How Substack Can Add to Your Content Marketing Efforts
Substack has grown in popularity over the past year or so as another channel to build relationships with followers. Substack can be a valuable addition to the content marketing plan for businesses, not just content creators. Substack is part email newsletter platform and part blog publication. With built-in analytics, it can be an ideal way to share valuable content with your target audience.
What is Substack?
Substack is an online platform for developing, publishing, and monetizing digital content. While it primarily acts as an email newsletter, it can also be used to publish longform blog posts and podcasts. And with over 20 million active subscribers, Substack offers a highly-engaging opportunity for businesses to expand their reach.
The platform is popular and trusted, particularly because it prohibits obvious sales behavior and prioritizes authentic content. The most popular and successful Substacks are those that lead with value-driven messaging.
How Can Substack Help Your Marketing Efforts?
Content-centric platforms like substack have gained popularity because they offer more direct audience engagement. The nature of these platforms means that subscribers (consumers) feel like part of a community, making them much more likely to engage with communications or content actively.
The direct engagement and community feel of the platform can build brand trust and brand loyalty. And both of these are key aspects to driving ROI.
Now let’s look at how to use Substack to assist your marketing efforts.
1 | Deliver Rich and Valuable Content
The direct-to-audience model of the platform means that you can bypass trend-based algorithms and deliver more valuable content straight to subscribers. You don’t have to fight for attention in a sea of similar content.
Sharing relevant and tailored content consistently lends itself to being more engaging and builds trust over time. In other words, you can leverage Substack as a direct outlet for inspiring your audience and tapping into their paint points and motivations.
2 | Take Greater Control of Your Subscriber Lists and Data
Substack allows for full control over how you manage your subscriber lists while giving you ownership of your engagement data. Customize the look and feel of your Substack in line with your branding. This can help elevate brand awareness and improve engagement.
3 | Monetize Content to Open Up a New Revenue Stream
Substack does allow for monetization strategies, including:
- Paid subscriptions: allowing your audience to access more “exclusive” content, resources, or insights in exchange for a small monthly fee.
- Selling physical or digital products: once you have a healthy subscriber base, you can use the platform to promote and sell your products or services to subscribers, offering deals or discount codes to help increase conversion rates.
- Affiliate marketing: you can work with affiliates to earn extra revenue from your Substack marketing activities.
If you aren’t sure if monetization is right for you, consider using the “pledge” feature to give subscribers the option to commit to a paid subscription. This can help you gauge potential interest before making the leap to a paid model.
How to Create a Winning Substack Marketing Strategy
Now that you understand the benefits of Substack marketing, let’s delve into how to set your Substack up for success. Before creating content and hitting publish, here are three things to consider:
1 | Identify Your Target Audience
Understanding who you are communicating with and why can help ensure your content is tailored to your subscribers’ interests, needs, and motivations. Explore the Substack channels of your competitors to gain insight into what might inspire your own target audience.
2 | Define Clear Marketing Objectives
What would you like to get out of your Substack? Write down your goals to help you develop communications around those goals in a way that is focused on what your subscribers will find valuable. Make sure your goals are measurable.
3 | Focus on Your Design Branding
Before you start publishing your content and building your subscriber base, customize your channel with your own branding. This will help boost brand awareness and improve engagement. While customization features are relatively limited on the platform, many creators use design platforms like Canva to create brand-specific visuals to help them stand out.
Content that Actually Engages Your Substack Audience
Now that you have your goals set and your Substack design done, let’s talk about creating content for your channel. Your messaging and assets are the heart of your content strategy.
Remember, Substack does not allow you to simply advertise your products or services to drive traffic to a third party site. Instead, you have to focus on rich content that is valuable to your audience.
These tips will help you create content that is highly engaging on your Substack:
- Plan your content in advance.
- Use an engaging mix of assets, including podcasts, videos, newsletters, and articles.
- Focus on your niche.
- Stick to your brand tone, keeping it consistent across your platforms.
- Ask readers to share their thoughts in the comments.
- Use polls–they are interactive and can help you gather valuable insight.
- Cross promote your substack on other platforms.
- Offer signup incentives, such as a deal, discount, or access to exclusive content for subscribing.
Key Takeaways
Substack has grown in popularity since the mass exodus from X. It’s a powerful tool for any brand or business looking to expand or improve their content marketing efforts. The direct-to-consumer model allows you to not worry about hitting the algorithm just right, so you can cut through the digital noise and deliver value directly to your audience. And because people have to hit the “subscribe” button, they are already more willing to actively engage with your brand, helping you build trust that can drive brand loyalty and ROI.