SERVING YOUR REAL AUDIENCE INSTEAD OF THE ALGORITHM (LIVE STREAM TEST)

Did a surprise Substack Live today on a whim. Just me, a webcam, and my cat (Blue) losing his mind in the background. OBS melted down half the time (I have no idea what I’m doing), but here’s some threads worth pulling out:

Serving the people who already showed up

I keep saying this because it never stops being true: Notes is just social media. Chasing the feed means a few winners and everyone else shouting into the void. The only sane move is making your best work for the folks who already subscribed, not every stranger on the internet.

Why I nuked every platform except substack

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn — all deleted. The only “social” thing I use now is Substack Notes, and even then it’s more of an on-ramp to my newsletter.

The escape club origin story

Social Media Escape Club wasn’t born fully formed. It started as Heavy Metal Email (bad name, I know). Sarah Fay told me she didn’t like the name and I renamed this newsletter in October 2023.

Burnout happens when creators act like social media managers

I talked about a podcaster who spent so much time posting, replying, DM’ing, and “being discoverable” that the actual podcast started slipping further apart (I wrote about it here, too). We spend hours performing for strangers, and the real work suffers.

Sales = trust, not tactics

People buy you. Your voice, your face, your pace, your vibe. If your sales page shows endless paragraphs but never shows you actually talking, vibing, thinking — you’re not builting trust. And most creative people already have the trust-building material, they just leave it trapped on Instagram instead of putting it right next to the booking button.

You won’t disappear if you leave social media

I’m off every platform and still get found — blogs linking back, podcasts, people emailing, RSS readers, random mentions on LinkedIn from people I’ve never met. The real internet still works. Social media ain’t everything!

The timeless duo: your website + RSS

RSS is ancient wizard-magic and it still works beautifully. No algorithm, no tabs, so spam. Only the stuff you subscribe to shows up.

Gatherings > performative posting

I mention a post I wrote about Priya Parker (here), and I talked about how small Zoom calls, doing Substack Lives for your fans, and direct invitations make for deeper connection than any “reach” metric.

Where the real writing comes from

Everything good you write comes from living your actual life — going outside, making things, meeting people, doing stuff in the real world. Then you bring it back and tell the story.