Tend to your own garden: the case for good ol’ blogging

Dear Reader,

I know it feels like a chaotic and noisy time right now. Perhaps because of this, I believe more than ever in the value of sharing authentic, human, helpful words. 

On an individual level, the act of carefully crafting (and reading) words helps us slow down and clarify our thinking. As creators and entrepreneurs, writing and sharing consistently over time is how we sustainably nurture our audiences and grow our businesses. 

The small business entrepreneurs I work with are doing good work, have low negative impacts, and give stability to their lives, homes, and communities. This big, chaotic, noisy world needs you to keep doing this while staying as kind and peaceful as possible—and marketing is part of how you carry on.

In recent months, Substack and similar online publishing platforms (like Medium, beehive, etc.) have been a recurring theme with several of my clients as they grow their marketing efforts. So I thought it would be helpful to dig deeper.

🌱 But first, let’s take a deep breath and go on a gardeney metaphor…

Every evening my husband and I walk our dog past a nearby community garden where people can rent out small plots of land. Come spring, the garden will be full of gardeners prepping their beds and planting seedlings, and on summer nights it’s a really fun and vibrant place to walk around.

These days, however, in the middle of winter, the garden honestly looks a little bleak. Many plots are left bare, exposing the topsoil to erosion. Broken-down lawn furniture sits neglected between paths. Bags of miracle-grow are stacked conspicuously in the corners (🪱🦠 tip: MG products are harmful to soil microbes that help nourish plants, as explained well here).

There are many wonderful things about community gardens—the main one being that people without backyards have a space to grow their own food. It’s also a place where community members can connect and learn from each other. Even as a non-member, I’ve occasionally talked over the fence and shared advice, seeds, and surplus veggies. 

Having a backyard garden isn’t feasible for everyone, and it doesn’t give you the same level of community connection. It’s also more complicated and expensive to set up. But if you are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to pick between the two, I’d recommend tending to your own garden beds first. 

The thing is, there are some big drawbacks to renting a plot that’s owned by someone else: the primary one being, it isn’t your own. You’re not able to nurture your own soil over the years, or foster your own chemical-free backyard, or tend to and enjoy your own sanctuary any time you wander out your own back door. Your prices could go up, your plot could be rented to someone else, you might have to put up with other people’s miracle-grow. 

You get the idea.

What is Substack? 

You can think of Substack like a combination of a social network, a blog, and a newsletter. The content you create (which can include writing, video, and audio) is posted in a nice looking magazine-style page on Substack’s platform and gets emailed directly to subscribers. 

👍 It has a lot going for it:

• Looks great and is easy to use.
• Includes community-building features (people can comment and even join livestreams and group chats).
• You can monetize your content (although it’s debatable that even Substack is making money on Substack).
• Your column can get referred when people sign up for others, which is a nice way to get discovered and grow your list (although you may want to consider if this is a place where your prospects actually hang out).
• It’s currently free (though Substack takes 10% of transactions + credit card fees).
• There aren’t currently advertisements.
• It has an app so readers don’t need to read emails in their inboxes.
• You can export your subscriber list and content if you decide to move to another platform (although, for an established column, this type of move would be daunting to say the least).

👎 It also has some big drawbacks:

• Your column and audience live on a network that’s owned by someone else, which means:
  • There are a host of branding and design limitations.
  • Functionally, it lacks integrations with other platforms, advanced analytics, and (this is a biggie) good search engine optimization.
  • The connection between your content and your offers isn’t seamless.
  • You aren’t building search engine traffic that directs to your own website.
  • You’re subject to the practices of a big tech company, including their security vulnerabilities, corporate and operational changes, fee increases, ever-changing algorithms, etc.
• At it’s core, it’s a social media platform, so:
  • It can be a time suck (you need to make sure your time isn’t better spent on other things that help your business more). 
  • It can negatively impact your wellbeing (being a social media platform and all).

What is a Blog+Newsletter Setup? 

A good ol’ WordPress blog in your very own website lets you publish content to your site. You can set up an email marketing tool (like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Kit, etc.) to automatically email this content to your list (rss to email) or to send out newsletters with anything you want.

👍 Benefits:

• Your emails are driving people back to your website where you control everything. 
• A blog can be extended, categorized, and customized as a digital magazine, a corporate newsroom, a classroom, or nearly anything else.
• Your posts live within your website, so your branding is consistent and connections to your offers are seamless.
• You can monetize your content through various means (direct selling of products/courses, ads, sponsored content).
• You have more control over search engine optimization and can foster long-term search engine visibility that points directly back to your site.
• You have more control over how your emails are designed and delivered.
• A robust email marketing tool will let you do more with your subscribers (you can tag them, customize follow up sequences, etc).

👎 Drawbacks:

• It’s more complicated to set up and learn how to use.
• It’s more expensive.
• Unlike Substack, there’s no built-in referral system, so your list will likely grow slower (although I think there’s value in having a smaller, more relevant list on your own platform vs. a bigger one somewhere else).

What’s a gardener to do?

Substack and similar social media/newsletter platforms are like a community garden—they can be a great place to learn and make connections, but at the end of the day, you’re tending to a plot of land that you simply do not own. 

While a blog+newsletter combo can require more setup and learning at the beginning, and it won’t be as quickly discoverable or connected, this approach has the potential to yield a host of long-term results, just like a well cared for backyard garden. 

If you really like the vibe of Substack (or similar) and/or if you don’t have your own website or bandwidth to figure out how to use it, go ahead and get started there. It’s better to plant seeds now than not grow anything at all. It also looks like a simple, easy-to-use tool to experiment with monetizing private content and a community.

But, if you already have a website with blogging capabilities, I’d recommend carefully considering a good ol’ blog+email outreach strategy for growing and nurturing an engaged audience over time. Then you can use social media platforms (perhaps even Substack) as a way to direct folks back to your home.*

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me if you read to the end. It helped me to dig into these options, and I hope it helped you too. I’m grateful to be connected with so many people who are doing what they can for our big, chaotic, noisy world, and that includes you. 

xo,
Sarah

*Be aware that search engines don’t like duplicate content, so if you want to post the same content on both Substack and a blog, you’ll need to have your blog use the Substack url as the canonical url (which means search engines will prioritize the Substack content). Another tact would be to use Substack for alternate/newsletter content that links to your blog articles.