Transcripts
1. Intro: Newsletters and
having control over your email list is now
more important than ever. The introduction of AI,
ever changing algorithms, the overwhelming amount of
content on social media, it can make you feel a
little lost in the crowd. But I believe and so
do many others that somewhere like Substack
starts to give back control. It can connect you
to an audience in a way that the busy
feeds of other platforms Instagram is around 2
billion monthly users and linked in to
around 1 billion. Whereas Substack
being relatively new but gaining
traction quick is more like 20 million
readers with 5 million of them paying
for writers subscriptions. So while other platforms
serve billions of users, Substack is in the
tens of millions. It's less crowded,
easier to be seen, easier to build
those connections. Even the writers with
a very small audience are making monetization Hey, I'm Marc. I'm a top
teacher here on Skillshare, and my online classes
have attracted over 60,000 students. I'm also the founder of
a Multi Award winning music charity and director
of a creative company. This class will cover all the essential
parts of Substack, how to utilize its key features, the powerful tools
that connect you directly with a
relevant audience, the cooperative and supportive
nature of the platform. Substack really seems to be nailing that
community element, and I see a lot of writers
supporting each other to provide prompts to
help you define what your publication will be
based on, tips for growth, ways you can monetise early, and how to own your
email list rather than being at the mercy
of another algorithm. In the time I've used Substack, it has enabled me to launch
and grow an email list, create connections
that my company and charity now work with, generate donations
from people who have found our charity
through my writing. It's become a creative
outlet that I really enjoy, and I've started to see paid
subscriptions come my way. No prior knowledge of Substack. I simply had a desire
to start a news later. But even in the early
stages of using it, the return in terms of growth, connection, and creative
fulfillment has been huge. I'll share what I've
learned so far and show how Substack can
benefit your ideas, your creativity, and
your personal pursuits. Whether you're growing
a business, supporting a cause or channeling
your creative outlet, there is a space and
an audience for you. I look forward to seeing
you in the class.
2. Class Project: Okay, so the class project, we are going to start
things nice and simple. I'd just like you
to think through what your newsletter
title would be, or at least the area that
you'd like to focus on. You might already
notice, if not, I've attached a worksheet
with a couple of prompts that will help you
pull all this together. So you're going to
start by answering two simple questions. What would you write
about so you could tell us the niche, the story, the theme, the topic that
you're going to write about, and the areas that you
want to explore on Sub. As broad or as
specific as you like. I think creativity,
art, music, fitness, health, personal reflections, business tips, whatever
feels like you. Then what might your
newsletter be called? If you've got a
working title, great. If not, no worries, mine is currently labeled
creative confidence. It has changed in the past. It might undergo another rebrand by the time
you've watched this, but the general
area of focus will want to take this
class project to the next level and I
encourage you to do so. If you've already got
things in place like the newsletter title
or at least the area idea that you
want to focus on, you could go to Substack,
register your profile, sit on your home page, write your first note or
long form post. I'll explain more about what they are later in the class and then share that with everyone in the class project section. The idea here is
that we are building a supportive community that helps inspire and
encourage Ijaba. If you're feeling confident
to do so and you get all that stuff written
and registered, then share it with
everyone here. We'd love to see
it and we'd love to help push on everyone else. Wish you all the best with it? I'll catch you in
the next video.
3. My Decision To Join: In this lesson, I'm going
to give a brief overview of my background and why Substack became somewhere
I wanted to focus on, and hopefully that's
going to align with a lot of your interests and
the reason you're here. So I have run a music
company since 2014, working mainly with
in disability, dementia and mental
health, alongside that, I've been a full time
musician, an instructor. I've worked in schools
and homeless hostels, run a music studio with friends, generally just immersing myself in music pretty much every day. In 2020, my music service
got charity status, meaning we could reach even more disadvantaged people and comuni. My company in
charity was growing. I was learning more
and more about the impact music was having on people's lives from all ages, all abilities, all backgrounds. I wanted to share
more about that. We were doing the usual
thing where we're captioning photos and
videos and inforcession, and sharing them online. But the more I was
posting online, I was hearing more
and more about the benefit of newsletters and having a direct access
and control of your audience, your customers,
your client base, and not being at the mercy
of another social media imagine one of the
big players at LinkedIn or Instagram go down, you've lost that
list, you've lost all those followers that
you've built up. Scary fall? Basically, I grew
increasingly keen to launch my own newsletter that would focus around the world
that we were doing, and that's when I was hearing more and more about Substack. We'll go more into the
features of Substack later, but it seemed like a
really good way for us to blend that social media element where we could post content, but we could also write
the long form post but then go straight
to our audience. It's accessible, easy to use. This is a really important
one. You can store and download all of the email
addresses that you've acquired. Actually started just as a
guitar tutorial publication, which would share some
stuff about my charity. But after quite a
short space of time, the focus shifted, and it
became based around my charity, and the odd little thing
about guitar dropped in because more of my day
to day was the charity, was delivering sessions with in disability, dementia,
mental health. So it seems natural and
organic to reflect that. And this is why
the beauty of just getting started is so important. You can have an idea. You can imagine how things
were going to pan out. But it's not until you actually start to launch something, deliver something that
you can refine it and you can make it the best
version of what it can be. That happened with
my publication. It now feels so
much more organic and natural to write
about what I'm out. The real learning
starts once you get going. I talk a lot about this in
another class I've created, which is all about how
you can launch and design your dream business if you want to check that at any point. The newsletter was launched,
it had been refined, so it reflected more of my day to day rather
than just being more around guitar and the
instrument courses I created. I had these opportunities
now to share a breakthrough that music
therapy attendee had achieved, how people living with dementia, written their own song, how music could help
people living with disabilities or non verbal be able to communicate,
develop their mod so many of these moments
that were being generated organically because
that's the sessions that we were
delivering regularly. That's the people we were
meeting all the time. I hopefully just became
better at documenting that information and then presenting that to
the people that were interested in
reading about it. It could be dawning
to think, have I actually got enough
to write about? Is this worthy to share? But I promise you,
once you start, you'll start to develop your own systems to document this, you'll become better
at reflecting what you around you, in turn, that
confidence should build. The self doubt, the
impostor syndrome, is natural, but you do have
something worthy to share. You are further along the
road than someone else. There's this quote from
someone on YouTube, Ali Abdel that says, Whenever he's lacking
that confidence, this is a guy that's
got 6 million plus subscribers on YouTube, really successful
online business. He just says, I'm
making myself for a video for me two years ago. Two years further down the line. I've experienced
everything that I've experienced in those
couple of years, educated myself, had all
these unique experiences. I'm now relaying that to someone else who was
those two years ago, further behind me
in the journey. You can look at it
in the same way. So the newsletters
launched. I'm really enjoying the process of writing. It's bringing new eyes
onto the company. In the charity, we've
received donations, specifically from
people that have just discovered us on Substack. It's been exciting stuff. So let's now look at why
Substack would be right for you.
