Your Friday Email - Stay Creative on Substack

When a thread wasn't a chat thread, it was actually an email and the SUPER power of a network.

Round the block and down again - this sign lives at the of our street!

Hello!

How’s your week on Substack been? I’ve figured out some more bits and pieces here about what works and what doesn’t and what works for me - they are all different things I think?

What I mean is what works for me might not also be the thing that works for you? What works on the tech side is more fact? What works today might not work tomorrow - ok I’ve gone too far now…

Anyway, I’ll share with you and do let me know what you’re learning here too?

This will be a shorter post this week as it’s half term here in Northumberland and I’ve been busy exploring a new project that will come out in time for the Summer holidays.

I feel like writing apols for the typos - sent from my iphone but it’s not 2014… 😬

The ‘Stay Creative on Substack’ podcast will be back next week. If you want to read past ‘Stay Creative on Substack’ tips - the posts are are all listed (tagged) here on my home page

Please feel free to share those with new folks joining. They are ESPECIALLY relevant to creatives who also happen to write.

I’ve pretty much written about ALL the features here (I think) and I have a masterclass and course and now some YouTube videos dedicated to my love of Substack. There are also some others teaching about the platform - I’m gathering them up so I’ll share those next week.

First up this week -

Did you claim your Substack Handle?

Do it now!

It makes it much easier for folks to find you and tag you in Notes and in posts.

While I’m here, to “tag someone” you just use the ‘@’ button before their name here and in notes. To pull their publication through into one of your posts if you want to celebrate them and link to their work, just copy and paste the URL and tag them - that way they’ll get notified.

What do you think of the new dashboard?

💌 📮 I don’t quite know yet but I’d love your thoughts.

What I do know after 14 months on Substack, I’ve quickly got used to any change they’ve brought in…

I can’t find my scheduled posts as easily and the BIG annual revenue thing is a bit triggering as it goes down if a monthly sub doesn’t renew… hmmmm… This is where it’s important to have our own ‘success metrics’ and I chatted about intrinsic reward in last week’s post… ultimately I’m just glad they haven’t made the design green and red but green and grey is hard enough to see…

A thread that was meant to be a chat

Ok I was wrong about this but ‘New Thread’ on desktop is NOT the same as ‘New Chat’ on app.

Oooops - I thought they were the same as the icons are the same/ similar? To start a chat from desktop I have to type /chat at the end of my URL where as with threads the button is right there in writer dashboard…maybe it’s the same for you. To make it more confusing you can also send chats as emails to both subscribers and paid members.

This is an accidental ‘thread’ I sent when I thought it was a chat… You can better see the difference if you’re on desktop.

Here’s the back office but in the app it just looked like a regular email and I felt a bit spammy ¹about that last week…

I noticed

Sara Tasker - Me & Orla

shared a thread this week and (I think) wrote THREAD in the email subject which makes is SO much clearer - Sara is SO brilliant at engaging us on the internet and making things easy to follow!

I’m part of her Hashtag Authentic course community and a paid subscriber here which I’m very glad about!

The last post at the bottom of the list above My ‘Creative Content Club’ in the image above is a blog post and invitation I pulled over from my old wordpress blog and updated.

I didn’t email it out which means it doesn’t get seen as much BUT it’s really handy to be able to link to it as I’m re launching that programme and a series of free group mentoring sessions. As I was editing the post from last year I wondered if updating it would make it jump up the timeline but it doesn’t. I had to copy and paste the content and then re post it. So now it exists twice here - once from Feb 2022 and once from now…

I also realised folks get notified if you’ve mentioned them in a post every time you update it. 🙊 sorrrryyyyy for all my edits this month. Tags coming in sent my organising brain into overdrive and I wanted to organise my home page!!

So for those of us who are slowly working through and adding tags it’s nice to know that any @ mentions will be re notified.

So, in short if you want to start a thread from your desktop you can (third button down) - I think this could be really great for a regular weekly or monthly discussion -

Zoe Gardiner

looking at you?

I wrote about my thoughts on chat a few Fridays back but basically I don’t think it works as well as it could and to honour a calm and spacious Substack experience for my subscribers, I’m just hosting one a month at the moment.

