How to 'Meet' Other Creators using Substack Office Hours
... for fruitful collaborations
Hi!
I hope you are having a productive week.
I’m writing to you today because I just discovered a new way to get more out of one of my favourite Substack-success resources.
Three things have helped me in my Substack journey:
Subscribing to lots of different Substacks to see what other people are doing well (and what doesn’t work).
Being part of an invitation-only Substack Grow intensive program for fast-growing paid newsletters.
Substack Office Hours.
This post is about Substack Office Hours, which has really helped me to get the most out of Substack. With Office Hours I discover new writers, learn about new features and find new ways of ‘Substacking’. Right now, I am also using Office Hours to find out what new writers are struggling with, so I can check I have covered those topics in my Substack Success book (coming soon!).
Substack Office Hours is a comment thread hosted by Substack where writers get together and ask questions, share their wins, and learn about new features. It is held each Thursday afternoon, American time, and the Substack staff attend for one hour. I jump into the thread around ten hours after the allotted time (because I’m in Australia), but I still learn a lot every time.
Interestingly, even though I join very late, my replies and comments still get engagement for days afterward - so it seems I’m not the only one showing up after the session has ended…
People who attend Office Hours in real time somtimes struggle with the volume of comments and the speed with which new replies are added to the thread. This causes the view to ‘jump around’ on the page and can make it hard to read and reply.
In today's thread, I discovered that
from Mostly Python has created a 'Survival Guide' to help you get the most out of Office Hours. I love Eric's writing because it is very succinct and well organised. Eric explains how to keep track of comments you are interested in, and prevent the page jumping while you are writing a reply or comment. Thanks Eric!Check out Eric’s Survival Guide here:
https://mostlypython.substack.com/p/using-substack
If you haven’t attended an Office Hours yet, you should definitely check it out. I guarantee you will learn something. To receive an email invitation to Office Hours each Thursday, subscribe to the Substack-owned publication, On Substack, using the link below. And let me know what you learn!
Have a great week,
Karen
Cover image: DeepMind on Unsplash
Hi Karen, thanks for sharing the guide! I'm going to update it by next week's office hours, to reflect the new format where they split the conversations by topic. It was a much better approach, although the busier discussions do still have the jumpiness issues.
Hi Karen, I heard about the Office Hours. I bet it's a great resource. I think it's smart to collect all those questions from people and create a Substack Success Book!