4. Why Substack: Let's now talk about why
Substack will be right for you. And then in the
next few lessons, there'll be a lot
of screen records, so you can see everything
step by step and really know how to get the
most out of the platform. So a big one straight off
the bat, ease of use. It's known for its
accessibility. It's very user friendly. So I don't think
you'll be too daunted by a lot of the features and
the access to the platform. It really comes across
nice and clear. Auther one community feel Substack pride
themselves on this. It's a big feature and focus
for them as a platform. Things like writers
recommendations, the restack features, the
notes, boost, group chats, all this sort of
stuff we will go into in far more details soon, but just know that
community element, that community vibe is big on I want to point out that it's not just a newsletter platform. It has brought on board that social media
element as well. The big feature around
this is called notes. That's basically your
feed where you'll be to post regular daily however
much content you want to, and then you have the
longer form post format. That's basically what
your newsletter feature is. Also, broadcasting. I've noticed a lot
more of that recently, the live video streams, people hosting podcasts on there, people
posting their music. That's quite an exciting
feature to be thinking about as well if that aligns
with what you're looking to a big thing to recap quickly why Substack could be right
for you is the amount of people using the platform
and the ratio of those that are then paying for the subscriptions of
writers publications. Instagram, having around
that 2 billion monthly users linked in around the 1
billion globally and Substack being at
that 20 million with 5 million of those paying
for writers publications. Numbers. That's good metrics. That shows that conversion
rate is really healthy and very supportive for
the people that are using that
platform to write. So your niche has far
less competition. You've got a much better
chance of standing out. And also, people have
an option to pay. You don't have to set a fee. You can have these
tiered memberships that people can choose to pay, or they can just make
their own contribution, which I think are really nice features
have there as well. That gives the
control to the user. A big key feature in why it's right for you is owning
that email list, which we touched
on a bit earlier. Another one, the posts are
landing in people's inboxes. They don't need to be. Your
readers don't need to be actively engaged on
the Substack platform. Have their email
address, they've put their email address to
you. It's all logged. You've got that information. You can send your
newsletters out to them. They don't need to be
engaging with the notes. They are receiving your email, your newsletter
without having to be actively on the
Substack platform. I think that's really cool. And you're not really getting that
relationship elsewhere, that blend of social
media style notes and then that post newsletter
landing in people's inboxes. It really gives you that
good flexibility and again, that control over
your email list. And you don't have to
worry about another big social media platform that you rely on
disappearing overnight. It's not. Don't go
into this thinking it's a get rich, quick scheme. I'm trying to go viral. It's not that vibe this platform
at the moment. Focus on building
those connections. Even those two free, 400
followers that you start to get, the connections you
can build with them, that genuine back and
forth, authenticity, a big word that's put
out there nowadays, that is going to
mean more and have more impact on you as
a creator as a writer. Those 50,000 views that sometimes happen on a
TikTok that get a ton of s, but no real
meaningful engagement or something back
from that audience. People can get lost
in the metrics. See those big numbers
and think that that's a precedent that you
have to hit every time. Actually, when you focus on
more of that community vibe, which is definitely a
bigger thing nowadays, you will find that you get a lot more back from the
people that engage the first talking
head video I did when I was trying to post a bit
more regularly online, I got about two, 300
views. Not at all. But from that, we had six
schools get in touch, four of them then became
regular sessions, and the other two
we're waiting to deliver a first
session for free from. I mean, that's pretty good
metrics when you think of it actually turning
into business. Some people have a video
take off on YouTube or TikTok that's going to get into the hundreds of thousands, but don't really have a
great conversion rate for their newsletter sign ups or subscribing or buying
whatever their product is. Again, focus on that
community element. There's less emphasis on likes, follow accounts,
watch time metrics. It's more about
reading, responding, connecting, sustaining
those longer form relationships,
all things that build. I think this is massively
appealing to creatives or anyone who feels
exhausted by algorithms. It's still early days, but
gaining a great reputation. It's a good time to cement yourself and build
a strong presence, but don't get bogged down
by chasing the big numbers, set those realistic
expectations. You continue to
build that trust. You create a core group
of people to look forward to and engage
with your content. Then when you do launch
a product workshop, you invite them to a community, they're much more
likely to do so. Let's look at the actual setup now and all those exciting, creative and brilliant features that you're going
to want to use.
