On Substack: Building Relationships vs. Creating Community
On Substack: Building Relationships vs. Creating Community
And how to do both
Hello, Substack Writers at Work!
Most Substack writers want subscribers and readers who engage with our work.
Some focus too much on the high that comes with new subscribers, forgetting that if your subscribers don’t stay and aren’t active, your numbers are (to put it bluntly) just that: numbers.
We want our subscribers to feel like they’re part of something, not just newsletter recipients.
Why?
Because people unsubscribe from newsletters, not people and communities.
Both also help with getting paid subscribers and being featured by Substack—bonus!
On Substack: Building Relationships vs. Creating Community
There’s a difference between building relationships with your subscribers and creating community.
Building relationships is connecting with your subscribers and other writers on Substack.
Creating community is when you connect your subscribers with each other.
These two have different dynamics:
Building relationships is vertical you 🔃 your subscribers.
Creating community is horizontal you ⟺ your subscribers ⟺ each other.
Below, we go through the keys to building relationships and creating community:
The core principles of building relationships and creating community
Inspiration from your fellow Substack Writers at Work and the Substack features they use
This post is interactive. I want you to consider or write through the prompts, so you come away with a deeper understanding of your Substack.
→ Below you’ll see how other Substack writers use Substack’s relationship-building features—
Comments
Chat
DMs
Your posts
Audio/voiceover
and community-building features—
Workshops
Challenges
Hero post
Zoom co-working events
IRL events
Book clubs
Polls
Threads
The core principles of building relationships and creating community on Substack
Whatever you do, you want to be purposeful, repeatable (i.e., something your subscribers get used to and look forward to), and encourage participation.
You don’t want to just throw a bunch of questions at them at the bottom of a post and ask them to respond in the comments.
You need clarity on what you want—relationships, community, or both—and who you want.
What do you want your subscribers to do?
Respond to your posts
Ask questions about what you’ve written
Share about themselves
Meet and connect with each other
All of the above
What your answers mean:
1 and/or 2—you want a relationship with your subscribers
3 and/or 4—you want a community
5—you want both
What primary connection do you want them to have?
With you
With each other
Both
What your answers mean:
1—you want a relationship with your subscribers
2—you want a community
3—you want both
Who do you want to bring together?
Not demographics; think motivations and interests.
What do your subscribers need more of?
This could be entertainment, understanding of the world, social connection, guidance, etc.
What change do they desire?
This could be professional growth, education, personal growth, etc.
If you want a community (a community of readers is still a community), what’s your community’s “why”?
Why do they come together?
What’s a problem that only they can solve together?
Having this awareness and intention will take you very, very far.
How to build relationships with your Substack subscribers
Non-negotiables for creating relationships:
You respond to every comment. Once you start getting hundreds of comments, it becomes impossible to keep up (unless this is your full-time job and you have an assistant), but I still recommend going in when you have time—no matter how old the post is—and responding to the most recent comments.
You respond to every comment on your Notes. (Caveat: See above.)
You create posts that exude excellence and/or personability.
You post consistently. Be a trusted friend.
Your welcome email is specific and inviting—as are your subscription expired and renewal emails. (If you aren’t sure about these, watch the Mastering Substack’s Automated Emails Workshop.)
Two things businesses and people off Substack do to create relationships and why they don’t work:
Be grateful we don’t have the old personalize-the-addressee/name feature favored by so many and by businesses: Dear _______.
Auto-filling a person’s name screams falsity. It’s not as if we believe James Clear or The Gap actually knows us. We’re not duped into feeling close to them personally.
Alternative: Address all your subscribers as a community, i.e., give them a name like the Lesser-Mores on my author Substack—those who want a little less in a culture of too much.
We don’t have lengthy automated email sequences and are so much better for it. Automated emails feel, well, automated. Maybe they create more sales, but we aren’t salespeople; we’re Substack writers. We’re providing, not hawking our wares.
Tips on building relationships:
Here’s what some of your fellow Substack Writers at Work are doing—and the Substack features they use.
and his Substack Beyond the Bookshelf is a super smart look at life and literature and how it helps us explore “the challenges of life’s transformative journey.” It’s also a case study in creating relationships—with his subscribers and other Substack writers. Here’s his advice:
Show your paid subscribers extra love by sending them personal messages.
