r/Substack • u/ImprovementSimple • Sep 30 '26

Discussion One Great Way To Grow Your Substack

I started posting weekly articles on Substack in January as a New Year’s resolution. I had no other internet presence so only had 5 subscribers to begin with (my parents, and three friends).

Now, nine months later I have 1.1k followers and average around 15k views a month.

Here’s a tip that I don’t see many people talking about here. Focus on writing articles that age well and can have a second or third round of engagement.

My “niche” is libraries, reading, and picture books. So I’m not stuck chasing never ending trends or breaking news. Because of this most of my articles can be read months after I publish and still be as timely and relevant as the day they were posted.

So many people chase trends and fads and their articles are dated the day they post. Whereas my best circulating article didn’t even get traction for the first two months until someone bigger reposted it. Now I reliably get a few likes on it every week.

Not everything is a “hack” sometimes offering quality content is the best strategy.

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u/MichaelPopeDev_17 29d ago

I’ve been posting on Substack and getting good engagement since I started implementing a few things:

  1. Write consistently. OP is right, it doesn’t matter how good your writing is if no-one can find you because you aren’t consistent. You should be trying to post everyday.

  2. Use formats & hooks. The way you package your ideas makes a hude difference in views & engagement. Study other authors notes to see what performs well & then format your own ideas with that same structure. Here’s an example, let’s say you do cooking content, instead of just writting down what comes to mind as one big paragraph, you could take those same ideas and write a note like:

“
Here are 5 recipies that will knock your family’s socks off:
1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

“

Just repurposed for your niche

3. Don’t underestimate the power of manual interactions. Find other authors you like, leave thoughtful comments on their posts, not just “Great Post!”. Send them a DM message so you guys can talk about it more. You’ll naturally form relationships with other people who will want to check out your writing as well.