Thank you for sharing. I am not surprised. Across all platforms, social media is limited to how many of your target market are on that platform and reachable. I have also thought of Twitter as being over hyped by its audience and even then with a bias towards politics and current events not literature. I would expect that original posts would be as or more effective.
Years ago I posted a survey to several LinkedIn groups related to my topic (higher ed careers), and I had great results at building a list from this. Part of the key is not being salesly. Another part is asking interesting questions. For example, asking questions about what subjects or other elements of short stories do people enjoy or asking whether people write and/or read short stories.
An interesting demographic question for your readers would be how many of us are readers versus writers. That would help you know who your audience is and who to target with paid or organic efforts.
Great advice! I haven't done anything really with LinkedIn but I agree about not being too pushy in terms of selling. The demographic question is also one that is hard to parse because I think the majority of the people here would describe themselves as both readers and writers. I think that it is just going to be long, slow work that builds the subscriber base. Nothing wrong with that, as I am in it for the long haul!
Hi Michael, have you tried anything that has worked outside of Substack, either through Reddit, forums, newsletter aggregators, etc.? There's a growing desire to market fiction outside social media, but nobody has landed on anything that works consistently.
Reedsy has quite a few marketing services listed, all pay to play, but I suspect the ROI is similar.
As for the Lunar Awards, nothing comes to mind. The largest number of subscribers I ever received came through a recommendation because the Substack recommending was doing an eBook giveaway list that went sort of viral. Something to chew on.
Sadly, I really haven't found anything that is ROI positive for short stories. I am not that surprised given the naturally small market for short stories, but the hunt continues.
Honestly, the best ROI have found is just spending 5 minutes a day on the substack app responding to other content in an intelligent way. Free sometimes is better :)
Thank you for sharing. I am not surprised. Across all platforms, social media is limited to how many of your target market are on that platform and reachable. I have also thought of Twitter as being over hyped by its audience and even then with a bias towards politics and current events not literature. I would expect that original posts would be as or more effective.
Years ago I posted a survey to several LinkedIn groups related to my topic (higher ed careers), and I had great results at building a list from this. Part of the key is not being salesly. Another part is asking interesting questions. For example, asking questions about what subjects or other elements of short stories do people enjoy or asking whether people write and/or read short stories.
An interesting demographic question for your readers would be how many of us are readers versus writers. That would help you know who your audience is and who to target with paid or organic efforts.
Great advice! I haven't done anything really with LinkedIn but I agree about not being too pushy in terms of selling. The demographic question is also one that is hard to parse because I think the majority of the people here would describe themselves as both readers and writers. I think that it is just going to be long, slow work that builds the subscriber base. Nothing wrong with that, as I am in it for the long haul!
Hi Michael, have you tried anything that has worked outside of Substack, either through Reddit, forums, newsletter aggregators, etc.? There's a growing desire to market fiction outside social media, but nobody has landed on anything that works consistently.
Reedsy has quite a few marketing services listed, all pay to play, but I suspect the ROI is similar.
As for the Lunar Awards, nothing comes to mind. The largest number of subscribers I ever received came through a recommendation because the Substack recommending was doing an eBook giveaway list that went sort of viral. Something to chew on.
Sadly, I really haven't found anything that is ROI positive for short stories. I am not that surprised given the naturally small market for short stories, but the hunt continues.
Honestly, the best ROI have found is just spending 5 minutes a day on the substack app responding to other content in an intelligent way. Free sometimes is better :)