5. Key Features: Right. Let's actually
start getting you set up on Substack then. Nice and straightforward,
as you can imagine, when you're signing
up to any website, pretty clear where your signing would be or create account. So that's all pretty
straightforward. We're not going to need
to go through that right now because I've already
got my profile set up. So once you've done that, you've signed in, you've set up, you will be taken
to this home page. And the first thing
you're going to want to do is go to your profile, and this is where
you will start to build out your initial profile, the page that people will land on to learn a bit
more about you. Your name, your handle. I can't imagine many
people have that surname. So usually, it's
pretty easy for me to get the name that I want
and the handle that I want. But yeah, hopefully, you've
got a little idea of what yours is going to be, bio, initial header
image, your socials, initial links that
you're going to show people, all that sort of stuff. Pretty straightforward, right? And then we'll go back
to our profile here. So once that's all set up, I then want to show
you where Substack starts to create different
areas for different things. So we've got our
initial profile there. If I go back to the home, let's look at someone I engage with quite a bit, Victoria. So Victoria runs a car,
mentor, publication. She's been so good
for our charity. Connected us with
a lot of people. So you can see here I've
landed on her profile. She also has the Cara
mentor publication, and this is where Substack
creates those differences. We have a profile where
people can learn about you, and then you have the actual
publication where this will be more detail
around what you create, and all your long form
posts, effectively, your newsletters,
you send out to your email list will start
to be collateed here, and you can, as you
see, put resources, you can start to highlight posts that you want people
to go to straightaway. So this would be
like your sort of main post here that people
would land on first, and then you can
see that there's more areas where
you can link people to different things and you can learn a little
bit more about Victoria more detail than
you would get on the actual pro folder we
looked at a minute ago. So now let's actually
build our publication. Hopefully, you've
got a little bit of an understanding of
the difference there. We'll say Bye to Victoria for a minute. So we'll
come back here. We go to a dashboard, and then we want to go to
settings and then basics. And this is where we can add
the name of our publication. I say Analia mine is currently
creative confidence, and then a little
description about what this publication is
going to be focused on and a chance to put your
little publication logo. You might want to stick with a bit of a theme for the photos. Lot of people have
headshots like this, kind of a little bit
linked in style, I guess. So this is where your
initial information for your publication exists, and then we want to go back and we're going to go to website. And then this is where
we're going to really start to build out
that publication. So, Blow, remember, we
landed on Victoria's. This is currently
my homepage with the sort of order of recent posts that I've
done, recommendations. We'll talk a bit
more about that. And then the notes that
I've been posting, archive of posts, and
then my about section, which is what we then want to edit to give the
people to land on our publication a chance to really learn more about
what we are sharing. This is where we can start to see how our newsletters
might look as well. It's going to have the
same run of editing features that you get
across the top here. So this is, like I said, the first chance for
people to learn more about you and see how
you present yourself. So, you know, you're going
to have a welcome message. We've kind of got
this initial heading for people to get an idea
of what you're about, a nice, hopefully
welcoming image, which again, kind of hopefully gives you a bit of a
vibe of what I'm about, you know, with a guitar
in the background to maybe hint at
that sort of stuff. Again, I'm sort of starting
to link in things here. So see your standard sort of text options that
you would have, you know, if I wanted that to be bold, pretty straightforward. It's already in Italic. We can add some links. We
can add images. We've got a little buttons here. So that's where my
subscribe now came from and any other little
things that you want to add in. We'll go through these
in more detail when we're actually
writing a post later, but just so you get a
brief overview now. Things like dividing lines, things like if you
wanted to quote someone, put a financial chart in there, this is where you'll
start to get this is a really good chance
to start to sew yourself. And what I like to do is
throw in a free gift here. So hopefully, that's
enticing people, that's showing what I'm about. I'm not looking to charge.
Everyone's straight away. You know, this is something
that you can sign up, you can learn about
what I'm doing. And everyone who does sign up automatically receives a
free beginner guitar class. So hopefully, that's a nice
incentive for everyone. So, we started to build
that out a little bit. Let's go back now to we
don't need to say changes. Let's go back to our
dashboard into those scenes. We gave the initial
publication name. We'll start to work
through some of these other little
features in there that are kind of the essential things you need to put in place early on. So we spoke a little
bit about pricing. Now, you can set this amount to whatever you want it to be. You don't have to have anything and you don't have
to charge people. I give all of my
newsletters away for free. There's no set charge.
