It's Time For Substack to Eat Its Own Dog Food

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Photo by M Burke on Unsplash

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When I first joined Substack, and even now, the userbase and experience here very much reminded me of how Twitter was in its early days prior to 2010. Back then, most everyone used Twitter to interact with each other. There were so many conversations, it was easy to get on Twitter and lose hours just jumping in and out of all the wonderful conversations.

In many ways, Substack has captured that same magic that Twitter once had. It’s so easy to get lost here reading the wonderful writings of everyone here, to dive into the comments and interact with you community. It’s so much fun.

One of the problems Twitter had early on is it didn’t listen to its core community of users. I fear Substack is heading down the same path.

Let me give you an example: If you use Twitter, you know that when you follow someone on Twitter, you can then see their tweets. But early on, Twitter had a feature where you would see their tweets, but you would also see when someone you were following REPLIED to someone else.

This was a wonderful way to find conversations to jump into, as well as interesting new people to follow. It was a great way for users to organically build their network one connection at a time.

Then one day, Twitter announced that you could no loner see replies from the people you follow in your main feed. The users immediately complained, and Twitter said it was a server issue, it just took too much bandwidth to serve up user replies as well as their tweets. Users continued to complain. We pointed out to Twitter that we loved seeing replies because it helped us find new conversations to join, and that meant more time we spend engaging on the site. Didn’t Twitter want that?

Then Twitter did something I will never forget: Twitter (I believe it was Biz Stone specifically) explained to us that Twitter was never supposed to be a platform for conversations. Twitter was designed to be a BROADCAST PLATFORM. As a result, Twitter didn’t care if we saw replies.

And Twitter didn’t care that its users wanted to use the platform to have conversations and be social. We even asked Twitter to please create a Community Manager position so that the brand could better understand the views of its users. Again, Twitter said no. It was clear that Twitter really had no interest in what its users said or wanted.

I feel like the same scenario is starting to play out here.

Soon after I started writing here last June, I noticed that Substack started rolling out features for video creators. At first I didn’t think too much of it, just assuming it was a ‘sign of the times’.

But the last few weeks, Substack has rolled out a constant stream of features for video creators. Video creators are being featured in Substack emails, and the team at Substack openly promotes video creators with larger audiences that start posting here after leaving Tik Tok.

The last two update announcements from Substack have included multiple feature updates for video creators, and none for writers. You know writers…the core Substack user.

Publish video posts directly in the Substack app

Check the comments on that post. You’ll note two things immediately:

• The vast majority of the comments are users asking them to PLEASE don’t turn Substack into a video platform.

• Substack only replied to comments talking about the video tools, and ignored the many comments complaining about how a WRITING platform was heavily focusing on video.

You know I had to say something:

Notice Substack didn’t reply to my comment either.

Why the Full Court Press on Video Creators?

I noticed that Substack throwing itself at video creators really began in earnest a few weeks before the proposed Tik Tok ban would have shut the site down in the US, starting on Jan 20th. I suspect that current and potential investors are advising Substack to move more into video to attract castoffs from Tik Tok, and grow quicker.

Quick growth isn’t always preferable. Sustained growth is, however.

One of the common themes that Substack users talk about is how you must stay consistent if you want your Substack to grow. You need to write consistently, engage consistently. Consistency wins the race.

And it’s completely correct and wonderful advice from Substack users. It’s also advice that Substack’s leadership seems to be completely ignoring right now.

Substack’s core user is a writer, not a video creator. One of the reasons why Substack is gaining in popularity is because the site has a very unique positioning among social media platforms. Substack offers a newsletter delivery system, with a social engagement layer on top of it. It gives Substack a wonderful competitive advantage that it should be leaning into.

Instead, Substack is trying to water down its positioning by offering more tools for video creators. Many other sites, such as Tik Tok, IG and FB already have better and more options for video creators than Substack does. Twitter is also rolling out more video creator tools at the moment.

Both Facebook and Twitter tried to incorporate newsletter functionality into their platforms in recent years, and both sites had to abandon the efforts. LinkedIn is still doing fine offering newsletters to users.

So Substack, why would you purposely dilute your core functional advantage versus competitors like Facebook and Twitter? Embracing video creators and ignoring writers is literally the best gift you could give your competitors!

Instead of video creators, this is who Substack should be targeting:

Editors at major publishing houses.

All Will did was leave a Note saying he was an editor at Penguin and he’s got 9k Likes and 500 comments. Notice many of the comments are from writers pitching him book ideas. Which is exactly what he wanted to see. It helps him find new writers, it helps new writers get more book deals.

Win-win.

If Substack was smart, it would start an outreach campaign with every major publisher pitching them on bringing their editors to Substack. Editors would jump all over it, they simply don’t know what Substack does. Once you explained to them that Substack is a platform for writers to share their stories, they would sign up immediately.

A hallmark of good marketing is that it creates a clear benefit for both the marketer, and the audience.

Substack recruiting editors creates a clear benefit for both Substack and its user base.

Substack recruiting video creators creates a clear short-term benefit for Substack, and not for its user base.

We have a saying in the South, “Ya dance with the one that brung ya”. Meaning you stay true to your core user, because when you lose them, you’re in trouble.

Ask Twitter. Twitter is still trying to recapture the magic it lost over 15 years ago by not listening to what its users wanted.

Let’s hope Substack doesn’t do the same.

Am I overreacting? Is this just a ‘sign of the times’? Do you see real value in Substack courting new users in the form of video creators? What do you think?

And with that, my soapbox is put back in the closet. Thanks for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!

Mack

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