My Top 8 Sparkly Tips to Support your Substack Growth
ooo and Cultivate Audience CHEER over the Holidays! ✨ 🎄
Did you know you can add a url to an image here - how about a Happy Holidays card that links folks somewhere fun? Perhaps a free gift or a template they can use to make their own if they are arty?
Hi Sparklers,
This is a light lift post that will support you to make a couple of subtle shifts that deeply impact your resonance with your right fit audience.
Pick one tip that resonates or work through them all if you fancy?
Implementing these tips will encourage a subscribe or two when squillions of people are online in between Christmas and New Year. It’s busier than usual here and you don’t have to be constantly plugged in to receive your best fit readers over the holidays.
My biggest tip for joyful, sustainable growth is to be constantly asking yourself how to break the fourth wall. And yes we actually have to sit with the question.
How can you reassure your audience you’re a living breathing, imperfect human in the eyes of your readers, not someone they consume, skim read or scroll past? Humanity, connection and gratitude will save us all in and re-connect us to our “why” for this work again and again.
Top Tips to Set your Substack Up for your “Out of Office - I’m on holiday!” yet still welcome new readers and subscribers
We’re being read more than ever before but the model is different now.
With most creators facing greater than average subscribe churn and praying to the algorithm gods to go viral for the discoverability…Here are some ways to help and ensure folks click the sub button!
Add a subscribe button to the TOP of your post… a couple of paragraphs in. So many writers aren’t asking for the sub - it’s not a blog unless you make it a blog - do you want to make it a blog?
Pin a post to your publication’s home page - I wrote more about hero posts here but cutting down the calls to action on your Substack homepage is the single biggest way to funnel people into the subscribe. Take off ‘Leaderboard’, be cautious about having a ‘start here’ mixed with a hero post and a contents page - give people ONE place to read, click and subscribe.
Tidy up your welcome email and add a surprise gift. Add MORE of your personality, more work in service, some social proof of what you’re about, how your work resonates with your audience.
Add your Substack URL to your email signature AND (if you like) to your out of office reply?
It’s such an easy thing to hyperlink your email signature. Here’s mine…
I’ve never been able to figure out an out of office that doesn’t go into an endless email loop with someone else’s OOO but if you are setting an OOO - make it personal and link your Substack archive there? Something cute like - “Got some time to read over the holidays - here’s an article I wrote on x,y,z…
Schedule a round up of your top posts. How do you discern top? You want to go to ‘stats’, ‘email’ then toggle the top bars to look at open rates, views, comments, likes and subs… feel into what people (new and existing) might like to see again.
Gamify your publication - tell your audience you’ve hidden gifts in and amongst your publication. I did this for my Substack birthday and it was so fun. I used emojis and hyperlinked them like this in a few of my posts easy to access from the home page. ☃ 💫
Gift your readers an audio reading of one of your posts - either an older one or a new one - it’s lovely to hear your voice and builds on my point of breaking the fourth wall. If you’re not confident to read your work yet, please know there’s a creative practise and an art to it. Be kind to yourself and make the reading about your audience - make it a conversation with your biggest fan because they are already inside of your audience I promise!! This melts the jitters away and gives you such a permission slip to move past your inner critic.
And don’t forget your headers and footers - most people read in email so if you want to temporarily update your header and/ or footer to point people to something or spread some holiday cheer - do it!
What’s your plan for being ‘online’ over the holidays?
Your ideal reader’s plan is probably similar.
Around this time of year my husband usually says;
“no one likes to be seen to be being online but we’re all on there.”
…and I’ve observed in previous years, the permission slip is well and truly ON from 27th December with a short quieter time from 24-26th.
You can post festive wishes or posts if you want - it’s your publication you’ll know what feels right and good. Let’s make some magical connections over the holidays?
Claire
✨
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THANK YOU again for your continued support - it’s a JOY to do this work and support my members in their endeavours too! 💫
These are such creative ideas, thank you 💗💗
Thank you Claire ✨ great ideas to implement and thank you for the wee hidden gift 💝🎄🌟