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The Underdog's avatar

Welcome onboard the Substack train!

A some tips from a not-entirely-successful Substacker on article management:

- Aim for 1 to 2 pages. Most people don't have long attention spans, and the longer the page, the less likely they are to finish reading it (more likely there will be errors). I will admit there was too much for me to digest in one sitting.

- Break up in-depth research into multiple articles, each one covering a sub-topic of the wider research. You can then always link back to your earlier articles in later articles, making it a convenient bookend reference.

- By breaking it up into distinct articles, you make it easier to bring up the new links in conversation so you can keep re-stimulating the discussion. It also allows you to reference specific areas rather than lumping a large haystack for someone to sift through.

- Provide links and references for everything (it seemed like only a handful had links?). Screenshots are nice, but... they can be fabricated. Or altered. The original source material can mysteriously disappear, and providing a link allows someone to reference the original source material, which may include context you might have missed or may be pertinent to someone else's research.

- If you quote or reference something, and the source material changes, be sure to re-refer to the link (even if it's a link you posted earlier).

- Shrink the size of your screenshots to 'readable size', rather than full screen; full screen screenshots force the individual to scroll more frequently when reading the article, which is an unpleasant experience, and the large images can "swamp out" the text and distract from the readability of it. If the text is unreadable when shrunk, then, by all means, keep it full, but if it can be smaller, make it smaller.

- Highlighting in yellow is nicer on the eyes (and better for people with colour blindness) and less distracting than primary colour red underlining. If you use GIMP, add a new layer, and set the layer mode to "Darken only" to get the effect.

- Put effort into your thumbnail. It is what entices people to click. A 1200w x 1000h I find is optimal-ish given Substacks weird inconsistencies in sizing. You won't always produce 'winning' thumbnails (I know I don't), but good thumbnails really drive engagement. Use pixabay.com if you need free-for-commercial use images as a template (you should seek to customise and improve them).

- Use sub-headings to break up sections/areas where possible. Not only does this help with 'trackability' when trying to read the article visually, but Substack makes it so you can provide direct links to sub-headings in your article, so it's even easier to reference specific sub-sections.

I really ought to write up an article on what I found out about Substack...

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Peabody McCallister's avatar

Love this info. Thank you.

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