Transcripts
1. Mastering Substack - Introduction: Welcome and hello. My name is John Valentine and welcome to this class
on skill share. Grow your newsletter on Subst. Now if you click on this
class, you have a newsletter. You're interested in
starting a newsletter and you want to use substack
in order to do that. Well, subst is a
great platform in order to start
getting customers, getting your audience built up, and sending out that
newsletter to get subscribers, get views, get everything
on your newsletter. In this course, I'll be
going over a couple of topics as you can see on screen. First, I'm going to talk
about the difference between the quality and quality
that you want to do. You want to have
quality and quality in your newsletter content, right Then I'm going
to talk about sharing, then partnering up using social media,
requesting feedback. And then towards
the end, I'm going to have some final thoughts and some concluding thoughts
on this whole class. So feel free to skip around. Feel free to sit back, take some notes,
watch everything. And then afterwards, maybe watch other sections that you want to rewatch or
you're not sure about. And if you want to
have more questions, then you can put them in the
comment section on below. I will be going through these periodically and trying to
answer them as best as I can. But enough set. Let's jump on
into the first topic here.
2. Chapter 1 - Quality and Quality: Now let's go ahead and move
into the first topic here, which is quality and quality.
What does that mean? Well, it means that you should focus on your quality rather
than quantity, right? Some social media sites can
get away with less quality, but just frequency and higher quantity to sort of overwhelm your
audience with content. For example, Twitter
is a lot like that. You can just shoot off
a lot of good tweets, but sometimes just the
amount of content can help. Sometimes Instagram
can be like that. And then of course, there
is social media sites where the quality
really matters. For example, Youtube
as well, right? You want to do videos, do well. You want to have high quality
videos similar to substack. If you have a newsletter, right? If you send those out once
a week or even once a day, you want them to really
have that quality, right? You don't want to just
send it out twice a day or once a day and
give it less thought. It's better to
send it out once a week with higher quality
than once a day, or just with more
frequency, right? Because the difference
is people are, the aim is for you to get
people to pay for it, right? You want to start
with a strong base, get consistent, because
you don't need views, you need subscribers, right? This is a substack.
It's not Youtube, it's not Twitter,
it's not Instagram. People don't consume
it for free. People don't, you know, click on it 1,000 times and
then you still get paid. Right. People can click on Youtube videos and
can click off. But as soon as you get to a
certain number of seconds, you get that click and
you still get paid. Right. So if 1 million
people click on it, even if they might
not like it, Sure. In the long run it doesn't work. But at the end of
the day, right, if it's good enough for people
to watch, it'll be okay. Because it's free content
and people can watch it. But subs Stec, you
want to attract people enough to make them care enough
to like your newsletter, to actually subscribe and
have that subscription going. Right? Because that's how
you make your money and that's how you build
your audience, right? So that's the key difference. You can focus on
quantity as well. But if it's not quality, if it's not consistently good, people are not going to
be able to pay for it. People don't want to
pay for it, right? So you want to start having that audience where you see wow. You know, this is the value I'm getting out of
this newsletter or whatever kind of topic that
you choose to be, right? But the big, big
difference is that it's not free because
people have to pay for it. So people would only pay
for it if they really, really enjoy you as a person, as an influencer, as
you enjoy your topic, enjoy your style of writing. Enjoy whatever they're
getting out of it, right? Because they have to make that decision to
actually pay for it. It's not just a Youtube
subscription they can click on. It doesn't matter, it
doesn't cost anything. Who cares if I have it or not? Even if I subscribe it. I
don't watch the videos. It doesn't really matter. All right. This is
completely different. People are spending money on you every month to get the information that
you're putting out. So make sure to focus
on that quality.
3. Chapter 2 - Share around: So let's move on to the next topic which
is the Share option. Now what you want to do is customize your
newsletter, right? You want to customize
your options. And a big thing that
you want to focus on is customizing your
button options, right? You want the share button and the subscribe button. All right. These are big, big pieces of creating a newsletter and
growing on a newsletter. Right? Because
Substate has a couple of offers of some button
options. All right. There's share Common Subscribe, become a paid subscriber
and more and more, right? So if you do too many it can overwhelm the
reader and look spammy. And also if there's
a lot of buttons, sometimes people don't
click on any, right? Think of the sort of
paralysis of choice, right? If there's two or three options, you might just click one of
them is there's two options, okay, Maybe I'll click
on one of these. If there's ten,
you're like whatever else, give over it, right? So think about it from
your audience member. Think about it from your
client perspective. How it would look, how
good it would look. And so of course, some of the most important buttons
are the subscribe, like the pay Subscribe button and of course the Share button. Right? Because sharing allows
people to get that comment, get that newsletter
out to other people, and maybe share it
with their friends if they saw something
interesting. And then next thing you know you get a new subscriber, right? So sharing is very important for word of
mouth and for marketing. And of course, that
subscriber button is good because that's
your end goal, right? You want to make it
easy for people to subscribe to you, right? So try not to use
too many buttons, but having a share
option really, really helps you with
the organic growth. And then of course, making it easier for people who
like the article, like the newsletter, to share it to someone that they want. And of course then click
on that subscribe button to keep engaging
with your content.
