REPLAY - Visuals for Substack?

Top 4 Tips, Monday's member's class and a penny for your thoughts...

“I think art teaches us how to feel, what our parameters can be, what sensations can be like, it makes you more engaged in life.”

Jeff Koons

Hi all

Hope you’re having a lovely day. ✨

I love how simple the Substack publishing platform is. I also love how creative we can be here. Creativity takes courage; courage to make decisions, courage to ignore features that don’t feel aligned and ‘right’ for you and your publications.

What joy!

Before I wrote my monthly ‘Note from the Sea’ I used to visit our local beach (less than a 10 minute drive away) sit with what I wanted to say, take a photo of the landscape, meditate. The photo I took would usually be the photo that made it into the ‘newsletter.’ The intro gave us a strong grounding message right at the top; here’s the ocean; a vast expansive sea of possibility. The practise of it also really helped me find my voice. Creative practise rooted in wellbeing is my true love. It’s a direct line with our intuition and our intuition gives us a full body ‘yes’ as we show up to the page.

Storytelling through visuals in posts…

Here are some ways I like to use visuals here on

Sparkle on Substack

…these are personal to me and part of the aesthetic of my Substack home.

Visuals are part of the invite (to me and you) to feel safe and creative here…

Have you thought about this much for your posts and publication? ¹

On Monday, we’re meeting to discuss visuals in relation to open rates - I’m excited! Some questions/ talking points ahead of then…

• What’s the magic key in positioning ‘art’ inside our Substack posts?

• Can we encourage our visuals to work harder for us to embed the messages in our posts?

• Can we hold our readers steady and break up our text and/ or create more depth/ pause moments, time to integrate our words?

• Do we need/want a pro canva account? A brand photoshoot? To commission an illustrator?

• What blocks/ questions do we have to bringing visuals into our work?

🌀

My Top 4 visual options for your Substack posts (but only if you like…)

1. The emoji - say what you like about the ‘coolness’ stakes but the sparkle is here to stay. ✨ On your desktop, press CONTROL, COMMAND & SPACE BAR and all the emojis will pop up. 🦔 (you’re welcome)

2. The page break - a delightful rest for the eyes and an opportunity to enhance your brand/ brand values…

Here is a canva template to play around with making your own. There are 108 designs in this canva template that fits the same length as this one below.

Make sure you download with a ‘transparent’ background incase folks are viewing in dark mode or your Substack website has a colour.

My page break designed with LOVE and an invitation to creative freedom here on a sunny balcony in March ‘23…

3. A “stock” photo - I’m going to talk MORE about this in the workshop on Monday but my biggest tip is be creative in the search bar and don’t pick the top image because because it’s likely to be the most popular. You want your Substack to be unique so give this some space. AI images via Substack? Not even going there. 😅

4. Gallery images - time consuming but a personal fave! I tend to use them at the bottom of my posts over on

   Creatively Conscious
   . I really like gallery images because they are playful, because it’s a fun jigsaw for me and because I think my readers can connect with my visual eye and what I want to share about my world at large.

You'll notice my images usually have pink/ and or yellow in them - there's a reason for that.

REMINDER - There’s also the opportunity to find a critical friend from inside the sparkle gang. This quarter our focus is; a joyful and considered outside eye to look at either your ‘About Page’, ‘Hero Post’ or ‘Welcome email.’

If you’re not yet a paid member and you’d like to join you’re super welcome. We meet twice a month on zoom for an hour or so. I always make time for questions too.

Replays are available and there’s over 15 hours of calls to choose from, a free Substack masterclass plus some delightful resources to help you stay creative on Substack!

⭐️A reminder all the recordings from the previous Sparkle on Substack classes are here; https://sparkleon.substack.com/s/membership-sparkles

⭐️Podcasts are here; https://sparkleon.substack.com/podcast

Sparkle chats and network

💬 On Mondays (every week), I open paid member chats for Substack questions, wins and frustrations.

💬 On Wednesdays (every other week), I open paid member chats for community connection on Notes - always the same week as the call. Every once in a while I’ll open this to the whole list so you get new eyes on your work.

Welcome to Substack CHATS...

And if you are a beginner and still taking baby steps to realising what you want this space to be for yourself go here first and do jump into the pre-recorded calls. Every paid subscriber gets access to my 4 week drip fed beginners course - I want you to feel empowered here.

Each month, we work into two completely different topics in the calls.

• Mon 19 Feb - 2pm (UK time) - Workshop and practical exercises; using photos/ visuals/ illustrations to increase your open rate on Substack.

You can start your Substack in a simple way so some of these workshops might not feel relevant to you right now depending on where you are in your journey. Permission to be discerning and mindful of your own focus and timeline.

If you’re a free subscriber you can RESTACK this post into Notes to join the conversation, paid subs there’s more info below and I’d love to see you in the comments.

Claire

☕️ ✨

PS - Illustrator and Picture Book artist

Adam Ming

and I recorded a really insightful session on commissioning illustrations for Substack. It’s here in my members area and I’ve taken the paywall down for a week for you all.

Commissioning Illustrations for Substack Publications