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?
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