WRITERS ON SUBSTACK & MEDIUM: YOU HAVE MORE READERS THAN YOU THINK

Both platforms are rather stingy in who they count as a reader, excluding many who should be included. We also discuss LinkedIn.

Image courtesy Maxim Hopma. (Available for hire.)

The most common grievance heard from bloggers, newsletter writers, and writers posting on any platform, is standard: why don’t they have more subscribers and followers? Why aren’t more people reading them?

The answer may surprise many writers: the number of subscribers and followers is not the sum total of your readers, and the number of recorded “reads” or “views” is for the most part limited. Medium gives a “read” only on paid posts read by paid subscribers to Medium, and only if they are on for more than thirty seconds. Substack credits a “view” only when it is read by a subscriber, from Substack.com or the Substack app, but there is no limitation on who they count.

[Note: whether called a “view” or a “read,” it means someone opened the email or clicked on the site or app to look at the piece. That is different than an “impression,” which just means notice was sent, but it does not mean the piece itself was opened or seen.]

I write a Substack newsletter, and I post on Medium. In both cases, I almost always crosspost as well as on Facebook and LinkedIn. I can easily see how many people have opened the post on LinkedIn, and how many have seen it on Facebook. On both of those platforms, readers can comment and react, and many do. None of those views, reads, or whatever you want to call them, will be counted by either Substack or Medium. I know with certainty that the reach of my writing is far greater than I might deduce were I to rely solely upon the numbers from Substack or Medium

These discrepancies add up. Many times I will see that the number of views on LinkedIn is several times that of Substack views, and this ratio is seen whether there are forty Substack reads or hundreds. [Caveat: no matter what system one uses, there is no real way of telling how much the reader actually consumed. The Medium read number does have some value, as you know the person made it through thirty seconds; in most cases, they’ll finish.]

If you are not a writer, but a reader, I hope this post helps guide you through the thicket of writing platforms, to understand their differences, and why they have somewhat different emphasises on content.

Whether a new or experienced platform reader, hopefully it helps you distinguish between the three major players. and gives an idea of where you might start reading.

Readers can understand that the information afforded here was gained strictly and exclusively by experience; I had to make more than a few mistakes before I was qualified to offer advice to anyone else. This knowledge, and the confidence gained from the realization that a lot more people than I thought were reading me, gave me the push I needed to offer an expanded and paid option.

Writers should also take into account the different natures of the readership on the different platforms.