The same content arrives at everyone's inbox. But you can give people the option a flexible
founding plan pricing. So allow founding
members to select an amount less than suggested, but more than your annual plan. This is where
people can be quite flexible and choose to make
a payment if they wish. And then these here are the suggested price plans
if people wanted, basically to donate because they don't have to pay
for any other content. And I've actually
had people decide to just pay for the content
because they can see it's aligned with the charity and they've messaged me
individually and said they just like to support publications and writers work. So yeah, really
nice. You do meet some nice people on the
Internet. They are out there. So again, some people
will set a paywll so they'll only get a certain
amount of content for free, and then the pay
I'll have to pay. So another thing to add about
the pricing as well that if people do start to pay
for your publication, Substack will take 10% off
of that paid subscription. Your payments will be
processed through stripe, which is a really simple
payout system to you. So I recommend having
a little look at. And then they will
take around 2.9% and some other small
transaction fees are around $0.30 if we're
just talking in dollars. So you're going to take
about 80 to 85% of your actual fee once all those little deductions
have taken place. So let's move down a
little bit more then, and we will go to our website. It's the next key thing
that we want to look at. So we've got the
website theme editor. Pretty self explanatory. This is where you're going
to be able to choose the branding, the color things. I've kept mine very
simple at the moment. I don't like to clutter
my on too much stuff, maybe a little change
in the future, but for me, someone
landed on this page, I just want things to
stand out very clearly. So hopefully, the images from the sessions that we've taken kind of sum up
what we're about. And then there's
just nice, clear, concise directions
towards the information I'm hoping people
will then click. To look at as a welcome page. We touched on it a bit earlier, but if you wanted to edit the
photo that you've chosen, whether you want your
name to appear on there, this is where you do
all that sort of stuff. The short little description
that we looked at, this is where you can
toggle that on or off. So then the next essential step is setting up your emails. So you can start to edit the templates that you
have fewer emails, like a header and footer
that will exist in those. But basically, when
someone signs up, when their email address
is added by yourself, as long as you got
their permission or they've entered
their email address, they will receive
a welcome email. So this is where you can start
to edit those templates. Now, similar vibe to the welcome
page that I had earlier. Got the title there. We've got a little description
of who I am. And again, this is
a real opportunity to sell yourself
and direct people towards the things that
you want them to see. Obviously, we're
going to be giving an overview of what
we are talking about, what our publication is
going to be focused around. But like I said earlier,
this I think is a great opportunity to give
something away for free. People have already
made the choice to commit to receiving your
work, your writing. Just to give them
something else. I think that's just
a nice incentive for people to just again, start to build that
trust for you. For me, it's a
beginner guitar course that I just give away for free, and people can start to
learn a bit more what I'm about a bit more
about my teaching stuff, they're interested in
that side of things. And hopefully just
think, this is a place that I'm going
to receive resources, and it's worth keeping an
eye on and checking out. And it is important to highlight that you can change these. So a welcome email
to paid subscribers, a welcome email to
free subscribers, a welcome email to subscribers
that you've imported. So if you're bringing
over subscribers from another platform
that you're already on, you can change the
context of these. Now, mine because
the publication is free across the board,
they are all the same. They all have the same
context and the same freebie. But you might want
to bear that in mind because it might be
something you'd consider tweaking depending upon how your subscribers have arrived. And on that note of
attracting subscribers, you realize the platforms
you're already on. So social media, obviously, a great port for connecting and you've hopefully built a little bit
of a following, regardless of how big
or small that is, make those
announcements, you know, hopefully, any impostor
syndrome isn't going to stop you from doing that sort of stuff, and you can
just notify people, let them know what you're doing, and then they can make
that choice to go and added their email address. Well, you must be careful
of is privacy issues. Don't just take all the email addresses that you've got in your email contact list
or people that have sent it to you in the past on other platforms and just add it. If they've signed up to agree to receive these
emails, that's fine, but you can't just go
and start importing everyone's emails
that you can find. But obviously, you can
send links to everyone, you can encourage people.
You can direct people. You can give away those
free additional incentives, and then you can start to
build that initial community. So when you do first
launch something, it's going to be getting
some interaction from the people that you're already
connected with elsewhere. Publication is all set up now. We've got the profile. We've got the name
of our publication, which exists separately
from the profile. We've got our welcome
emails set up. We've got our landing
pages set up. So let's go back
and actually have a little bit of a look
at how the main feed, so to speak of Substack works.
6. Key Features Part 2: So let's go back
to the home page. And now you will start to
see that feed, which, again, is what emulates more of the social media
style of things. You can see this
is what people are posting on a regular basis, and these are your notes. So these are not
your long form posts that land in people's inboxes. Posts go to people's inboxes. Their email inboxes, notes
just appear on this platform. So the people that are
signed up to Substack, whether they're
writers or they're just users of the platform, they will see your
posts in their feed. So this is where you are a little bit algorithm dependent. You're hoping that
it gets picked up. And like on other platforms,
interaction is key. But again, emphasizing,
I don't always feel, which is a nice
thing, the emphasis ongoing viral on this platform. This is about that connection,
building that community. So a key way to do that is
once you have posted a note, which if I wanted to
do, I could just do that here, music therapy. I'm going to talk about
that. I could post that. That then goes into
that social media feed. Just before I post, I will
start to interact with people. After I've posted, I will
start to interact with people. I'll comment on a few posts, and that sort of
gains that attention, those eyeballs on
what you're doing. And it seems to feed
quite nicely into the algorithm and helps
lift your visibility a bit. Otherwise it can feel quite
lonely when you post. If you just sign up and
just post something, and you're going to
probably get nothing. If you start to interact
with people, you know, so if I am initially
on this platform and I'm learning about
I'm posting about guitar, I could just do that guitar, and you'll start to see
a few publications. So they'd be good people
to connect with, you know, music, you're going to start to see lot of people that
are working around, very broad terms,
but at least I could start to feed some
information into the algorithm so it knows a bit better about
who to recommend me and for me to be
recommended to other people. So to go into this in a
little bit more detail, if we just look at
whoever is on the top of this profile, feed, S Margaret. If she had appeared on my notes, feed, I could come to her page. I could lovely learn a little
bit more about Margaret, and then I could choose where
her to follow or subscribe. And again, this is
where that difference between posts and notes come in. If I was to follow Margaret, I would only see her
notes on my feed. I wouldn't receive any emails. If I chose to
subscribe to Margaret, I would then receive all of
her posts in my email inbox. I'd still see her feed.
