4,000 Facebook Followers or 600 Subscribers?

Thank you Mary Thoma, GeorgeAnn, Richard Schulz, Michael Maupin, Ken Seals, and many others for tuning into my “live office hour video” on Substack Live.

I don’t know what to call these. Do they need a name? I just know I like going “live” and helping people out. Shooting the breeze, talking about our lived experiences. It’s a joy, really.

Eventually Mary Thoma dropped a great question in the chat: she’s got a Substack newsletter, and has 4,000 followers on Facebook, and she’s worried about losing that audience she’s built over there on Meta.

I riffed on how only a small fraction (maybe 100–300) are actually seeing her posts, and so you need to do what you can to move your biggest fans off it.

“The vault is still open,” I said, meaning she can still reach those folks (I wrote about this here).

So today you can ask (reply to, DM) your biggest fans to join her email list, which is something she can actually own for years and years. You can build a sustainable career with an email list!

I talked about how I had around 2,300 Twitter followers but only 20 or send ended up subscribing to Social Media Escape Club.

Some people just wanna be on social media!

Mary mentioned that her Facebook audience, “wants to know what I’m doing but doesn’t want to read,” and I said, “Later. Bye.”

I’m not trying to be harsh, but maybe I am! If you’re writing a memoir, then people that wanna scroll on FB for three hours a day might be your target audience!

That’s when Mary mentioned she has 600 newsletter subscribers.

Oh, well then.

So then I mentioned that maybe her energy is better spent “watering the garden” of her 600 current subscribers than chasing strangers. And I think that’s true for a lot of us.

Write the best newsletter you can for the people who signed up for it, and then some of them will the marketing for you.

You don’t need everyone. You need the right people, and you’ll find them (and they’ll find you) by committing to the work you’re meant to be doing.

Here’s the full replay of the Substack Live: