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I don’t know about you, but for a long time I have obsessed over every single new subscriber to my Substack. Every email opened feels amazing. Each like or comment makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. And every unsubscribe still feels like a punch in the gut.
If you’re a writer on Substack, you’re probably hoping to build and connect with an audience. But you don’t make connections by pressing a button that says ‘publish’. Instead, you have to work to get to know your audience.
So, let me ask: How well do you actually know your subscribers?
We focus so much on writing amazing content that we can forget to delve into who our readers really are. But there are ways to connect and engage with an audience on Substack that will help to build a community of genuine connections and loyal readers. And that’s all anyone really wants from this, right?
It will help you to write better content. By knowing who your subscribers are, their interests and their challenges, you can create content that resonates with them. In using Notes and the Substack chat, I have found that many of my subscribers were interested in content beyond just freelance writing—hence the newer Grow Your Newsletter section of the newsletter!
Increase engagement. When readers feel seen, understood and valued, they’re going to want to read more of your content. If you know more about your audience, it’s easier to craft your posts in a way that speaks to them directly. They must have subscribed for a reason initially, but what do they really want to read about?
It will help you to find new readers. By getting to know your existing audience, you’ll get to learn where more of your readers can be found. Where are those people with similar interests? Engaging with existing subscribers can help to find them, even through something as simple as word of mouth.
Thankfully, Substack has a variety of tools to help you learn more about your audience.
There are a few sections of your publication dashboard that help you to learn a lot about your audience. It can show who signs up, who opens emails and who engages with your posts. Substack even has a star-based activity column on the subscriber section of the dashboard, showing who interacts the most with your newsletter.
Otherwise, here are some simple ways to learn about your audience:
Open rates. Look through your previous posts—which ones have the best open rates? Can you work out why? Something about these posts is drawing readers in, whether that be through a strong title or the content within. Why do some posts perform better than others?