Sharing Abundance + Growing community - it's as easy as 1,2,3

Here on Substack?

Top tip - if you want to get MORE RECOMMENDATIONS, you can add a custom button to take your subscribers straight to the recommendations tab where they can recommend you this is the url you need to type in your customer button url spot;

https://your.substack.com/publish/settings/recommendations

Thank you Mika for figuring this out.

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Hi all

It’s great to be back in the swing of regular writing and posts and teaching Substack again. I hope everyone is settling into the new term ok? I’m guesting over at Lucy Werner’s Hype Yourself Community this evening and for the first time in at least two years I’m NOT talking about Substack 😅. Come join us?

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As easy as 1,2,3 but just choose ONE takeaway for now and go do that one this week?

I wanted to share more about a community initiative I’ve come up with to support you all as a BIG thank you for supporting and sharing my work. Substack encourage us to lead with generosity here and it’s beautiful to see so many flourishing communities. It’s very different to solely algorithm driven platforms.

Here is a new initiative from me and two ideas for aligned growth for you and your Substack…

1. Introducing; The Monthly Sparks Competition 💫

Every month you have the opportunity to support my community with likes and comments and connection and lots of you do that beautifully.

In your dashboard you’ll find have a filter that shows you who your top ‘commenters’ are within a 30 day period. Clever hey?

I want to reward my top three monthly commenters with a free 3 month pass to the Sparkle on Substack Membership and my top all time commenter with a 6 month subscription.

This month (so far) they are; Quinn Columba Boyko| LadyQuinn, Robin Taylor (he/him) and Dre Beltrami 🥰 and my top all time commenter is Annalisa Caminarecci - thank you for being warm and supportive to each other and our community here.

Do email me claire@creativelyconscious.co.uk if you want to grab your prize. 💝

If you are already a paid member, you can gift it to a friend OR add it to your existing subscription.

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2. Recommendations are (still) SO powerful for aligned growth.

What a beautiful thing - remember this is in just 12 months.

Thanks Gill!

I’ve had a lot of questions recently about how to make recommendations and who to support.

This has to ‘feel right’ to you. It has to align with your ‘personal brand’, your kinship, your sense of how you feel your publication fits.

For me, it feels like an act of generosity and sending the lift back down so I am very free with my recommendations these days. Luckily for me I am getting to know lots of wonderful heart led creatives in my membership which makes the process super easy and if I can support them to grow through this initiative I will.

This wasn’t the case at the beginning of my journey here as I wanted to really get to know people, read lots of their articles, understand that our values truly aligned. I needed to understand the connection, the reciprocity, I wanted to feel safe in it.

This is why tending to our nervous system first is always so important with our online work. I’ll tell you a story on that…

I once met a wonderful creative in a yoga class, she asked me lots of questions about my work and my life, we chatted at the end of class, talked about what we were doing for the rest of the day. She gave me her instagram handle and asked me to put her in touch with my friend in an area she was interested in living in. It felt real, like the start of a friendship. You can guess the rest… yep readers, she didn’t follow me back. Now at this time, I had a public instagram but my work was all off line. I played that conversation over and over. I simply couldn’t understand. The world of online is just not the same… I don’t know her reasons but I can guess at them. The only piece of important work to do was to not take it personally…

You can also remember;

"People will show you how they feel about you.”

I know the online world can feel friendly and confusing and beautiful and inviting and I want to encourage you to keep seeking out the genuine connections even if you feel snubbed for any sort of reason. I promise Substack is FULL of genuine and beautiful people who care about your work and your ambition.

Number of recommendations from other Substacks this month.

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3. Referrals (Substack’s version of affiliates) are a thing

My referral programme is quite generous and I have kept it super simple. I turned it on in February as soon as the programme was introduced. More from Substack here;

https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/8946512015892-Does-Substack-have-a-referral-program

In your settings search referral and you can edit from there….

Behind the scenes….

Referrals in action…

🥰

Tell me, how are recommendations and referrals working for you.

Are you keen on joining in on my monthly community competition ‘Monthly Sparks’?

Remember we have time to set all of this up, everything is cumulative, it all works for you in the most beautiful way behind the scenes if you show up from a place of abundance with your generosity. Share your spirit with us? Show us who you are?

Lastly, thank you to Catherine Rayner, Leanne MacDonald, Beth Kempton and Clover Stroud for recommending my work, supporting me and helping folks find Sparkle on Substack 💫

Sending sparkles to you all,

Claire

PS - here is what’s on here in September incase you missed it, see you sooooooo….

What's on in September