Category: Email MarketingCategory: Email Marketing

Saw this at the bottom of The Oatmeal’s very excellent post “A Cartoonist’s Review of AI Art.“

As I said back in 2023, “stop telling fans to follow you on platforms that are built to limit your ability to reach them.”

If you (or the Oatmeal) drive 1,000 people to Instagram and they all follow you, you’ll be lucky if 100 of those people see your next post.

So why not just focus on getting 100 new email subscribers? That’s a lot easier than trying to update several other platforms just so 90% of your followers won’t see your latest stuff.

Amelia Hruby of the Off The Grid podcast was our guest on a recent Escape Pod Zoom call, which is 1/3 interview, then 2/3 community Q&A, and that’s where this question comes from, and I think apples to many art forms aside from podcasting!

How did you build the audience for your podcast without social media?

“The way I have built the audience for my podcast has largely been relational. Even in Season 1, I had on guests, and they liked the show, and they told more people about the show, and those people told more people about the show.’

This is definitely a variation of “getting awareness off our plate,” in that maybe we don’t need to spend so much time making social media assets or posting on several platforms to get the word out. This way we’re spending our efforts making great work that people want to be a part of, rather than trying to post our way to greatness.

It’s also important that your podcast has a focus, as Amelia explains:

“I work on a lot of podcasts, and what I will say with so much love to everyone who has a podcast is that most don’t have a clear premise, and they don’t really know why people should listen. Many people make a podcast because they want to make a podcast, which is beautiful. But people listen to a podcast because it’s giving them something—entertainment, education, or in my case, a space for people who don’t want to be on social media but still want to make money from their art. They stay because they feel so seen.”

Get on Amelia’s waitlist to be notified when her new book “Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media” is available for pre-order!

I got to be a guest on the Off The Grid podcast – a dream come true!

We spent this episode tracing our 20+ years of being online, from back in the days of AOL and Tumblr, through the chaos of Twitter, and into today’s mix of Instagram, TikTok, and Substack. Yikes!

“We were doing things that just were interesting to some people, not 10,000 people, whatever. I didn’t have a massive following or whatever, but it was enough to like get neat conversations going.”

Along the way we talked about how our early internet experiments shaped the work we do now, like when Ameila left social media years ago:

“When I left social media in 2021, people thought I was going to be back. They were like, ‘This is not a viable option if you want to be a small business owner and I proved them wrong.’ … But in 2025, everyone’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we all got to get off social media.’ Like, nobody questions it anymore in the way that I used to face a lot of fear, anxiety…”

We also talk about the importance of having a website, and how email became the lifeline for our creative projects. I also shared why I shifted my paid subscribers off Substack, what worked, what didn’t, and some lessons learned about paywalls.

Amelia Hruby, PHD will be our special guest on Thursday’s Escape Pod Zoom call with Social Media Escape Club Members. Start your trial membership and join us – details here!

I get this question a lot. The short answer: it depends, but probably yes.

(This text taken from my recent Substack Live, then cleaned and edited for readability.)

You wouldn’t buy concert tickets for a band you’ve never heard. You don’t buy a car without a test drive. So why would someone subscribe to your newsletter if they can’t see what it looks like first? Substack makes that possible. Every newsletter is live on the open web, easy to read before committing. It’s like a magazine stand for your work.

Another big factor is friction. On Substack, if someone already subscribes to other newsletters, their info is already filled in. That means all they have to do is click once to subscribe to yours. It seems small, but every bit of reduced friction matters.

Another advantage is shareability. Every post you publish on Substack has its own URL. That link can travel anywhere—text messages, group chats, Discords, blogs, other newsletters. When someone shares your work, it doesn’t just stop like it does with a closed system like Mailchimp. It keeps moving. Each post becomes its own landing page with a simple subscribe button right there.

Yes, that are limits, of course. If you need automations o tagging, Substack probably ain’t the right fit. But if your goal is to publish consistently, be seen, and make it easy for readers to subscribe, moving your list to Substack is a solid move.

I got this question from Leslie recently:

I recently started on Substack after being inspired by Mad Records’ experiment of releasing music outside Spotify. I have a small following and want to build a community I can keep, even if I eventually move platforms. Connection is important to me, but I’m unsure how to offer value or grow my audience. As I explore Substack through tutorials, I’m seeing a lot of concern about the platform shifting towards social media-style features (ads, algorithms, etc.) that may not be ideal for creatives. I’m feeling discouraged. Do you think Substack is still worth the effort for building a community?

First off, as an artist, you are not offering value or growing an audience, you’re making magic and pulling people into your creative orbit.

Second, yes, Substack is veering into social media territory for sure. But right now it’s an effective tool for letting curious visitors sign up for your email list.

So, all that said, time spent on Substack doing anything to attract any amount of readers is time well spent. Finding fans is one thing, but being able to reach those fans is another. If Substack allows you to build an email list of 10 people, well, you get the email those 10 people for the next several years. Every bit of effort here is worth it because of the foundation you build with an email list.