18 Comments
User's avatar
Sinéad Connolly✨'s avatar

A great read, thank you! It inspired me to write this note - would really appreciate any feedback!

When I was a child, I used to write stories

I journaled a lot and took so much joy in writing

Then I stopped

I stopped for many many years

I started writing newsletters in my role as CEO and publishing on LinkedIn

I loved writing and tried to prioritise it but the day to day was too busy

Since deciding to step back from my business late last year, I have started writing again

After reading others work on Substack for years, I decided to finally take the leap

I set up a newsletter and wrote to my audience of zero

After a few short months, I now write weekly, have grown an entirely organic audience and have reached so many people across the world

I feel like a writer!

As Florence Given wrote this week - ‘to be a writer, you just have to write. So go, write!

Restack for anyone who may need to feel like a writer today and let me know what was the catalyst for you in getting started on here?

Expand full comment
Rick McClelland's avatar

Curious if you have any advice for folks outside the type of pubs that would post this kind of content. For example, I'm in the Humor section of the site. So I go on and post short jokes a lot. None of that really fits into this formula BUT I see other humor writers doing similar and their stuff gets picked up way more.

Now obviously they have a lot more subscribers than I might, so they're working from a stronger base. And maybe that's all the difference is. But I'm trying to work out a way to get to that higher level with more humorous content vs. all of the "I can help you solve X pain point" kinds of posts. Because that's not really what I do regularly.

Expand full comment
Barry Farnsworth's avatar

As a fellow humour/fiction writer, I agree. While I don’t dispute that these tips work, and I am grateful of the author for sharing them, it’s hard to implement them if your publication falls outside of the self-help/finance/marketing category.

Personally, I like to share snippets from my upcoming posts and series, which generally gets decent engagement, but I don’t fully know the nuances of your publication and writing.

Expand full comment
zee mercado's avatar

Thanks for these very useful tips.

Expand full comment
The Identity Work Letter's avatar

As a newbie this is super helpful. Somehow my LinkedIn is restricted so I’m not findable and I can’t login to my account and I got off Meta platforms out of principle so I’m literally starting from zero. Thank you!

Expand full comment
Mission: Palm Trees's avatar

I like the idea of notes. But as you experienced at first, I too am not sure how to make them a valuable tool. So your deep dive here, with your results was quite helpful. Thanks much!

Expand full comment
Suzy Lindgren's avatar

I really appreciate the insight, and you really gave me some things to think about. When I look back at my tiny little corner of the Substack world, I find that my articles got much more responses when I talk or write about certain subjects that are more personal then instructive. I try to throw in some funny content too, and just be real.

Expand full comment
Mark J. Resnick's avatar

Very helpful, thank you.

Expand full comment
Fabio Matos Cruz's avatar

Solid insights Wes, thanks for sharing. Coming from a solid audience following on Linkedin, I've been finding a bit challenging to trigger engagement here on Substack. I feel that most of my subscribers just read my emails and that's it. Tried Notes but didn't really work out so far. Substack is quite foreign for them, so they don't really know how it works aside from receiving the newsletter emails. Any tips on how to improve engagement with subscribers that aren't familiar with this platform?

Expand full comment
Almost Dr.Karen Chambre's avatar

Thank you for writing such a helpful post. You did some amazing research

Expand full comment
Hope C Lundblad's avatar

👍👍👍thank you so much!

Expand full comment
Karen Wesley's avatar

This is brilliant! Thank you!

Expand full comment
Sharyph's avatar

Great. thanks for the share, man

Expand full comment
Robin Ghosh's avatar

I always seem to pick up something new from your articles. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers.

Expand full comment
Frank Favasuli's avatar

Thanks for going down this rabbit hole and spreading the good word. This was great

Expand full comment
The Timeless Traveler's avatar

Thank you for sharing this. Great article with a ton of useful information. 👍

Expand full comment
Jill Hart's avatar

spot on...substack is unique in its way of rewarding interaction! Simply getting active commenting & sharing has brought me 100+ subscribers in 30 days - mostly from notes

Expand full comment