I'd still see her notes. I would also receive her long
form posts into my email. Hopefully, that
makes sense. And on any of these posts
that someone's wrote, you can give them a little like. You can comment, and
you can restack, which is basically Substacks feature to share
someone else's work. You could just share that
as it is, or you could add a little comment at the
top of the restack. Again, all great ways to
boost your own interaction. If you do all three of these, tally on a few writers'
notes before you do your ones and after you've
done your note as well. Okay, on the topic of
posts, let's now go back. Hopefully, notes are
making a bit more sense. Let's go back to our dashboard and then start to learn a
bit more how posts work. So posts, you can see ones I've already written down here
that have been sent out. Quite obvious, I could go
to create a new text post. We mentioned earlier about
podcasting and streaming. This is where you can
see the options for creating a new feed in that way. Or we can just outright, create a new text post. And this, like the welcome page, has got all those same features, start to write our heading. Start subheading, and then
if I can just start to write about music therapy in there and add all our different options. So this is where
I would start to construct a new
post, a new newslot. And this is what will land
in people's email inboxes. We'll go more into how to put a post fully together
a bit later on. Okay, another key
feature then if we leave those posts alone for now is
to go back to our settings. And then we want to go
down to Import Export. The talk of posts landing
in people's email inboxes, this is where you can
collect all the data of the people that
have signed up and other data metrics
throughout Substack. This is where you can export
all that and keep that. And most importantly,
this is where you will retain all of those
email addresses. So that's really important
to do. I see people saying, monthly, it's quite
a good thing to do. Obviously, if you've
had an influx of subscribers and you've
got 100 in a week, then it's probably worth doing another export just so
you've got them you know, there's no murmurs that anything's going to go
wron with Substack, but that's the beauty
of this platform and how you can own
those email addresses. You can take more
control of them, so you might as well take
more advantage of that. So I would set up some sort of reminder to make sure that
you export that data, those email lists
on a regular basis. Okay, last couple
of key features, before we go on to learning more about how to write posts,
let's go back home. We will start to see
the new best sellers, so these are the people that are taking off at the moment, getting a lot of interaction, a lot of paid subscribers. You know, that's worth
keeping an eye on. If we go over to Explore, and then we start to click
on these categories up here, let's go to technology
you will see rising. So these are the
people that have had a recent spike in interaction, particularly a recent spike
in paid subscriptions. So it's been a couple
of times I've hit that sort of top 100 rising, and you will get minds in
the category of music, and you'll get a
little notification to tell you about it, and that's quite a nice
thing to share, as well. That's another note
done for one day, if that happens for you. So yeah, you've got a category that you're particularly
interested in and you want to get started
with some kind of good recommendations and
people that are doing well, and you want to try and
learn something from them, go into these categories,
whatever's relevant to you, and start to see who's
in that rise in area, and then just go through,
follow a few of them. Maybe the people that have just broke into that top hundred. Chances are they're
relatively new. You know, they are literally just rising through
the platform, so they could be good people to start to make some
connections with. Okay, hopefully that
gives you a bit of a better idea of an
overview of Substack. Let's now start learning a bit more about how you can write those posts that are going
to land in people's inboxes.
7. Posts: Now, we're going to
fully learn how to put those posts together. Remember, followers
just see your notes, subscribers, see your
notes, and your posts. So we'd come back
over to our home. We're into our dashboard,
and then post. We can just click Create
New here if we want to, or we can go in to
our actual posts area and then create new. Like we spoke earlier, you've
got the different options. I do increasingly see more
people hosting their music. And video posting,
particularly music, a lot of people streaming that. Maybe that's because I interact with a lot
of people like. So that is something
to consider if that is your niche, your field. But for now, again,
just text post, and this is where we can
create something from blank. One other quick option
that's worth noting is, if you go to a
previous post here, you can click on these free little dots
and you can go duplicate. And then that will save
that in your draft. So you've now got a
template to work from. If you was very happy with
what you had last time, where the bulk of
text was, where the next little section
was and then had an image, or if you had all your
links at the bottom, that is a good way to just get
that template copied over, which is what I usually do. So this will always
stay the same. This stuff at the
bottom unless I suddenly decide there's
something new to put in there. But I just know by doing
that three little dots, duplicate it's then
in the drafts, so I can see that
here in the drafts, and I can just carry
on working on it. But now, we're
going to go to that create new option and actually
start to build one out. So, like we said
before, we could have a little heading, user therapy, benefits of and then
our main bulk of text, music, does, whatever it is, I'm going to start
to write about. If I wanted to link
people to anything, and if I was talking
about my hari and then I wanted people
to go straight there, I can just go to this
little coil here, and then I can put
my Charity's website in and that'll link
it to that domain. There was images in
mind. I think that's really nice to break up
the text to have images, especially depending on what
sort of field you're in, but if you are working in a more creative sort
of artistic field, I assume you're going to
want a lot of images. So I could just go
into that folder. There's that one we use. There's a mix of photos
from our music sessions, the charities music sessions, and then I can just
open that in there. Very easy to resize. And then I can start to put text all around that one
to one music session. Standard beaches
if I want a bold, italic. That all exists there. And then if I thought
this would be a good time to ask
people to subscribe, I can stick that
little button in if I feel like they're
hopefully enjoying things. I could add a little caption
to that if I wanted to. I could tweak what
this says here. Obviously, then they can then put their email
address in this box. And then if that
section is finished for now, I can put a divider, and then I'm moving
on to the next thing, say it's communication
through music. Now, if I want that
to be a header, that can be my new
heading there. And we can change the size of those depending on
what you're after. Another thing that's
worth noting, say, we've had our
opening section here, what music therapy is
about, some images, some more texts, gently
asking people to subscribe. If I wanted to set up a paywall, I could then add paywall here. So then the people
who are receiving these emails, all of
this would be free. But they'd get to this point and they
wouldn't be able to see anything below this line.