4. Chapter 3 - Collaborate: Now let's move on to
the third topic here, which is a partner up. Partnering up in all
kinds of models of social media and content
posting can really help. Partnering up, AKA
collaborating with other people can really
be helpful, right? Of course, think about the follow a follow
things from Instagram, especially back in the day. You don't want to do that
kind of spammy partnering. Collaboration fall
a follow model, but you can partner
up with other people, publications, and then publish articles and newsletters
on each other's platform. For example, you can do
it in a couple of ways. First, you can collaborate
an article, right? Maybe you are two influencers
in the same niche. Maybe you talk about phishing
or something like that. And then you can partner
up on one article. Maybe it's the top
ten fishing spots in the United States. You have five and then the
other person has five. And you post that newsletter on your substack and then on their substack linking
each other's accounts. And if you have a
similar sized audience, then you really reach
out to new people. It's a win win
situations, right? They reach out to someone new, you reach out to someone new, and for free, you guys
can just partner up. And it's sort of a
collaboration that helps expand that audience and really helps expand
the potential reach that some of those newsletters,
right, have, right? The second option you have is not only can you
collaborate an article, but you can share
each other's article in each other's
newsletter, right? So for example, maybe you are
even in different niches, maybe you're in the same one, maybe you're in
different niches, right? Let's say you talk about
digital marketing and then you touch on AI or
something like that. And then you say, but
my partner over at this newsletter has
another article about AI, check it out here. And then similarly, if they publish a newsletter,
right, they can be like. So we talk about AI, but at the end it'd
be like and it can really be used in
digital marketing, just like my friend at this
publication talks about. So these are some kind of examples that you
can use in order to work together and gain a new perspective
on an audience, right? Gain some new members, people looking at your stuff. So it's a really, really good way to get some
of that organic growth, especially early on
when you, for example, don't want to spend money
on marketing or don't have much money to spend on
marketing, for example. So really connecting
with people, networking and getting some of that collaboration going can
really add value, right? Not just to your newsletter, but also for the other person
and in turn for you, right? So not only is it a win win in terms of exposure
for audience, but maybe the audience from your newsletter
really actually like some of the stuff that the
other person wrote, right? Maybe you can have
a guest article that they can write or
a link and be like, wow, this was
really, really cool. Thank you for
bringing in an expert on this topic for
your newsletter. I really enjoyed reading his insights into
this specific topic, even though you don't cover it. But I'm glad it was all
in one newsletter, right? Because what if they wanted
to learn more about AI now? They had to Google it, now they had to go to another newsletter
or whatever it is. But if you present
that information in your article, in
your newsletter, maybe your audience will
like that because they're happy that they get all
that information in one. Really try to connect
with some people. Look at the subs Stec
recommendations, your author recommendations,
and you can reach out to those people that way. You can really get some recommendations
going from other people and collaborate on
the actual newsletter or article itself, right? Get creative in that
way. But these are the options that you
have when it comes to partnering up with people
and when it comes to collaborating with other
publications or other creators.
