Substack is a popular platform for bloggers, writers, and journalists to share their content with the world. However, simply writing a post and hitting publish is not enough to ensure success. To make the most of Substack, it’s important to have a pre-publishing checklist to ensure that your post is engaging, error-free, and optimized for your audience.
One of the first steps in the pre-publishing process is to review your content for spelling and grammar errors. This may seem like a small detail, but it can make a big difference in how your post is received by your audience. Next, it’s important to optimize your post for search engines by including relevant keywords in your title, meta description, and throughout the body of your content. This will help your post rank higher in search results and attract more readers.
Another important aspect of pre-publishing is formatting your post for readability. This includes breaking up your content into short paragraphs, using subheadings to organize your ideas, and including images or other media to break up the text. By following these tips and creating a pre-publishing checklist, writers can ensure that their Substack posts are engaging, error-free, and optimized for their audience.
Understanding Substack
Substack’s Purpose
Substack is a platform that empowers writers to create and monetize newsletters. It allows writers to build an audience and connect with their readers through email newsletters. Substack provides tools for writers to manage their subscriptions, publish their content, and engage with their readers.
The platform is designed to be user-friendly and accessible to writers of all levels of experience. Substack offers a simple and intuitive editor that allows writers to create and publish their content quickly and easily. The platform also provides analytics tools that allow writers to track their readership and engagement.
Why Use Substack
Substack is a popular platform among writers because it offers a number of benefits. One of the main advantages of using Substack is that it allows writers to monetize their content. Substack provides a variety of monetization options, including paid subscriptions, donations, and sponsorships. This allows writers to earn a living from their writing and build a sustainable career.
Another advantage of using Substack is that it provides a built-in audience. Substack has a large and growing community of readers who are interested in high-quality, independent writing. This makes it easier for writers to reach a wider audience and build a following.
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Pre-Writing Process
Before starting to write a blog post for Substack, it is essential to go through a pre-writing process. This process involves selecting a topic, conducting research, and planning the content.
Topic Selection
Choosing a topic is the first step in the pre-writing process. It is essential to select a topic that the target audience will find interesting and informative. One way to choose a topic is to consider the audience’s needs and interests. Another way is to look at popular topics in the industry and create a unique perspective on them.
Research
Once the topic is selected, it is time to conduct research. Research helps to provide valuable information that can be used to create high-quality content. It is essential to use reliable sources of information such as academic journals, books, and reputable websites. It is also important to ensure that the sources used are up-to-date.
Content Planning
After conducting research, it is time to plan the content. Content planning involves outlining the structure of the blog post and organizing the information. The outline should include an introduction, body, and conclusion. It is also essential to ensure that the content is well-organized and easy to read.
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Writing Your Post
To start writing a post on Substack, the first step is to create a draft. This allows you to work on your post without publishing it immediately. To create a draft, click on the “New Post” button in the Posts section and select “Draft.” From there, you can start writing your post.
When creating a draft, it’s important to keep in mind the formatting guidelines for Substack posts. The Ultimate Guide to Substack Article Formatting provides comprehensive guidelines on formatting posts for Substack, ensuring readability and aesthetic appeal.
After writing the draft, the next step is to proofread the post. It’s recommended to proofread the post at least twice to catch any errors or typos. Substack does not have a built-in spell-checker, so it’s important to use an external tool like Grammarly or Hemingway to check for errors.
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Optimizing the Post
To make sure that a Substack post is engaging and informative, it’s important to optimize it. This involves several aspects, such as SEO optimization, visual aids, and links and references.
SEO Optimization
To increase the visibility of a Substack post, it’s important to optimize it for search engines. This can be done by including relevant keywords in the post’s title, meta description, and body. It’s also important to format the post in a way that’s easy to read, with subheadings, bullet points, and images.
Substack provides several SEO features, such as the ability to add meta descriptions and tags, and to customize the URL of the post. By taking advantage of these features, a Substack post can rank higher in search engine results pages and attract more readers.
Visual Aids
Visual aids, such as images, videos, and infographics, can help to make a Substack post more engaging and informative. They can also help to break up long blocks of text and make the post easier to read.
When including visual aids in a Substack post, it’s important to make sure that they are relevant to the content and of high quality. It’s also important to optimize them for the web, by compressing them and resizing them to the appropriate dimensions.
Links and References
Links and references can help to add credibility to a Substack post and provide readers with additional resources to explore. When including links and references in a Substack post, it’s important to make sure that they are relevant and up-to-date.
It’s also important to make sure that the links and references are formatted correctly, with the appropriate anchor text and attribution. Substack provides several features for adding links and references, such as the ability to add hyperlinks and footnotes.
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Post Settings
Before publishing a post on Substack, it is important to review the post settings to ensure that the post is optimized for the intended audience. The post settings include options for post scheduling, email settings, and comment settings.
Post Scheduling
Substack allows you to schedule posts to be published at a specific date and time. This can be useful if you want to publish a post at a time when your subscribers are most active. To schedule a post, simply select the “Schedule” option in the Post Settings and choose the date and time you want the post to be published.
Email Settings
Substack allows you to customize the email that is sent to your subscribers when you publish a new post. You can choose to include a custom subject line, preview text, and header image. You can also choose to send the email immediately or schedule it to be sent at a later time.
Comment Settings
Substack allows you to control who can comment on your posts. You can choose to allow comments from everyone, only paid subscribers, or no one. You can also choose to moderate comments before they are published.
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Final Checks
Before hitting the publish button, it’s important to do a final check to ensure that everything is in order. This section will cover two important sub-sections: Preview and Double Check.
Preview
Previewing your post before publishing is important to ensure that it looks and reads the way you intended it to. To preview your post, click on the “Preview” button located at the top right corner of the page. You can also select the intended audience (everyone, paid subscribers, free subscribers, or founding members) and see how your post will look like to them.
Take the time to read through your post carefully and make sure that everything is in order. Check for any typos, grammatical errors, or formatting issues. If you notice any mistakes, go back and make the necessary corrections.
Double Check
Double checking your post is another important step to ensure that everything is in order. This involves going through your post one more time to make sure that you haven’t missed anything.
Check that you have included all the necessary links, images, and other media. Ensure that your post is properly formatted and that there are no errors or inconsistencies.
Once you are satisfied that everything is in order, you can go ahead and hit the publish button.
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