This is where it would end. And in all the content
I write under here, that will be only for the people that have
paid for my publication. Which again, is not
something I've done at the moment, all
contents free, but that's worth noting
if that's something you want to do now or you
want to build towards. The same with donations and
the links that I put in. If I load up another one
that I've already done, this is a previous
post I've sent out, the links for my courses
will be down here, and the links for my
charity will be there. If people follow the
link to the chary, that's when they can
see that donate button. There is some of my
posts that I've done, especially if it's more aligned to the delivery
that my charity is undertaking and the need for funds within
certain sectors. Disability dementia,
unfortunately, is very low funded at times. So it might be
beneficial for me to put a donation link in
there to the charity, but again, no hard sell, making it very
easy for people to learn more to click
and then make the choice whether
they want to donate experimented with all sorts
of things from my post. You can see there there's a general structure
that might be talking about a project that we're
undertaking with our charity, the impact the music's
having within disability or dementia and achievement
that someone's made in those sort of
songwriting sessions. And on that note, actually
sharing the songs, the recordings that
will all be linked to either a YouTube video or Spotify linked to where
we've hosted the recording. And then playlists, I've done that I'll show what I'm
listening to at the time. The top five tracks, albums I've discovered, books
that I'm reading. Sort of stuff that's
behind the curtain, not just from a
business perspective, but from a personal
perspective as well. People want to see
who they're reading about or who's delivering
that information to, and people love
that kind of stuff. Again, a word that is
thrown around a lot, but authenticity, you know, just be yourself, start
to share your passion, your output, your creativity, and people really connect with. He about this earlier. It can be quite overwhelming
thinking about what am I going to be
documenting the whole time? How am I going to have
all this content. But it's amazing once you
do start the process, how organically that starts to come and you will
develop your own system. So if I have an idea,
I use notion a lot, so I will throw
loads of ideas into notion and tidy them up at
another time if I need to, I use voice notes, so
I'll be walking along. If I've got an idea, I'll just capture
that on voice note. You could then use AI to
take that transcript and refine it a bit more
or at least put all those ideas
onto your laptop, and then you can turn
those into notes. You could create a longer
form version after that, and you could use those notes as that initial spark
of inspiration, you then go and write
your news this is why aligning your publication with your passions, your interests, your day to day is so important because you're living
there all the time, and there will be
something of value or interest that you can
share with the world. And again, if that week
looks quite daunting, if you're trying
to post regularly, I know a lot of people that
will break those days up into different points and different areas that
they're going to focus on. It might be that you look
at a Monday and a Wednesday and that's when you're
going to do business post, something perspective, a little bit of insight from your day to day and your
operations or whatever your creative passions
and businesses are. Tuesday could be more
of a life reflection, a life experience statement. Thursday is where you just focus on recommending other services. You really hit up the re
stacks on there and sharing other people's work and shouting about things that
you've been enjoying. And then Friday, is
that a little sort of behind the curtain into
your personal life, your actual day to day
outside of your businesses, your interest and music that you're listening to a
gig you've been to, where as always trying to
conquer that imposter syndrome. You are further along the
journey than someone else. You are passionate
about something and you want to share those
passions with the world. You have experience in
whatever field it is that you work in or whatever creative
outlet that you have. You might be spending
time designing, whatever your dream
business looks like, and you will be out
to help someone else. Even when I first
started playing guitar, I was a year down the line, and my guitar tutor said,
You're ready if you want to start teaching because I showed
them interest in it. You know the
foundations. You can show a beginner what to do. You're not cutting you're not doing them a
disservice because you are X amount of months
or years ahead of them. As long as you don't oversell that and you just
give what you know, then you are going
to benefit someone. And actually, that helps you
learn and progress as well. So yeah, get the ball
rolling, get writing, and hopefully you'll
be really happy with a return that
you start to see. It's worth saying quickly that
notes can't be scheduled. So when we was looking at our feed and we wanted
to write a little note, you can't schedule those, but posts, you can. So if you've got a flurry of
ideas, maybe batch right. You've got three or four
ideas in your head. You want to get them
down, you can then go to your post once we
could preview it, so we could send a
little test email to us to make sure that
we're happy with everything. Then if you are finished, you can go down to here, schedule a time to publish, and then you just set the
time and date that you want that to be sent
out to your email list. And you can also choose
who received that. So if you have got the
paid subscriber option on, it might be that you just
want the paid people to be receiving whatever
announcement is you're making. And likewise, if you just want the free subscribers
to get it or both. Nice one. Hopefully,
that will make sense. Happy Ryan. I'll catch
you in the next video.
8. Networking: Let's look how we
can make the most of the networking
element on Substack. And the big message
coming out of Substack is the supportive
nature on the platform. Now, every social media platform is susceptible to its
levels of toxicity. Obviously, a lot of that depends on the people
that you're following. But so far, Substack seems
pretty sheltered from that, and there's a lot more
support, engagement, and a community kind of vibe
and feel about the place. To highlight the
support I've had in the relatively early
stages of me using it, we've had donations come to our charity.
