Substack Writers at Work with Sarah Fay

Substack Writers at Work with Sarah Fay

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Substack Writers at Work with Sarah Fay
Substack Writers at Work with Sarah Fay
The Substack Headline Mistake Costing You Subscribers
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The Substack Headline Mistake Costing You Subscribers

Your Engagement Strategy

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Sarah Fay
Apr 01, 2025
∙ Paid
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Substack Writers at Work with Sarah Fay
Substack Writers at Work with Sarah Fay
The Substack Headline Mistake Costing You Subscribers
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Quick housekeeping clarification: This weekend’s How to Use Substack to Sell Your Backlisted Book Masterclass will be very valuable to those with forthcoming titles and to indie authors. Join us!

  • What’s the difference between a subject line and a headline on Substack?

  • Should you care about Google search results?

  • Should you capitalize subject lines? What about headlines?

  • Given the introduction of beta testing titles on Substack (!), what’s the best workflow to take advantage of this thrilling (truly) new feature?

The answers are part of my proprietary Substack Growth Framework to help you engage subscribers, i.e., encourage them to open your emails.

Read on, my friends, read on…


I was talking with a Substack writer yesterday who used the exact same headline (a.k.a. title) for every post—only his subhead (a.k.a. subheadline) varied.

I gave unsolicited advice (my bad—no one wants that) and mentioned that he might possibly, maybe, maybe want to think about using different headlines.

Why?

  1. In email, people might think he keeps sending them the same email over and over because people are moving quickly, often deleting emails with joy and abandon when they’re cleaning out their inboxes. We say “cleaning out my inbox” for a reason—it feels cluttered.

  2. On his homepage, it did look like the same post over and over again, even with different social previews/thumbnails.

Important (!)

Before we go any further, let’s clarify: subject lines aren’t the same as headlines. Most people treat these as the same thing, and they are in a sense; they’re both your post’s title, but…

Paid subscribers get access to guidance from my proven proprietary Substack Growth Framework—trusted by 700+ private clients and tens of thousands of subscribers and Mastermind members who’ve achieved real, measurable growth. Reach all your Substack goals by joining us today.

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