Category: Social Media Escape ClubCategory: Social Media Escape Club

Sarah Fay and I focused on how people are using Substack right now, especially the temptation to treat Notes like another social feed to optimize and post constantly.

We talked about slowing that reflex down and prioritizing email subscribers instead—saving strong ideas for newsletters, reposting things from Notes into emails so subscribers actually see them, and measuring success by retention rather than public subscriber counts. The emphasis was on engagement, keeping people on the list, and treating email as the primary channel rather than chasing visibility inside Substack itself. 

We also covered practical approaches to writing, video, and business models on Substack. That included writing in a way that feels natural, publishing without waiting for perfection, and getting comfortable sending work to small groups before larger audiences.

On the business side, we talked about proximity, like keeping most work public while charging for closer access through Zoom calls or live discussions, and using Substack as a tool that supports existing goals rather than becoming another platform to manage. We also discussed live video formats, replays, YouTube workarounds, and treating Substack as a professional practice without overcomplicating the model. 

Thank you to Jelly for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

Still sharing a single email login for customer service? Time to try out Jelly in 2025! Jelly is a shared inbox with plans starting at $29/month for your whole team, and you can use our special code ESCAPECLUB15 to get 15% off your first year.

---

Recently I said to make your own Twitter.

You can have a section on your own website, with your own domain name, where you can post your thoughts, and dreams, and links to cool things, and embed fun videos.

Don’t make your fans visit toxic platforms to find your regular updates, but instead invite them to your website.

An updated “news feed” gives fans a reason to visit your site.

Making your own “Twitter” means you start owning your deep thoughts and random ideas, rather than leasing them to other platforms (yes, even Substack Notes) for them to monetize and build upon.

If you’re using WordPress, you can add a feed to your site pretty easily.

1. Start adding posts under the Aside post-type, which WordPress describes as “typically styled without a title. Similar to a Facebook note update.”
2. Add a new Category where your “feed” will go under. I called mine Daily Feed, with a category description of “Like a social media feed, but on my own site.”
3. After you’ve got a few posts, add the “Ultimate Category Excluder” plugin. Once installed, select your new feed category so it’s not in your main feed. You can also exclude it from your RSS feed.
4. Add a link to your feed category in your main menu bar, so people can find it.

Our pal Casey says you can do this another way, too:

You can use the Posts or Post Grid/Carousel block and set it to only include posts from a specific category.

Again, we do this to have control of our writing, our photos, our music.

Sure, our work exists on Spotify and Youtube and Instagram and Substack and everywhere else you choose.

But now, for example, when I make a post on Substack Notes, I will be adding that note to my own site, as well.

My site then becomes a place for existing fans to appreciate my day to day work without being surrounded by the noise of social media feeds, without the need to be active on several other platforms.

And when new people discover my site, they can learn about my work without being sent to another platform, one which they might not even have account with (like TikTok, which U.S. users can no longer download).

With a news feed on your website, you control the branding, the tone, the vibes. The potential reach is much lower, of course, but you’re building a body of work with potential to be discovered by anyone on the open web.

Today’s newsletter is sponsored again by Jelly. Instead of sharing an email login for customer support duties, get your team on Jelly, a shared inbox solution with plans starting at $29/month for your whole crew. Use code ESCAPECLUB15 to get 15% off Jelly for your first year.

1. PROVIDE A GREAT NIGHT OUT

I found this clip of Quentin Tarantino railing against the current movie industry, via Ted Gioia’s “The Infrastructure of the Recording Industry Is About to Fail.”

Making movies is a much lower priority. Films are just too risky—especially anything fresh or different or daring.

It’s gotten so bad that filmmaker Quentin Tarnatino now says that he would rather write a stage play…

What I love about this bit is giving the audience a great night out.

Yes, it’s always about the art, of course.

But putting your art into a new setting (in this case, Tarnatino doing theater), makes for a great experience for the audience, which is energy, which is what any artist wants to feel when displaying their work.

Below you can see olivia rafferty performing at a museum in front of a T-Rex.

Playing in a museum on a Friday night is not the same as playing a bar on a Friday night. Put your work in front of different crowds and see what happens.