Recommend other publications and write a good blurb for why you recommend them.
Leave thoughtful comments on the Notes and posts of others.
and her Substack We’re All Getting Older (WAGO) offers profiles of people in midlife and a unique perspective on aging that will make you want to get old. She connects by highlighting her subscribers in posts:
“I have a regular section in my newsletter called ‘Shout-out to WAGO Readers.’ Every other week, I highlight and celebrate the work of one reader (e.g., their Substack publication, their podcast, or a book they published, etc.). And of course, I respond to every single comment I receive!”
(You can also do this by highlighting comments from subscribers in a recent post.)
Features: Notes, audio, and DMs
- ’s Sage Sanctuary is a different kind of health and wellness Substack. Her short description: “Deep wisdom for modern times and messy lives. A haven for the real and raw, embracing life's paradox with grace, grit, and growth.” Here’s how she builds relationships:
“In my posts, I treat it like a letter with a greeting. Voiceover in my weekly text posts. And I’m creating a video for my About page.”
Features: voiceover, comments
- writes about wellness and spirituality but with a bite. Creating relationships comes in the form of the writing itself:
“Sharing my soft underbelly, aka being vulnerable. I must write from my heart, inviting my readers to share my experiences and find themselves in the process. Wincing as I send a post because it feels too raw is a sure bet that it will be well received. Vulnerability is a tough nut.” This part is so important: “However, I must also be cognizant of making the experience about my readers even though I’m writing about my life.”
Features: posts, audio, chat, website design, and the new Ask a Question feature
Note: The chat is the hardest to get going. Only a third of Substack subscribers use the app, which means your chances of engagement are cut by two-thirds.
How to create community on your Substack
Community creation principles:
To create community, you need to
bring your subscribers together and/or
encourage them to talk to each other, not just you.
The features you’ll likely use are chat, threads, Zoom workshops, and challenges.
Five ways to create community
1. Challenges, polls, your hero post
Two words:
. In her Substack, Introvert Drawing Club, Beth has created one of the most vibrant communities on Substack and is an expert at getting people into it and keeping them:She often runs challenges, e.g. a challenge to scale back on tech usage.
Celebrating member milestones.
Polls to see what’s resonating with people. (
is an expert at this too.)Beth also has a killer hero post that focuses not on the stuff she’s going to send (posts, etc.) but on the community her subscribers are entering.
In his excellent Substack, The Half Marathoner, which makes me want to start running again and is about so much more than just running,
is also really great at challenges. Runners! He’s running one now (no pun).Reading challenges!
does this so well in his Substack Personal Canon: First Beowulf and now the Lord of the Rings trilogy:
Note: Jeannine Oullette is perhaps the queen of challenges. Stay tuned for my interview with her next week.
2. Book clubs
So many great ones—held via posts or live on Zoom.
Bestselling novelist
hosts a Wordplay book club with bestsellers like Daisy Jones and the Six and The Encyclopedia of Fairies.
3. Live meetups
RHS Chelsea award-winning garden designer
of offers IRL meetups for paid subscribers.
4. Zoom workshops, gatherings, and coworking events
- , whose Write More, Be Less Careful is a hub of writing advice, holds Zoom coworking events.
5. Threads!
Many Substack writers don’t understand Threads. Threads are a type of post. (Go to the dropdown menu when you go to post and you’ll see the option.) They look more like, well, discussion threads.
They’re very different from the comments:
Comments are vertical: People responding to us and our posts.
Threads are horizontal: A chance for our subscribers to share their wisdom, recommendations, and advice—and meet each other.
Threads do not work well when you ask people to (yet again) respond to a topic of your choosing. They’re about stepping back and giving your subscribers the stage.
The master of threads is (no question) is
of Culture Study. I’ve spoken to many people who love her posts but pay for her threads. Threads are actually her primary paid strategy.
Here on Substack Writers at Work, we do pretty well with Threads.
Why do my threads work so well? Because I make it about you.
I also invite you to meet each other. People have to be invited to do this. They won’t do it on their own.
I also do this on my author Substack, Less and Less of More and More, for people who want a little less in a culture of too much. I host a monthly “Less-in” where people can share something they’ll have less of each month.
Now go to it. Build relationships simply because doing so enriches your writing and life on Substack. Create community simply because it’s fun and makes Substack feel even more like your home.