We've had referral. People that we now work
with on a one to one basis, we've had people that
I've connected with refer our charity to other big
organizations like Cars UK, who we now deliver sessions for. I've had people decide to
pay for my publication, and generally just been really
impressed with the amount of people that are keen to connect and support what you do. One of the big features for this supportive and
networking element is recommendations. So if we go back to our home
and we go to our dashboard, and then we can come down and
we can see recommendations. And this is where you
will actually find all the different publications that are recommending
your publication. So we've got incoming
recommendations, people recommending us, and then the outgoing
recommendations, people that my publication is recommending other
writers to read. Now, when people subscribe
to your publication, the recommendations will appear, and then they will
obviously have the choice whether they're
going to follow, subscribe or interactive
some people will just organically choose to recommend your publication once they discover you, which
is brilliant. Others might need a
little gentle nudge. And I think this is again where that connection and community element is
really important. Now, when I find someone that I'm genuinely interested in, I'm genuinely enjoying
their writing, I will message that person. So if we were to pick whoever's on our feed here, I
could go a message, Melissa, tell her how much
I'm enjoying our work, and then suggest about setting up a recommendation
for each other. Now, I could just say,
which I've done before, just to let you
know, really enjoy your word, really
enjoying your writing. I've set you up as a
recommendation on my publication. And then you'll find
a lot at the time, people will respond and be like, Cool, I'm going to
do the same for you. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much for sharing what I
do and recommending it. I'd love to return the
favor and do the same. That's not going to
happen all the time. Maybe people feel like
there's not enough of a connection or similarity,
and that's fine. You're not recommending
people just to get a recommendation
back, but obviously, it's nice when it happens
because it becomes like the passive income version of acquiring followers
and subscribers. Once that recommendation exists, this other publication,
as they get bigger, and as they draw new people
to their publication, recommended, and then
you've got these people deciding whether they choose to follow or subscribe to you. It's a really nice
system to be a part of, and again, really supportive
element to be a part of. I would say, don't blanket email people with
this kind of thing. That destroys that connective community vibe that we're after. If you just have a
template email and you just send that out
to a load of people, obviously, that doesn't
feel very personal. This is where you
actually want to have that personal touch. You've seen someone's
work, you really enjoy a certain element of it, reference something
that you've read, a little quote, something that's inspired, something that
you've really enjoyed. And that will really mean a
lot more to the people you're reaching followers
and subscribers come my way every
week from this, so it's definitely
something worth doing. And if you're a little bit stuck about who you want
to connect with, you'll not finding
material relevant to you. Go back to that search Substack, start to search again if I
want to put guitar in there. And it wouldn't just be
publications that would come up. If I searched the
guitar, I could look at obviously what's appearing
in the top search results, but I could see posts
that are around guitar. I can see publications that
are focused on guitar. I've got guitar and the title, people that are using that name, those keywords, and
then notes that have been posted about guitar. So you'll start to see
that actually that really broadens the amount
of people that are going to come up
with whatever it is that you're searching for can hit their profiles and start to reach out and build
those connections. Restack was another one
networking element. That's a really important one. People greatly appreciate that. You'll be amazed
at how many people message you and
thank you for it. And then it all just
perpetuates itself. If you're restacking someone, they're then commenting on that. You then start to talk back
and forth in those comments, and then you start to like
each other's other posts or you follow you subscribe. All that stuff is feeding
into the algorithm and helping each of your reach and
awareness to other people. And days that you're struggling
for content, remember, we said that there
could be a day where you just share other
people's work. Well, if you haven't got
a note ready for the day, if you want to be posting
daily or most of the week, can spend the day just
restacking people. Even on the days that
you have done notes, leave it a little bit and
then start to restack people, restack people either side of the notes that
you're creating, again, to increase the amount of engagement and eyeballs
on what you're doing. Another one is the
group chats they're on here, so we go
back to at home. We go into chat. Someone like changes with Annie
who I'm part of. She's really good for
creating a weekly chat, brilliant way to
build community. It's in people's diary. They get used to the regularity. And you can interact with all the people that
she's got subscribers. It's amazing how
many connections you start to form through that. Now, you can go in and you can engage with people's
conversations, group chats. If you pay in Annie's scenario, you can then start
your own Fred's, your own group chats within
her subscriber network. Other people will set up
different tiered systems. It might be that you have
to pay to be able to engage in these group chats, but someone like Annie's one, you can just go in there and you can talk straight away to a whole subscriber so a really
good way to test ideas. If you're starting to
build a bit of a network, you've got a few followers
and subscribers, you can just check
in with people. You can say that you're
thinking about whatever this post is that you're
starting to create, this product that you're
looking to launch. You want a little
bit of feedback from a draft that you've done, you want to ask people, What
do you want to know more of? It's a really good way to have that very direct response
and interaction with the people that have
already chose to engage leads very nicely
onto notes boosts. So you will see quite
a few people that have got a decent following. I've followed
someone called Wes. He's got this escape the
cubicle publication, helping people sort of build
their independence with newsletters and
creative outlets, build their own businesses. And on set days, so it's like
a Tuesday and a Saturday, he will do a notes boost. So again, this is something that is in
people's diaries now. They're aware of it. It's just
cemented in their brains. Okay, Tuesday, the 15,000 followers or whatever it is
