How To Succeed On Substack

From someone that is by no means an expert (unless you count my 10 years in marketing) but that does have some thoughts

Welcome to Baby Brain, a space where I - Charlotte, hi! - write about my life as a mother of three small children - Poppet (m, 4 years), Pickle (m, 3 years) and Peach (f, 6 months.) Those are not their real names. These are real stories from our days.

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Ahead of our baby sign language class last week, I found myself unexpectedly nap trapped. Phone in hand, laptop by my side, I ran through a mental list of productive jobs I could get done whilst in this position - the online food shop needed doing, for example, and if I don’t renew the TV license soon I’m genuinely concerned the BBC will burn my house to the ground for repeatedly watching Bluey. Pondering on these tasks - and a whole host of other, equally dull ones - I looked into the face of my sleeping daughter, unlocked my phone to get started and found myself, within moments, not doing any of my doable to do’s, but instead writing a Substack ‘note.’

This was that note.

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Eight lessons I learned in my 7+ years as a ‘UK Lifestyle Blogger,’ that I think will help others ‘succeed’ on Substack

1/ True success is enjoying what you're doing. There will be hundreds of notes and articles telling you how to build a readership in order to be successful, but the numbers matter less than the enjoyment, unless you're writing for business purposes, in which case the numbers probably matter quite a bit (but if you're just writing because you love writing, F the numbers)

2/ People will always be ready to tell you how to ‘do things better.’ “Add more photos!” They'll say, or “stop writing such long paragraphs, have you considered breaking up your text to keep me interested?” You can't please everyone, though, and it's not your job to try to. If someone doesn't like how you format your writing, well, that's a shame because writers are sensitive creatures and we want everyone to love us, but we can't be changing the way we do something we're happy with just to please someone else. Thats how you end up writing ‘copy’ instead of writing from the heart. I used to write ‘copy’ for a living and it is BORING

3/ All of the growth advice is based on a small handful of success stories, all of which are successful because they did something unique that made them stand out. You will not stand out by copying what they did, you will blend in with everyone else that is copying what they did. Be original, and you might have a shot at being the next insert name of someone you admire

4/ Connection is key. Follow, subscribe, comment, care about the people you're interacting with. Build connections and you'll thrive, at least mentally speaking. Staring at numbers and being devastated if they don't grow ‘fast enough’/ if someone unsubscribes will only result in a bitter taste that leaves you wanting to quit. I had thousands of followers when I blogged and it never felt enough. I have 330 on here and I am THRILLED

5/ Ignore marketers, they'll neg you into not believing your own worth so they can take advantage. They'll do in en masse, too - where do you think all of the UK Lifestyle Bloggers went? (Well, not all of them, some are still going strong, cc

Michelle

.) They were told by marketer's that their numbers were too small and that they should change to attract bigger brands and that blogging wasn't enough they had to INFLUENCE and then they all got fed up and hated their own content and set fire to everything they'd built because that's what happens when predators target prey, the prey doesn't win

6/ Don't put out filler content. If you don't have anything to say, don't push yourself to find something that doesn't genuinely feel right for you. And to this end don't ask people what they want you to write about because it's not their job to come up with your ideas (again, unless you're a business, in which case this is probably quite useful)

7/ Stop checking your stats and don't write according to the keywords you're being found for. You're not AI. And also the stats are weird. My blog was once found for ‘homeless pigeon sex’ which I absolutely was not writing about (and who is googling that anyway?)

8/ Stick with it. And even if you don't, save whatever you've written somewhere so you can revisit it with kinder eyes.

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk, the baby is waking up so I have to go and mother now. Please share your own tips in comments if you have any words of wisdom to impart ✌🏼🏃🏼‍♀️

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And now, just because I can, three things from this week:

1/ On a walk with Peach the other day, I had a random thought pop into my head: ‘I wonder if any of the charity shops have some Wedgwood?’ A long standing love of mine, Wedgwood is an “English fine china, porcelain and luxury accessories manufacturer founded in 1759” whose signature white on blue pieces are a thing of dreams. Living in the area that I do (millionaire adjacent though I, myself, am not a millionaire despite repeated attempts to win the lottery) it’s not uncommon to find Wedgwood in Cancer Research, and so I went on the hunt. I didn’t buy anything, but I did find three pieces - one of which I would have purchased if I was one of the aforementioned millionaires, because £200 for a children’s tea set is probably reasonable if you’re bathing in cash but is a bit too much when you’re a) working to a budget and b) the mother of two feral children who are just as likely to smash up the teapot to ‘see what happens’ as they are to succumb to your desire for a teddy bear’s picnic. More likely, actually. The Wedgwood of this week’s search:

In the interest of transparency, I’ll probably post about Wedgwood again. It is the OG of my heart and I succumb to my love for it always.

2/ While I didn’t buy any heirlooms on my charity shop crawl (directly contradicting my above claim that I succumb to it always - oh well) I did end up with two new books - Bridge Of Clay by Marcus Zusak, which I am yet to start, and The Most Of Nora Ephron.

Now, I have a strange relationship with Nora Ephron. I adore When Harry Met Sally and Julie And Julia and I want to love her written work, but Heartburn wasn’t for me and, as I once noted in a post, I Feel Bad About My Neck didn’t do it for me either. HOWEVER, Nora is a female writer whose opinions and musings continue to be quoted so long after they were written that I have to respect her and, as a result, when I saw this book I felt a strong urge to give her another chance. I have started reading it already and am enjoying it which makes me think that perhaps a) I was in the wrong frame of mind when I last read her work (I last read it when I was giving birth, so it’s possible) and/or b) I have matured. Either way, £3 well spent.

Related: I wrote a post in which I talk about Nora back in December, and removed it almost immediately because it made me sad. I’ve put it back up today, so if you fancied reading something ‘from the vault,’ as it were, you can do so here:

3/ I have discovered Saint Agur blue cheese dip and I implore you to try it, it is a revelation.

Until next time 💻