Are You Avoiding Short Posts? Don't. Here's Why

+ 3 new Substack features you might have missed

Hello, hope you’ve had a wonderful week and that you are not too hot up there (in the Northern Hemisphere) or cold (down here).

This post was inspired by a conversation about post frequency I had with Lisa in a coaching session. We were talking about how hard it is to write a high-performing post every week.

The problem: As creators, we need to show up for our readers quite often to build a good relationship with them. I recommend posting every week. But this is hard to do if your posts are long and detailed.

I suggested Lisa could try publishing short posts every second week, instead of switching to fortnightly posting. No, she said, that wouldn’t work, because her audience loves her long, deep personal essays, and they are the only posts that perform well.

Long, intense posts are what Lisa’s audience love. They are the ones that are shared widely, that generate new subscribers and that prompt new paid subscriptions.

So, for Lisa’s publication, long posts are needed to drive growth and revenue. But she can’t write them every week - too much work, not enough time. Short posts are easier but her audience doesn’t share them as widely and they don’t generate new subscriptions. She knows short posts don’t perform so she avoids them.

But short posts have a secret purpose which is easy to miss when you are deep in the swamp of content creation.

The secret purpose of short posts

Short posts posts let you show up for your readers without having to create a masterpiece. Short posts remind people who you are and why they love hearing from you every week.

Short posts give you breathing space while letting you show up every week. They keep the momentum flowing with your subscribers, so that when you do write a huge vulnerable personal essay - an absolute banger! - they will gladly upgrade to paid to reward you.

So if you’ve been avoiding short posts because they don’t perform well, it might be time for a reframe. Every post doesn’t need to get new subscribers or revenue. But every post will grow the relationship between you and your audience.

Use short posts to build your relationship with your readers, so when you send them a banger they are ready to become super-fans.

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Three new Substack features you might have missed

In the past two weeks, Substack has shipped three new features:

1. You can now generate a QR code for your Substack welcome page from your publication settings.

2. You can now draft and publish posts directly in the Substack iOS app.

3. Substack users can now publish posts without first setting up a publication.

For some of us, these features will be a game changer, for others not so much.

That’s it from me for this week, thanks for being here,

Karen

P.S. Lisa found her coaching session super helpful. "Thanks for telling it to me straight", she told to me later, and "I am so much happier with it [my publication] now." If you want one too you can book a slot here.