I do wonder about threads as I love chatting in the comments of posts and can’t REALLY see the difference? Perhaps because I don’t have 10s of thousands of subs I don’t need to differentiate between a thread and a post with comments on? Is that it?

You can see

Emma Gannon

uses it really well and pulls her “threads” through to the main menu on her home page so people can see at a glance what a brilliant community she supports here - https://thehyphen.substack.com/s/threads

Where do you stand on having comments turned on or off here?

The POWER of a super network

I absolutely love Substack for the network of people it shares with me. Years on social media wondering why it felt like everyone else was having all the fun (just me) have been replaced with joyous interactions with writers and creatives here on Substack.

1. This post on Notes really caught my attention this week by

   S.E. Reid

I had to think about this a lot because my multi-passionate, portfolio career does not let me niche! I could write on so many of these ‘micro-journalism’ ideas… I’ll keep thinking…maybe a creative producer stack or a curation stack or just a good ole sparkle stack? Thanks to

Sarah Shotts

for that last suggestion.

Later in the week,

Lindsay Johnstone

drew my attention to a place called ‘Memoir Land’. It looks like they curate a tonne of personal essays and re-share every Monday - I’ll be taking a dive into this content come the weekend!

There’s also

Fictionistas

if you’re interested in fiction and

Jami Attenberg

1000’s words of summer is coming up if you want to join that community to write. I’m going to give it a go. I love the romance of the invitation - it reminds me of when I was a teen and sitting round the pavements of County Durham listening to friends tell of holiday romances and discos and two ice creams a day!

Everything you need to know about #1000wordsofsummer

There was also this Note with lots of insightful responses which was exactly what I needed to read;

2. Lovely

   Substack
   often pulls my posts through to recommendations in Explore. Want to know how it works?

   Ha - me too! I do have a theory but I’ll not unpack that this week. Thanks

   Substack
   for all your do to support my creative work and writing here !! 💁🏽‍♀️

Substack of the Day!

We are all here to read different things and it’s not a competition (and thank goodness) but I wanted to bring this feature back because I started it over on instagram and no one cared it was quiet in response and so I moved my energy here where it’s much better spent.

I loved Mackenzie’s words over at

the lovely road

and the invitation here in this post is glorious…

why i'm having a slow summer

Where I’ve been finding value

There is a lot of brilliant writing on Substack which is just gorgeous. I’ve found real value here in my paid memberships. I LOVE running mine here and I pay for a membership to

Heart Leap

which is a new addition and Suzy is BLOWING my mind with her generosity and connection to big thinkers, dreamers, journalists, writers and happy to be here-ers. I know Suzy IRL and I’m yet to meet a more open hearted, fiercely determined creative. Story for another day but I followed her down a HUGE slide last week and her invite to join her membership popped in my inbox the next day - it was an instant YES PLEASE!

NEW - Youtube Videos about Substack!

My Get Creative on Substack & Stay Creative on Substack series is also on Youtube now. 🥳

I want to be of service to as many folks as possible so if you’re a creative who also writes you might find these useful.

I’ve been meaning to pick up youtube for a while and the lovely Molly over at

Hippy Highland Living

along with my eight year old son and my husband

David Venus

have been very supportive to inspiring my journey.

I started with 24 subscribers and I’ve given myself a year to learn the ropes over there! Are you youtubing? I mean are you a youtuber, I mean are you creating content on youtube - I’m definitely not cool enough I know. 😙

Ok that’s all for this week, tell me something you’ve enjoyed or discovered here on Substack this week?

Claire x

PS - If you want to work with me as a mentor in unpacking your creative strategy for writing and creating here I have a few ways you can do that. More here.

You might also like my Substack Contents Page - doing my best to keep it updated each season! I didn’t email this one out - I just published it and pinned it to my home page.

Substack Contents Page 2023

1. The spam FEAR - am I emailing too much, are people sick of me in their inbox, am I taking up too much space, does emailing people wreck the planet because it all has to live on a server somewhere… ? Ok only the last one is a real question! The other stuff is mindset stuff. I’m ok. 🌻