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...
Appreciate the comments, of course. Wasn’t meant in any other way. But as soon as people realise the scale of the fraud, lies and corruption, and start pushing back, I think my writing days are over. I’m not doing this to make money or for fame, I’m doing this because I don’t want my kids to grow up to live in a fascist state that can take you out as they see fit.
Whilst I could appreciate your laudable goals, I would say money is better spent on you than, say, the government or Amazon, and fame is actually one of your primary goals, albeit indirectly.
By improving click-through rate (CTR), you actually improve the visibility of the topics of which you discuss. The truth movement has this tendency to shoot itself in the foot because it's got this weird perspective that marketing is bad; but everything you do to raise awareness is already a type of marketing.
Good thumbnails are an adjunct to that goal.
I really wish Substack had something resembling DMs.
And no, fame is definitely not my goal. I want One Health implications to become understood, once people standup, more than happy to delete account and disappear in obscurity.
Perhaps, but "fame", and I use airquotes, because you mean egotistical celebrity, and I just mean 'someone who is very well known' is important for raising awareness. You act as an ambassador of your own ideas, and they're like children, they generally won't survive without you in their infancy.
Whether it is you or your Substack or even your ideas, fame is an aspect. Fame is a tainted word, you might replace it with 'popularity' or 'recognition' (not the accredited achievement kind but the 'hey I know you' kind).
I use an alias. I don't mind if the alias gets "famous", because the alias isn't me. It's a bit like saying Batman has become famous, but Bruce Wayne has not. I bet you know of FreedomToons or the BabylonBee, but I bet you can't name who does either (and they're public with their names, I believe).
People will always require leaders. You might go 'but the problem is obvious', but what is obvious to you, isn't obvious to everybody, or even most people. I had to write instructions on how to work a printer once for an organisation I just joined because I was the only one able to "reverse engineer" how things worked.
There are many more, who are less capable, unable to follow even basic instruction. You've met the muttoncrew, right? I bet you wonder how they tie their own shoelaces everyday (it's probably velco or stick-ons). But there's a lot of people like it. You have a gift, of seeing, an intellect. Don't let it go to your head, it is a responsibility, or a burden, even; but with great power comes great responsibility. And that may mean leading, even when you don't want to.
So, apologies, my follow up from the Tweet post is try Gab.com
I can't comment if it's fifth columnist or not, but speech is far looser there, to the point you may even find it crass and offensive. Christians, *actual* Nazis, leftists with a hate boner, people discussing the wildest theories... and I guarantee despite Gab's size, you'll get way more engagement than Twitter.
I'm on there. I don't post much as I'm trying to flush out the shills from hiding in Twitter, but you can hit me up in DMs on there:
Forgive me, I just realised all of the Substack articles have done full screen embeds which I mistook as screenshots (Substack does not border delineate embeds).
If you want to link (and not embed) a Substack article, highlight the text, and manually click the hyperlink button (the chain link) in the edit window and paste the URL in manually. It's a pain but Substack ignored my UI feedback on not embedding on text highlight (instead it destroys the text and embeds anyway).
If you want to reduce the size of the embeds, if you hover the individual embeds in the edit window, in the top right you should see a 'burger menu' (three horizontal lines) appear which, if you click on it, allows you to specify which type of embed you want.
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...
Appreciate the comments, of course. Wasn’t meant in any other way. But as soon as people realise the scale of the fraud, lies and corruption, and start pushing back, I think my writing days are over. I’m not doing this to make money or for fame, I’m doing this because I don’t want my kids to grow up to live in a fascist state that can take you out as they see fit.
"I’m not doing this to make money or for fame"
Whilst I could appreciate your laudable goals, I would say money is better spent on you than, say, the government or Amazon, and fame is actually one of your primary goals, albeit indirectly.
By improving click-through rate (CTR), you actually improve the visibility of the topics of which you discuss. The truth movement has this tendency to shoot itself in the foot because it's got this weird perspective that marketing is bad; but everything you do to raise awareness is already a type of marketing.
Good thumbnails are an adjunct to that goal.
I really wish Substack had something resembling DMs.
And no, fame is definitely not my goal. I want One Health implications to become understood, once people standup, more than happy to delete account and disappear in obscurity.
Fame is not a good thing. Ideas, not people.
Perhaps, but "fame", and I use airquotes, because you mean egotistical celebrity, and I just mean 'someone who is very well known' is important for raising awareness. You act as an ambassador of your own ideas, and they're like children, they generally won't survive without you in their infancy.
Whether it is you or your Substack or even your ideas, fame is an aspect. Fame is a tainted word, you might replace it with 'popularity' or 'recognition' (not the accredited achievement kind but the 'hey I know you' kind).
I use an alias. I don't mind if the alias gets "famous", because the alias isn't me. It's a bit like saying Batman has become famous, but Bruce Wayne has not. I bet you know of FreedomToons or the BabylonBee, but I bet you can't name who does either (and they're public with their names, I believe).
People will always require leaders. You might go 'but the problem is obvious', but what is obvious to you, isn't obvious to everybody, or even most people. I had to write instructions on how to work a printer once for an organisation I just joined because I was the only one able to "reverse engineer" how things worked.
There are many more, who are less capable, unable to follow even basic instruction. You've met the muttoncrew, right? I bet you wonder how they tie their own shoelaces everyday (it's probably velco or stick-ons). But there's a lot of people like it. You have a gift, of seeing, an intellect. Don't let it go to your head, it is a responsibility, or a burden, even; but with great power comes great responsibility. And that may mean leading, even when you don't want to.
So, apologies, my follow up from the Tweet post is try Gab.com
I can't comment if it's fifth columnist or not, but speech is far looser there, to the point you may even find it crass and offensive. Christians, *actual* Nazis, leftists with a hate boner, people discussing the wildest theories... and I guarantee despite Gab's size, you'll get way more engagement than Twitter.
I'm on there. I don't post much as I'm trying to flush out the shills from hiding in Twitter, but you can hit me up in DMs on there:
https://gab.com/TheDailyBeagle
I am.
There are highlight - underscores - above every time I source new material
Literally everything is linked and sourced.
And I only really started writing because of Twitter censorship.
Forgive me, I just realised all of the Substack articles have done full screen embeds which I mistook as screenshots (Substack does not border delineate embeds).
If you want to link (and not embed) a Substack article, highlight the text, and manually click the hyperlink button (the chain link) in the edit window and paste the URL in manually. It's a pain but Substack ignored my UI feedback on not embedding on text highlight (instead it destroys the text and embeds anyway).
If you want to reduce the size of the embeds, if you hover the individual embeds in the edit window, in the top right you should see a 'burger menu' (three horizontal lines) appear which, if you click on it, allows you to specify which type of embed you want.
Forgive my tardiness.
Love this info. Thank you.