or one-woman media empire, or even just like your ongoing serial publication.”

03:20 Hamish’s time at Tesla and his book

07:34 Substack’s origin story

12:41 Substack’s vision and model

25:03 Advice for aspiring Substack writers

Get more expert interviews like this one from the Substack team by joining the Substack Writers at Work: www.substackwritersatwork.com

Join the only all-in-one membership where you get subscribers, build a platform, and earn an income on Substack: www.writersatwork.net/subscribe

Today we’re going to stop begging for paid subscriptions. I’m going to give you six smart call-to-action strategies. Don’t worry if you don't know what a call to action is—we’ll get to that. Six smart CTA strategies to convert paid substack subscribers.

Stop Begging for Paid Subscriptions

01:28 Understanding CTAs: What and Why

02:36 Strategy 1: Limit Your CTAs

03:42 Strategy 2: Focus on the Subscriber

07:16 Strategy 3: Customize Your CTA

08:22 Strategy 4: Experiment with Wording

09:58 Strategy 5: Avoid Begging

10:55 Strategy 6: Make Subscribers' Lives Easier

11:28 Conclusion: Recap and Next Steps

If you really want to achieve your Substack goals, subscribe to Substack Writers at Work: www.writersatwork.net/subscribe.

In this episode, we talk about how to paywall on Substack. Randomly placing annoying paywalls in your posts isn’t the way to go about it.

* To be effective, it has to be done intentionally and with a generous spirit. 

* And you need a paywalling strategy (that’s the intentional part) and to think less about some abstract idea of “producing quality content,” which is relative and vapid, and instead more about connecting with your subscribers.

We talk about all this and more.

To watch or listen to the full workshop, become a member of Substack Writers at Work, the only all-in-one membership to grow your Substack. No cheap tricks. No marketing "hacks" that don't work. Real expert guidance: www.writersatwork.net/subscribe.

This workshop is so, so good.

Watch or listen to get exercises to define your Substack niche, develop a profile of your ideal subscriber, and articulate the specific problem your writing addresses.

The goal is to help you better understand your readership, which will inform your content strategy, strengthen reader connections, and make Notes and publicity much, much easier.

Join the Substack Writers at Work community to create a Substack that grows and earns an income: www.writersatwork.com/subscribe

This is great to listen to while driving, walking, cooking, etc. Someone else’s questions are likely your own.

And I just love the Substack Writers at Work community. Such wonderful people here—like you!

Timestamps:

(00:00:34) - Targeting a niche for your Substack

(00:09:38) - Incorporating a community aspect into your Substack

(00:12:41) - Defining your audience for your Substack

…