Where can you showcase your magic in a new way? How can you go about displaying your work in front of people more willing to accept it?

2. REGISTER FOR MY ABOUT “ABOUT PAGES” WORKSHOP!

◼️ Feb 13th at 2pm EST

◼️ FREE with a “Pay What You Want” option if you’d like to support this work.

3. RECREATE EVENTS IN YOUR SPACE

Tim McFarlane Studio was part of Tiny Room For Elephants (TRFE) in Philadelphia, PA in years past. It was an event that combined multiple artists making work while musicians and DJs and producers performed live at the same time.

Tim brought elements of that into his own studio by inviting local producer / musicians into his studio to make music while he made art.

Read all about it here.

Are there ways you can combine your work with someone else’s work?

4. MAKE YOUR OWN TWITTER

I read Hacker News because I have a geeky computer background (anyone remember the HotDog HTML editor?), though honestly these days I don’t understand 80% of anything on there.

That said, when I saw ‘The Debian Publicity Team will no longer post on X/Twitter’ I knew I had to check it out.

Turns out they made their own Twitter-like feed on their own website, where they can post all their bits and bops (they called it “micronews”).

You can have a section on your own website, with your own domain name, where you can post your thoughts, and dreams, and links to cool things, and embed fun videos.

Don’t make your fans visit toxic platforms to find your regular updates, but instead invite them to your website.

1. Skip the self-checkout

This came up in our Escape Pod Zoom call this week, as a way of breaking away from our isolation and the ease of “not talking to others.” If you’re able, stand in line and wait (maybe without looking at your phone), and make small talk with the person helping you. I did this a few hours after our call and it was a delight.

“Buying things in stores is a simple trick I use to spend more time offline and increase my chances of chatting with real humans. Win-win. Nobody said real life would be easy.”

From Mehret Biruk’s ‘How to live without social media.’

Q. Could making small talk help us get better and talking about our own work in bigger settings?

2. About Page collaborative workshop?!

I’m thinking of making a collaborative workshop, instead of me just blabbering on for an hour.

Talk for a bit, we work together, talk for a bit more, share our work… if that sounds like a productive use of your time, click here to add your name to the wait list and I’ll let you know when it’s ready to launch.

P.S. this will be for your about page anywhere, not just on Substack. Your website also needs a nice about page!

3. Trust that the kids are alright

Kamilah Jones of Hard Decora passed along this video after this week’s Escape Pod Zoom call, basically telling me “don’t worry, the youth got it!” I’m a believer.

Q. Are you comfortable saying you’re an artist, and not a content creator?

---

◼️ JOIN MY WEEKLY ESCAPE POD ZOOM CALLS

Next call is Thursday, January 16, 2025 at 2pm EST– click here for more info.

---

4. Make it easy for people to contact you

This advice might not be for you you, and that’s fine – skip this and have a great weekend!

Sending an email to someone whose work you admire feels good, and it can sometimes lead to opportunities.

But I bet if you start doing this you’ll run into a common problem – most people don’t list their email address anywhere.

There may be reasons for this, notably avoiding harassment from creepy men (SIGH), but… if you’re up for it, try to have an email address that can receive inquiries from other artists, companies, art directors, and more.

Yes, DMs on social media can work, but not every artist, company, or art director is hanging out on social media everyday, but they’re all checking their email around the clock, I assure you.

So, be reachable. Have an email address. Make it easy for people to say they like your work, give you money, and/or hire you.

A client who has worked with some wonderful people is building an email list from scratch.

Typically this could mean sending a boring email to “all your contacts” saying, “hey, I have a newsletter now, please subscribe.”

Instead, I suggested they think of the amazing people they worked with throughout the years, and think of all those stories you shared, and the memories you’ve made. They’ve got to have dozens of those stories to write, right?

So write that post, with that one person in mind. Once published, send that person a link to the piece.

Maybe they subscribe, or at least reply and you two catch up, and who knows where that leads?

It’s not always about getting 100 new subscribers. Sometimes the right message to the right person at the right time is all you need.