This validates what I've been toying around with for my Substack. I have a lot to say and a lot of content I want to import from another platform, but didn't want to spam my readers. I've just learned how to properly use Sections as well so my content is categorized nicely.
Posting without sending emails allows you to post long content daily (for SEO purposes and search engines). Notes are short posts that aren't really evergreen to get traffic or exposure.
I thought about a similar strategy of posting 3 - 6 times a week post only with no email. Then once a week doing a digest email that was more like a magazine than an essay. Of course linking to all the post from throughout the week.
So much advice on Substack was to do less, to make it sustainable, to post no more than once a week to be respectful of email subscribers.
My two key hesitations are my questions for you;
a) The naked post (no email) doesn't show up in the app for subscribers either, do you have a workaround for that?
b) Have you been doing this strategy long enough to attract the search traffic or are you able to drive enough traffic to your non email posts with Notes and off platform Social Media?
About the advice: I know all the types of advice and while they hold some truth, the best advice is always to write the way you can keep up with.
1. It doesn't show up as far as I know. Although I am not sure about the app which shows some banner of recent stories at the top. This might include the ones that aren't send via email as well.
2. I have traffic coming from search engines (that's why I started with that in the first place) and I have traffic coming from other platforms like Medium and Gumroad. Also Notes has an impact. I often post Notes about the published stories.
I’ve been dabbling in this method the past week or so because I’m doing a writing challenge and I know about half of my subscribers read via email. Didn’t want to annoy them. I also posted (without emailing) a couple of other things because I needed to set up a new serial (and did a live and needed to post the replay). The stories are getting some love because I share the links in the challenge’s Chat threads. I share via Notes and my subscriber chat, but they are not getting nearly the level of eyes that sending it to email and the app is. I’m sending out a digest email on Monday (I usually do one monthly, but that will be epic this month), so we’ll see if that results in an uptick.
Hi Burk, thanks for this. I just came across your newsletter.
I wonder if you have any thoughts on this:
I want to send out newsletters (via email / inbox) only twice a month for how. But I post on Instagram too, and write pretty long posts (for IG standards) + I create a video a week for IG. Would it make sense to reuse the IG content (long caption + video) here on Substack and turn it into a web-only post? Or do readers here expect long posts?
Also, unfortunately my videos are optimized for IG and the ratio doesn’t work for SS (big ugh!). So for now the best this to do for me is to link out to my IG (if/when I reuse my IG posts and turn them into a web-only post for SS). Is this perceived as a negative thing by readers here on SS (to link out to IG)?
I would use that here! And I would also double down on video here as well. I think this is the next thing that will get even bigger here, with video in Substack Notes and the Substack app pushing more video content. And short content.
Do you mean use the IG captions in posts here, or just in Notes? Notes kinda get buried, but I was unsure about sharing in posts because it’s short form writing.
Also the video ratio just looks bad on SS, which is why I link out to IG — is linking out OK?
For SS posts, it seems that the ideal ratio is 4:5, which crops a lot of the 16:9 IG video.
Great idea about combining multiple IG posts! At the moment I repurposed them on SS as posts, and added “kitchen notes” and “garden notes” to the title, so it’s somewhat clear they are shorter posts. But I’ll think of a good way to group them together. Maybe a monthly round-up.. but then I’d end up posting all that content once a month rather than twice a week like I do on IG .. hmm
Thanks for the excellent idea!By the way if I treat substack as my blog which is what I wanted, but, I have another blogspot blog as well with the same niche; I am having SEO issues by crossposting my substack posts there. So, it's double work for me posting different posts on both the blog platforms.
Thanks again! You really helped me solve a great issue. 👍. Really grateful to you. I am going to delete my blogspot and focus on Substack and Medium only.
Oh wow 👌 you are do brave! Now even I am getting courage to do it. But sure, it's ok to delete the other blog ? I mean we could rely on Substack for not throwing 🤷 us out one fine day? oops? Thsts what some writers were propagating and suggesting to keep outdide own blogger or WordPress blog as well as Substack blog but I am going bonkers maintsining both..:-(
This is so helpful - I've only been on here about 3 weeks, and trying to find the best way to approach the newsletter content because I have such a backlog of written drafts that I'd like to post but I don't want to spam the few subscribers I have...I've been thinking I was stuck with Notes if I wanted to post something every day. Looking forward to testing the blog approach, and sharing the best of the week as a newsletter!
This validates what I've been toying around with for my Substack. I have a lot to say and a lot of content I want to import from another platform, but didn't want to spam my readers. I've just learned how to properly use Sections as well so my content is categorized nicely.
Waaaiiit. Tell me more about sections!
Such a great strategy, Burk. I suggested this to a client and his publication was transformed into a powerhouse. Grew his revenue by 9000%!!!!
So are you saying posting, without email, is better than using notes?
No. Totally different thing.
Posting without sending emails allows you to post long content daily (for SEO purposes and search engines). Notes are short posts that aren't really evergreen to get traffic or exposure.
maybe you should make another segment for people who want to receive every post you know
I thought about that too. Might try it
Thank you. I’ve been postponing publishing for this reason, now I have the hack.
I just recently realized I didn't have to send every post to my email list on Substack.
why would anyone send daily newsletter emails? that's bonkers
No. I write long posts every day.
I like the long ones. Unless non-humans wrote them. When you say long, do you mean 8 minutes long, or 13-17 minutes long?
I do.
