The broken flywheel concept makes so much sense. And it's already happened everywhere and is one reason social media has become boring and pointless. I see these "growth" posts now and then on Substack but have been actively muting and sometimes blocking them, and keep liking and engaging with topics I'm interested in such as photography and that has cleaned up my feed.
Your suggestions to fix the problem are excellent. Feed filters would be great.
This was fascinating to read. I’ve noticed the same that you shared. My notes about Substack get more engagement than my niche notes. A feed filter based on content topic would be awesome.
So very interesting! As someone who left Instagram for these greener pastures, I noticed that the posts criticizing IG would gain the most traction and be shown to the widest audiences. These platforms love to have their ears burning.
Totally agree with you, you make some solid points. Love how you see both sides of the growth content coin, great for people coming in trying to start up, but stagnant for anyone trying to find anything else.
Personally. I’m tired of these thanks for 100 subs posts, I get that people want to share success, but why not post that in your sub chat?
The homepage should be for discoverability, not for lowkey bragging.
It also shows to me that people’s interests are misguided. If you care so much about “growth” you are doing it wrong. Write good content, and growth will come naturally.
"The homepage should be for discoverability, not for lowkey bragging.
It also shows to me that people’s interests are misguided. If you care so much about “growth” you are doing it wrong. Write good content, and growth will come naturally.
Everyone’s looking for the shortcut…" YEP!!! a thousand times over. #oldguywritesbooks
I really agree with you! 95% of content here is about how to succeed on Substack! Sometimes I wonder, should I have stuck to blogger or WordPress blog only??
As someone who is already easily overwhelmed by social media, all the Substack advice is contributing to it. I share your question/wondering ... My old WordPress blog is starting to seem like heaven.
I noticed this my first week on the platform, and I decided I’m gonna make two substack accounts… My “hard” account where I write for my publication and it’s focused on growth, numbers, and specific topics, that account will be for posting…….and then my “soft” account where I just consume and mute every single post about substack growth etc, and consume the things I like personally, with no goals or purpose, just consuming and reading
I also think people should not be relying solely on substacks internal network for their growth, it’s an incredible platform but 20 million users is nothing right now, you should be gaining subscribers from additional sources. (Depends on what your writing about)
I might try that. I'm pretty new to substack and I've loved some articles i found but I'm starting to dread the endless scrolling and finding it really hard to find the content I've subscribed to. I'm probably missing a trick but it's not supposed to be hard work.
Angele, the content on Substack growth can be very irretating. It gives us the feeling that only gurus prosper here. I try to find people writing about life and its lessons - writers like me. 🙂
This makes total sense, but I also feel like it's not an inevitable trap. When I first started, I liked and followed a lot of content creators talking about how to succeed on Substack. I applied their advice and got some traction, but after a while, I felt like everyone was saying the same things. (i.e. Exactly what you described)
THEN I stopped liking, following, and subscribing to folks hawking Substack advice. I unsubscribed from all but the best Substack coaches, and I turned my focus, likes, comments, etc toward content I love. Now I rarely get shown any Substack advice. The occasional post that gets through feels like an adorable flashback to remind me how much I've learned.
I love that you pointed out how Substack needs to support writers for the platform to work, and I agree there are too many people hawking Substack advice. But in my experience it's easy to avoid if you just tell Substack (through your actions) that you want something else. Great read... cheers!
I wrote posts on LinkedIn for about a year and half to two years, I posted each week, often twice a week, discussing various non-business topics; my posts were never about getting a job, marketing, economics or any such and so were alien to LinkedIn's audience. All of my posts were related to my own published work without too much self-promotion. Overall, I have 150+ posts which are still available and generating views on LinkedIn.
I moved from LinkedIn to Substack for two reasons. First, I wanted posting that was not restricted by the number of characters, LinkedIn enforces a hard limit of 3000 characters whereas Substack has no limits, other than the reader's attention span. I had become reasonably comfortable with 3000 characters, but I then abused the comments by adding 3-6 comments below the post. Additionally, LinkedIn is a different atmosphere, it is made for business, job hunting, promotion, advertising, careers, against which my type of posting sharply contrasted.
A friend suggested I try Substack. I have used Substack Posts to, for the first time, develop my macrosocial ideas in longer form writing. Of course, I don't have much of an audience here, but it is much more of a community than LinkedIn will ever provide.
After about eight months on Substack, I began reposting or cross posting my Substack Posts to Medium solely in the hopes of finding yet another audience. Medium feels barren to me, not much of a community, and it took over a month and the intervention of some Substackers to finally get reads and views in Medium. I don't think Medium had a clue what to do with my type of posts and their initial distribution was very weak.
Because I am not trying to monetize and am only moderately trying to grow my audience (knowing that my writing has very narrow appeal), my engagement with Substack, and now Medium, and before that LinkedIn, has been different than other more aspiring writers, my goals are different, I am writing for legacy.
I remember this type of "hustle bro" content on X. IMO it was natural for them to migrate to Substack. After all their hustle was writing. And Substack is about writing.