that he's got subscribers, we're looking forward
to that Tuesday, and you start to target it. So you post a note around ten to six. I think
it's UK time. It works out about ten to six in the evening because I know he's going to be doing
one at 6:00, UK time. And my note will go out, and then he will start
the notes boost. Everyone that's in
that group chat starts to share their notes. The kind of deal is that
you go back and you like or restack or interact with at least three to five
people in that group chat. So you've just got that
initial wave of interaction. Helps the algorithm. It's a really nice
supportive thing to do. And I see a lot of
people doing that. I've now followed a mix
of people subscribe to a mix of people that I know most days
throughout the week, they're going to do
a note to boost. So I've kind of got it in my
head of when I post a note, their group chats going
to start pretty soon. The people that I've been
interactive in there, we're going to all support
each other's notes. That's just going to help
boost the engagement and awareness in the algorithm you're sort of playing the
social media element here. Substack obviously is
brilliant for the newsletter, the own in your email list,
all that kind of stuff. But if you want to push
that growth even more and grab hold of what some of the positives of
social media are, you can play the
game with his note boosts and his interactions, and that will just benefit you
and help you grow quicker. You could start your own
notes, boost, group chat. I watched someone
in their early days have around 30 subscribers, started one of
these notes boost. I discovered him
because he focuses around music and
releasing your own music. Four or five of us replied. In the space of two
weeks, he'd shut up to just under 400 subscribers
because he's just got a really nice swell
and wave of interaction. Done him a massive
favor. And we've all actually stayed connected and supported each
other's publications. So yeah, it could be a good thing to think
about for yourself, or at the very least, interact and sign up to other
people's ones. One more thing to
focus on within this networking element
is collaboration. So we spoke earlier about the
posts that you can create, the emails that land in
your email lists, inboxes. Well, when you do these posts, you can collaborate
with other writers. So this is one that
I'd done a while ago. It was focusing around a songwriting project
that my Chari had undertaken with a
dementia support group, everyone in the record. Everyone who helped write
the song, write the lyrics, perform the music is someone
who's living with dementia. And this was done in
conjunction with Victoria, I showed you briefly earlier,
who runs Ca as mentor. She's been really
amazing connecting us with a lot of people
supporting what we do. And this collaboration was
undertaken with Victoria. And then I just made sure
after liaising with Victoria, what she would want included. And it was for the dementia
action week campaign. We both specialize in that area. We both do a lot of
work within dementia, so it made sense
for us to connect. And then we could push these
posts out to our audience. She had an incentive to share it on her
page, in her post, on her note pull in those
people that she's already interacting with and has got following her
and subscribing her. And I could do the same
with my follower base, and it just really helped both of us grow a little bit more. And then she just sent me an email that she
wanted in there. I was able to link in her publication, wherever
that needed to be. Yeah, and it's been a really
important thing to do. And something I've
started to do more with other writers that I'm
discovering on the platform. So to summarize, be supportive you should
get the same in return. Put that time and effort
to discover other people, take the time to read their
publications, to comment, share your thoughts, feedback, what's inspired you,
what's interested you. And you'll be amazed and
hopefully very happy to see how many people reciprocate that you start to build a nice, supportive community that feels very different to a lot
of social media nowadays. Okay, enjoy. I hope you
make some good connections.
9. Outro: Well done for making
it to the end. That should be acknowledged and celebrated whenever you
complete something. I hope you're excited and feeling ready to launch if
you haven't done so already. At the very least, I hope it's helped you get
some ideas going, got you familiar
with the platform, and given you the self belief
that you have something valuable to share with the world because
you definitely do. I'd love for you to
consider signing up to my news as you
know, it's free. Well as sharing a
ton of stories and first hand insights around
the impact of music within disability,
dementia, mental health. There's also exclusive
access to classes, class discounts, freebies,
all that kind of stuff. And from the instrument
and music perspective, there'll be recommendations,
playlists, gear that I use, more of that kind of behind the curtain songwriting process, access to the guitar bass and ukulele courses
that I've created. So a real ton of creative stuff for you to get your teeth into. But more importantly,
share your Substack. I'd love to see I
reply to everything. Skillshare is the tab that is
always open on my computer, so I will check everything
that's sent over. And this is a place for
us to be supportive. Substack has its
supportive element. Skillshare is the same. Skillshare is big on
community as well. And I will make
sure I sign up to every publication that is shared in that class project section. If you haven't started yet, then I encourage you to do so. There is no perfection needed. Register, start your publication,
announce it on social, write your first note and post, and then start connecting
with new people. I can't emphasize this enough, but you learn so much by starting and form so many
connections by doing so, and these people can then
help you inspire you. You learn from him. So it's a really rewarding
process once you just got those attached
PDF that can help you a bit more if you
haven't used them already. Remember the creative career
class that I mentioned. That will be a big
help with refining any business ideas
that you have and could be the catalyst
you need to turn your creative passions
into a full time income. So, give me a shout if you've got any
questions about that. Reviews are huge, so please
consider giving one. They're a great way of helping other people discover
the content. And also, I learned
so much from them. I can learn what's loaded well, what means improving on, what you would like to
hear more about. So please consider doing that. It really, really mean a lot. Thank you. So, I hope
you join me on Substack. You any questions that
you have? Maybe subscribe to my Newsletter,
if you want to, launch your publication,
send him away once you do, and I will see you
over on Substack. Big thanks for
watching everyone. All the best. Take care.
Marc Barnacle, Music Instructor
