💬 So you want to go LIVE on Substack?

Some tips + meet a live buddy in the comments.

Hi Sparklers,

How are we all feeling about lives? Going live? Trying out Substack’s new tool?

I thought I’d see a few folks pop up in my app this week but I haven’t? 👀 📲 🏃🏻 💨

Honest question - Do Substack Lives feature into your content eco system? Your ambition for joyful, sustainable growth here?

✨

I love a chat - you guys know that, so when Substack rolled out the live feature in the app I thought it was a nice opportunity to chat more casually with some of my colleagues. It’s a different medium to podcasting in my mind (although Substack pile the replays into my podcasting tab).¹

I also made a tag so that folks could easily re-find the full replays if they missed them. https://sparkleon.substack.com/t/live-chats

When you make a tag (which you can do at the point of posting or in your settings), you are making a little collection to help others find your posts now and in the future. This small act of organisation will INCREASE your monthly views. We are allowed to remind folks of the archive regularly.

Substack’s announcement post on how to use Live Video in the app - https://substack.com/home/post/p-154826615

💫

Thank you

Jo Hutton

,

Caroline Donahue

,

Seth Werkheiser

,

Russell Nohelty

,

Charlie Swift

and

Tanya Lynch

for being LIVE with me recently.

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Top tips for going live in the Substack app.

1. It only works in the app!! You can’t watch on your desktop either unless the writer posts the replay. There are no fun filters unfortunately - maybe this is a good thing for folks seeing the authentic version of us?

2. Give your Live a catchy title and give folks prior notice if you can.

3. DM the person you are going live with and they should be near the top of the list when you go to invite them in.

4. Decide where to look and use a tripod - if you don’t have one a hair bobble and a tin can work just as well.

5. Engage your audience - say hello to people who pop in. (You don’t get notified when they leave so I suspect the number is cumalative but I don’t know.)²

6. Tell people how long you plan to be on and what you’ll talk about

7. Give them prior warning if you can, use the auto email Substack recommends at the point of going live.

8. You’ll pop up in the app and it will say ‘name is now live’ on your homepage on your Substack website too.

9. People can type questions so you can pause to read those or try and catch them as they come in. I have an iphone 14 and I find it really hard to read the questions if they go over 3 lines.

10. Your live will be saved to drafts when you close so you can post it or email it out.

Does going live work for growth?

I’ve had over 100 people on a live without giving folks notice - it’s great fun - just be yourself.

Ok - personal growth YES! For most of us this is outside of our comfort zone. For Substack growth - hard to quantify as Substack aren’t giving us that data. There are already some BOLD claims about this 🥴 but I’d say yes my subscribers do get a gentle boost when I’ve been live.

I grew exactly the same number of subscribers on Thursday as I did yesterday (x35). I didn’t post or go live on Thursday so I personally don’t think there’s a mad rush to go live for any sort of fomo based reasons.

Let us know if you fancy trying it in the comments, what you want to talk about and if you don’t want to go it alone, find someone who wants to go live with you?

Have fun!

Claire

✨

PS - Fancy a FREE class on mastering your Business and Content Eco System for 2025 and where Substack fits? Come join us (replay available to all sign ups)

PPS - Members, we are meeting next week to explore our Five Year Vision - come!

1. I think this is actually incredible helpful. Although I wanted to curate my podcast feed into seasons and episodes it just means folks listening on other platforms (spotify, apple etc) get notified of the live after it’s happened and can listen and circle back into our Substack eco-system.

2. The views go up the longer you stay on a live (this has happened every time and I guess encourages us to stay on where as I imagine people are clicking in and out?).