It annoys me to no end though. When you see someone giving you all these tips, knowing that a lot of them are just BS. If you consistently post on Notes but you have nothing to say it is the same as standing in the middle of a town square screaming at the top of your voice at random times. Sure, you will be seen but who cares about your crazy story?
Writing captivating content gets you subs. Writing interesting content gets you subs. Writing content which no one else writes gets you subs.
And let's face it - we all want subs. Whether we want to share something out of pure goodness and have no love (or need) for money whatsoever OR we want to monetize the hell out of it in some form subs are needed. And this is what the hustle bro is looking for - a type of desperation.
One might argue "I am writing for myself" and with that I have no problem - but if it is just for yourself, a public platform is not the place for it. A journal or some offline content away from any online writing platform might be better suited.
As I look back through your post it seems I might have missed the point a bit and gone off on a tangent. But since we're talking I thought I might as well add my voice to the town square.
most of the substack, youtube etc influencers make money promising "to make money online" but the followers cannot follow these advices with success if they talk about something else than making money online.
I like your suggestion for reducing content redundancy. Fresh insights are far more valuable than recycled advice. Hopefully, those behind the scenes are considering ideas like these.
Thanks for this post. One thing that struck me as I was reading it - you really seem to care about the future of SS and writers here. I feel genuinely cared for. And I wanted to thank you for that 🙏
I respect every writer on Substack. I do not seek "influencers", nor do I seek to become one. I do not chase subscribers, I write my heart and my direct experience and if that draws someone, that is OK. "Influencers" do not draw me in any way, with all due respect. (just my humble opinion). W.E.W.
Excellent writeup Angele. I'm new to Substack but already getting tired of the content I get about Substack itself. I see even some creators have now changed their niche completely, left their area of expertise aside and brag about how successful their Substack has been.
The broken flywheel concept makes so much sense. And it's already happened everywhere and is one reason social media has become boring and pointless. I see these "growth" posts now and then on Substack but have been actively muting and sometimes blocking them, and keep liking and engaging with topics I'm interested in such as photography and that has cleaned up my feed.
Your suggestions to fix the problem are excellent. Feed filters would be great.
Hi Susanne. I see that you have found this boring too. It is so predictable and limited to follow those tips for success.
I agree, too; we need a break from getting exposed to things we don't want to see so frequently. It jams our creativity.
I have been blocking quite a lot just to avoid drowning.
Brilliant.
Thank you so much for this tip, Bec
Hi Bec,
By muting you mean not like?
That's helpful.
This was fascinating to read. I’ve noticed the same that you shared. My notes about Substack get more engagement than my niche notes. A feed filter based on content topic would be awesome.
Same here and.. I can’t wait to see it this post gets a higher engagement than my other ones 🙃
So very interesting! As someone who left Instagram for these greener pastures, I noticed that the posts criticizing IG would gain the most traction and be shown to the widest audiences. These platforms love to have their ears burning.
It looks like it is getting a lot of attention 🤓
I bet it will.
The filter are the topics.
Totally agree with you, you make some solid points. Love how you see both sides of the growth content coin, great for people coming in trying to start up, but stagnant for anyone trying to find anything else.
Personally. I’m tired of these thanks for 100 subs posts, I get that people want to share success, but why not post that in your sub chat?
The homepage should be for discoverability, not for lowkey bragging.
It also shows to me that people’s interests are misguided. If you care so much about “growth” you are doing it wrong. Write good content, and growth will come naturally.
Everyone’s looking for the shortcut…
Anyway. Love the post, thank you! 🙏
"The homepage should be for discoverability, not for lowkey bragging.
It also shows to me that people’s interests are misguided. If you care so much about “growth” you are doing it wrong. Write good content, and growth will come naturally.
Everyone’s looking for the shortcut…" YEP!!! a thousand times over. #oldguywritesbooks
I really agree with you! 95% of content here is about how to succeed on Substack! Sometimes I wonder, should I have stuck to blogger or WordPress blog only??
As someone who is already easily overwhelmed by social media, all the Substack advice is contributing to it. I share your question/wondering ... My old WordPress blog is starting to seem like heaven.
I am also thinking about revitalizing my WordPress.
Why are you thinking of doing so? For the same reason?
I probably get better engagement on Substack and have made a few good friends in a short time but I have less sense of drowning on WordPress.
Understood. "Drowning" is spot-on for me.
I've decided to try here, Medium, and restart blogging. We shall see. But mostly, I miss blogging. A great deal.
Yeah, it gets on my nerves, too.
I noticed this my first week on the platform, and I decided I’m gonna make two substack accounts… My “hard” account where I write for my publication and it’s focused on growth, numbers, and specific topics, that account will be for posting…….and then my “soft” account where I just consume and mute every single post about substack growth etc, and consume the things I like personally, with no goals or purpose, just consuming and reading
I also think people should not be relying solely on substacks internal network for their growth, it’s an incredible platform but 20 million users is nothing right now, you should be gaining subscribers from additional sources. (Depends on what your writing about)
That’s such a good hack ! I might create a second account !
Same here! One hard and one soft publication. It gives me that nice balance.
