5 reasons why no one is reading your Substack (and what helped me change that)

Little tips and tricks to get your articles seen

I’ve been seeing lots of notes about writers not getting their pieces seen. I’m far from being a viral sensation, but there are a couple of tips I’ve picked up on Substack in the last three months that have helped me understand why a piece might work.

Keep in mind that Substack does have an algorithm. So sometimes a note or a post is just going to tank because reasons, and that doesn’t mean the writing was bad. It doesn’t mean that the article is dead forever.

You don’t re-promote the post

Most Substackers write the post, publish it, and then leave it in their post history forever.

Re-promote it, people!

Promote it when you publish it.

Promote it once a week or once a month, whatever you feel works best for you.

This is an example that worked to bring new readers to my most popular posts. A couple of lines around why the article is important to read and what it might bring to new readers.

You can restack part of an article, too.

This is a good way to “revive” old posts. I know you might think that people have seen it before, but there is a chance they haven’t. My most popular post has been seen by 279 people. That’s fewer than my number of subscribers, and that’s not counting people who had never seen me before.

Your titles don’t invite readers

There are three types of writers on Substack: those who write purely diaries, those who write for themselves and an audience (I am part of this), and those who use Substack as an entry point to their marketing funnel.

If you are writing a diary for yourself, then you will tend to use titles that make sense to you only.

Titles should hint or mention what the post is about.

For example, how I vanquished overconsumption or what being broke and in debt for bags taught me works better than my journey as a broke person. I’m not saying the latter won’t work at all. It’s about being less inviting: the last title seems like a collection of events, a recollection of your life, when the others hint that there is something the reader will learn.

Something I’ve seen often, too, is using a metaphor to refer to what the article is actually about. For example, how I saved a butterfly as the title for a piece about actions and consequences. It’s a nice title, but it tells me nothing. It might be the best piece of writing you will ever produce, but it just won’t get seen.

Your notes are too personal

Okay, so people take what I’m going to say with kindness and with a huge pinch of salt, but some people are really too personal, I would even call it trauma-dumping.

Bear with me.

I realise this sounds bad.

I have less of a problem with articles discussing trigger-warning subjects because at least I have the choice to read them. Notes just pop in, and there isn’t much I can do once I realise that it might be discussing something I didn’t want to read.

You might think, “But Oceane, you need to educate yourself! Don’t ignore other people’s trauma!” And that’s your philosophy. With the rise of social media, we have lost the idea that we have the right to not want to be overloaded with some information. We have the right to refuse to learn about certain events because there is only so much our hearts can carry.

For example, I do not currently read anything related to miscarriage or birth trauma. I am 35 weeks pregnant, reading these stories, while strong and powerful and important, will not bring me anything but pain at this point. I’m aware they exist; I have done some previous research, but I do not need to be reminded every time I open Substack of the risk to my health.

I’m not saying they don’t have a space on the Internet. I’m saying you might be restricting the number of people who will read it - and that might be totally okay for you!

You don’t send your article by email

When you publish an article, make sure this is on.

I tested with my latest article, and my stats basically crashed.

You’re replicating Big Substackers strategy

Lots of people think that if they have the same strategy that the big names currently use, it must work, right?

Right?

I once saw a post with the most random name with more than 1K likes. I didn’t understand it because there wasn’t much about it that invited me to read. It felt like a club I wasn’t privy to. So I looked at the author.

Who was a Substack Bestseller.

What I mean is that when you have an audience of 10K people, you will always have more likes than someone who publishes for 50 people. That article might have flopped in terms of engagement rate for the author, but we wouldn’t know, as we can’t access their statistics.

From the outside, it would just look like they published a random column about their life and got lots of likes.

Note:

This is not meant to be critical of how you’ve been using Substack, especially if you’re happy to keep using it as a diary. However, if you’re reading this, I would think you're open to some gentle help :).

If you found this post helpful, I would really appreciate a small show of support with a Buy Me A Coffee or a subscription, which will help me make more posts like this and support my writing!

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