Wait a minute, your title is that you only send it once per week. Are you saying you post notes daily? There’s nothing wrong with that
I send almost daily newsletters.
I don't understand, I thought you said you only send email newsletters once per week
I’m not the author of this original post. I was adding a comment to “By Burk”.
I see that now, thanks for clarifying
I'm very interested to find this post Burk.
I thought about a similar strategy of posting 3 - 6 times a week post only with no email. Then once a week doing a digest email that was more like a magazine than an essay. Of course linking to all the post from throughout the week.
So much advice on Substack was to do less, to make it sustainable, to post no more than once a week to be respectful of email subscribers.
My two key hesitations are my questions for you;
a) The naked post (no email) doesn't show up in the app for subscribers either, do you have a workaround for that?
b) Have you been doing this strategy long enough to attract the search traffic or are you able to drive enough traffic to your non email posts with Notes and off platform Social Media?
Good questions.
About the advice: I know all the types of advice and while they hold some truth, the best advice is always to write the way you can keep up with.
1. It doesn't show up as far as I know. Although I am not sure about the app which shows some banner of recent stories at the top. This might include the ones that aren't send via email as well.
2. I have traffic coming from search engines (that's why I started with that in the first place) and I have traffic coming from other platforms like Medium and Gumroad. Also Notes has an impact. I often post Notes about the published stories.
I’ve been dabbling in this method the past week or so because I’m doing a writing challenge and I know about half of my subscribers read via email. Didn’t want to annoy them. I also posted (without emailing) a couple of other things because I needed to set up a new serial (and did a live and needed to post the replay). The stories are getting some love because I share the links in the challenge’s Chat threads. I share via Notes and my subscriber chat, but they are not getting nearly the level of eyes that sending it to email and the app is. I’m sending out a digest email on Monday (I usually do one monthly, but that will be epic this month), so we’ll see if that results in an uptick.
Good questions! I’m wondering the same.
Thanks Burk. You share some insightful content thank you and for answering my questions.
Hi Burk, thanks for this. I just came across your newsletter.
I wonder if you have any thoughts on this:
I want to send out newsletters (via email / inbox) only twice a month for how. But I post on Instagram too, and write pretty long posts (for IG standards) + I create a video a week for IG. Would it make sense to reuse the IG content (long caption + video) here on Substack and turn it into a web-only post? Or do readers here expect long posts?
Also, unfortunately my videos are optimized for IG and the ratio doesn’t work for SS (big ugh!). So for now the best this to do for me is to link out to my IG (if/when I reuse my IG posts and turn them into a web-only post for SS). Is this perceived as a negative thing by readers here on SS (to link out to IG)?
Thanks!!
I would use that here! And I would also double down on video here as well. I think this is the next thing that will get even bigger here, with video in Substack Notes and the Substack app pushing more video content. And short content.
Thanks Burk!
Do you mean use the IG captions in posts here, or just in Notes? Notes kinda get buried, but I was unsure about sharing in posts because it’s short form writing.
Also the video ratio just looks bad on SS, which is why I link out to IG — is linking out OK?
Linking out is okay. Can’t you rework the ratio with an app afterwards?
I would share on Notes. And also longform content. Maybe multiple posts combined.
For SS posts, it seems that the ideal ratio is 4:5, which crops a lot of the 16:9 IG video.
Great idea about combining multiple IG posts! At the moment I repurposed them on SS as posts, and added “kitchen notes” and “garden notes” to the title, so it’s somewhat clear they are shorter posts. But I’ll think of a good way to group them together. Maybe a monthly round-up.. but then I’d end up posting all that content once a month rather than twice a week like I do on IG .. hmm
PS I really hope somehow SS will be able to support IG video ratio (16:9) as I am currently unable to shoot in two different formats.
Good advice. Thanks!
Interesting information.
Thanks for the excellent idea!By the way if I treat substack as my blog which is what I wanted, but, I have another blogspot blog as well with the same niche; I am having SEO issues by crossposting my substack posts there. So, it's double work for me posting different posts on both the blog platforms.
But import you content into Substack if you haven’t.
Yes, I will. Thanks.
sure, I will do that. Thanks again.
I don’t think that’s an issue. It’s not likely to get kicked out of Substack.
Thanks again! You really helped me solve a great issue. 👍. Really grateful to you. I am going to delete my blogspot and focus on Substack and Medium only.
I had the same issue with my WordPress blog and Substack. I simply moved everything to Substack and deleted my Wordpress blog.
Oh wow 👌 you are do brave! Now even I am getting courage to do it. But sure, it's ok to delete the other blog ? I mean we could rely on Substack for not throwing 🤷 us out one fine day? oops? Thsts what some writers were propagating and suggesting to keep outdide own blogger or WordPress blog as well as Substack blog but I am going bonkers maintsining both..:-(
Thanks for this
Smart approach! Appreciate you sharing what’s working for you.
Very good post, thank you. I wonder what the difference between posting, without email, and simply sending a note is.
This is so helpful - I've only been on here about 3 weeks, and trying to find the best way to approach the newsletter content because I have such a backlog of written drafts that I'd like to post but I don't want to spam the few subscribers I have...I've been thinking I was stuck with Notes if I wanted to post something every day. Looking forward to testing the blog approach, and sharing the best of the week as a newsletter!
Yes, try it!
Love this! There are times when I have something to say, but I don't want to write a long Note. This solves that problem, thanks!