5. Chapter 4 - Request Feedback: Now let's move on to the fourth, and last but not least, topic that I want to
cover in this class, and that is requesting feedback. When it comes to
requesting feedback, you want to have
constructive criticism. Constructive feedback, right? It's always a good thing to seek out what people like and
what they don't like, right? So as I said here on the slide, realize the importance of
constructive feedback and direct input from content
consumers, right? Actively seek your reader
opinions on newsletters, on length content layout, and see if they can
engage effectiveness and identify areas for
improvement, right? You want to put maybe
some, of course, maybe not every newsletter, but try to put
surveys out there. And a really popular way to get people to do surveys is
have giveaways, right? Say once a month you put a survey in new newsletter
and say, you know, anybody who does this
survey is entered into a giveaway for
$50 Amazon gift card. And then you pick
somebody at random after you get a certain
number of surveys in. Right. That way
you can really try to get some feedback from your actual
customers especially. This is different too because especially from customers who
are paying for it, right? If they're subscribed for
however much money a month, then they will be
a little bit more inclined to leave their feedback because they want
their opinion heard. They want their voices heard. They want to get the value, what they have for
their money, right? They, of course, already see
enough value to pay for it. But if they feel like they are
heard and they can express their opinion and
you would actually start changing some things, then that will play
into even more of a really connection with your audience and they will
like it even more, right? If 100 people tell
you that you should have 200 more words
in your newsletter, then maybe you should
start looking at having more words in
your newsletter, right? If they say it's
always too long so they only read half of it
but they still like it. Then maybe look at that, maybe
they want more pictures, maybe they want something
else in it, right? So really try to gauge what people actually like,
especially your customers. And you can also do that
through social media, right? Go on Twitter, go and read
it. Going on Youtube. Go on whatever social media
is you're using to boost your newsletter as well and try to interact
with them, right? Try to get people to comment, like reaching out to my customers who are
subscribed, a subst. What did you think of the
last three newsletters? What can I improve? You can
be honest with them, right? People like transparency,
especially if you're creator rather
than a big publication. People will want to talk
and engage with you, right? You could say, I
was thinking about doing these changes thoughts. You can make polls, for
example, on Lincoln. You can do it all kinds of
stuff on Twitter as well or X. Just try to connect
with your consumer in some way and see what
can be improved. And of course you can be your own be critic as well, right? Do an audit, see what you think works
and what doesn't work. Great. Look at your newsletters, how they changed over the last few weeks,
over the months. See if the change is good. See if the interaction
is good, right? And see what works,
what doesn't. It's always good to self audit and always good to audit your
own work and your content and newsletters to see you
can do better what you can improve on and of course
what you can change, right? That's always an important
part of creating content, and in this case,
creating newsletters. That way you can
use that to become better improve your ways,
improve your newsletters. And in turn, of course, grow and get your audience bigger. And get your newsletter out there and really get
some new members that people might
like in the future. Maybe somebody looked
at your newsletter, didn't like it, but
you changed it. You became better, you improved. And three months
later they saw it again and they, wow, I like it. Now I'm ready to subscribe. Right. You never know. Reach out, be own critic and
try to improve continuously.
6. Conclusion - Mastering Substack: That has basically been it. Thank you so much for
joining me today. So just to summarize, again, going back to the
content that we covered today. Quality and quality, right? Focus on the actual quality
rather than the quantity, because it's a subscription based model that you
want to focus on. Substright. It's not a
social media site like Facebook or Instagram
or Youtube where you can just shoot out content. People enjoy it for free. If they like it, they like it.
If they don't, they don't. Here you want to have
quality content to get people to subscribe on
your newsletter, right? Number two, share. Right?
Get that share button there so people can share
with their friends and have that organic growth. And you want to have
that subscribe button to make it easier for
people to subscribe. Of course number
three, partner up, focus on collaborations, right? Focusing on connecting
with other people and publications to have a win win situation and get
your name out there. Then of course use social media, as I said as I covered. And last one at least
request feedback, right? You want to look at
feedback that you have. You want to
constructive feedback, constructive criticism. And in turn, again, use it with your social media to collect that feedback with social media to push
your newsletter and get that feedback
as well, right? That makes it easier,
run giveaways, run simply polls or just
asking people for feedback. And sometimes people can be more responsive than you
think when it comes to that. People who will give you that feedback that
you need, right? Because people who care enough
to give you feedback will actually be excited about you listening to
them as well, right? Use social media to
get that feedback and then request the feedback again. Use it, give away polls in whatever kind of
ways you can think of. Yeah, that's basically
it. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name has been John Valentine. Really appreciate you spending
your time with me today. Make sure to go on my channel, my account, to see what
other videos I have. I have a lot of videos covering all kinds of things related
to digital marketing. And whether it is Twitch,
Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram linked in, I
have a bunch of videos out that cover all these kinds of topics that interests you. If that interests you
in digital marketing and growing things
of that nature, go ahead and check that out. Make sure to put any
questions you have in the comment and
discussion section below. Make sure to check out
the project for this. And I will give you criticism. I will give you help, I will give you feedback
and so on as well. Yeah, make sure to
check all that out. Make sure to follow the channel. And I appreciate you for today. Thank you so much for watching
and joining us today, and I will see you
next time. Goodbye.
John Valentine, Digital Marketing, Social Media Expert