I might try that. I'm pretty new to substack and I've loved some articles i found but I'm starting to dread the endless scrolling and finding it really hard to find the content I've subscribed to. I'm probably missing a trick but it's not supposed to be hard work.
Angele, the content on Substack growth can be very irretating. It gives us the feeling that only gurus prosper here. I try to find people writing about life and its lessons - writers like me. 🙂
This makes total sense, but I also feel like it's not an inevitable trap. When I first started, I liked and followed a lot of content creators talking about how to succeed on Substack. I applied their advice and got some traction, but after a while, I felt like everyone was saying the same things. (i.e. Exactly what you described)
THEN I stopped liking, following, and subscribing to folks hawking Substack advice. I unsubscribed from all but the best Substack coaches, and I turned my focus, likes, comments, etc toward content I love. Now I rarely get shown any Substack advice. The occasional post that gets through feels like an adorable flashback to remind me how much I've learned.
I love that you pointed out how Substack needs to support writers for the platform to work, and I agree there are too many people hawking Substack advice. But in my experience it's easy to avoid if you just tell Substack (through your actions) that you want something else. Great read... cheers!
I wrote posts on LinkedIn for about a year and half to two years, I posted each week, often twice a week, discussing various non-business topics; my posts were never about getting a job, marketing, economics or any such and so were alien to LinkedIn's audience. All of my posts were related to my own published work without too much self-promotion. Overall, I have 150+ posts which are still available and generating views on LinkedIn.
I moved from LinkedIn to Substack for two reasons. First, I wanted posting that was not restricted by the number of characters, LinkedIn enforces a hard limit of 3000 characters whereas Substack has no limits, other than the reader's attention span. I had become reasonably comfortable with 3000 characters, but I then abused the comments by adding 3-6 comments below the post. Additionally, LinkedIn is a different atmosphere, it is made for business, job hunting, promotion, advertising, careers, against which my type of posting sharply contrasted.
A friend suggested I try Substack. I have used Substack Posts to, for the first time, develop my macrosocial ideas in longer form writing. Of course, I don't have much of an audience here, but it is much more of a community than LinkedIn will ever provide.
After about eight months on Substack, I began reposting or cross posting my Substack Posts to Medium solely in the hopes of finding yet another audience. Medium feels barren to me, not much of a community, and it took over a month and the intervention of some Substackers to finally get reads and views in Medium. I don't think Medium had a clue what to do with my type of posts and their initial distribution was very weak.
Because I am not trying to monetize and am only moderately trying to grow my audience (knowing that my writing has very narrow appeal), my engagement with Substack, and now Medium, and before that LinkedIn, has been different than other more aspiring writers, my goals are different, I am writing for legacy.
You know? I’ve never received even one message along these lines. Nobody has ever tried to tell me how to improve my Substack or get Subscribers.
Guess I’m just perfect ☺️
I've never received that topic to improve Substack either. I thought that I wasn't worthy of it...
A very good read.
I remember this type of "hustle bro" content on X. IMO it was natural for them to migrate to Substack. After all their hustle was writing. And Substack is about writing.
It annoys me to no end though. When you see someone giving you all these tips, knowing that a lot of them are just BS. If you consistently post on Notes but you have nothing to say it is the same as standing in the middle of a town square screaming at the top of your voice at random times. Sure, you will be seen but who cares about your crazy story?
Writing captivating content gets you subs. Writing interesting content gets you subs. Writing content which no one else writes gets you subs.
And let's face it - we all want subs. Whether we want to share something out of pure goodness and have no love (or need) for money whatsoever OR we want to monetize the hell out of it in some form subs are needed. And this is what the hustle bro is looking for - a type of desperation.
One might argue "I am writing for myself" and with that I have no problem - but if it is just for yourself, a public platform is not the place for it. A journal or some offline content away from any online writing platform might be better suited.
As I look back through your post it seems I might have missed the point a bit and gone off on a tangent. But since we're talking I thought I might as well add my voice to the town square.
This is a pyramid scheme.
most of the substack, youtube etc influencers make money promising "to make money online" but the followers cannot follow these advices with success if they talk about something else than making money online.
I was thinking about writing an article about Substack and pyramid schemes.
I like your suggestion for reducing content redundancy. Fresh insights are far more valuable than recycled advice. Hopefully, those behind the scenes are considering ideas like these.
A great analysis. I definitely am feeling the growing shovel marketplace - and hope people do not think that's what Substack is all about.
Thanks for this post. One thing that struck me as I was reading it - you really seem to care about the future of SS and writers here. I feel genuinely cared for. And I wanted to thank you for that 🙏
Ah thanks for noticing Jan, I do care tbh 💛
I respect every writer on Substack. I do not seek "influencers", nor do I seek to become one. I do not chase subscribers, I write my heart and my direct experience and if that draws someone, that is OK. "Influencers" do not draw me in any way, with all due respect. (just my humble opinion). W.E.W.
Excellent writeup Angele. I'm new to Substack but already getting tired of the content I get about Substack itself. I see even some creators have now changed their niche completely, left their area of expertise aside and brag about how successful their Substack has been.