Transcript 0:00 [gentle music] Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Honey & Hustle. Today, I am sharing my conversation with Seth Waraker. 0:10 Seth is the creator of the Social Media Escape Club, which is a newsletter and website helping you escape social media's algorithm that hinders your ability to create a meaningful and lasting relationship with your community and with your audience. 0:25 I know that sounds super scary, but I think we are able to cover a lot of ground in this episode. 0:31 We did this episode on Substack Live, and we had some really great questions that I decided to keep in this recording with, for you guys. And if you would like to join us on the next one, please do. 0:42 We'll be going live again on Monday, August the 11th, which really dates this episode, but I don't care. 0:47 Because if you want to find out about any of my future Substack Live sessions, you can find out very easily in your inbox when you subscribe to my newsletter, Please Hustle Responsibly. All right, let's get into it. 1:01 [upbeat music] Thank you guys for joining us. 1:11 As you can see by the, uh, cheeky title, we're gonna be talking, yes, a little bit about LinkedIn, but also about just Seth's whole premise of escaping social media, and leveraging the platforms and audiences and community that we've built there to grow our own newsletters and websites that are independent of an algorithm. 1:33 So thank you guys so much for joining. I'll go ahead and introduce myself, and let Seth introduce himself as well before I get into the obscure lore that I'm sure not many of you know. My name is Angela Hollowell. 1:44 I write the Please Hustle Responsibly newsletter. It is a newsletter community for creators who want to learn, connect, and grow. 1:53 I connected with Seth here on Substack, uh, when he was offering his email consulting, and we had a really great back and forth about building a course, and not just having an email list, but how to leverage that email list to actually segment people who are interested in buying that course. 2:11 So I really appreciate him taking the time to answer my question, but also join me today to talk about a bit of a broader topic, and that is LinkedIn and escaping social media. Seth, thank you for joining me. 2:23 Thank you so much, Angela, for having me. 2:25 I'm glad we were able to connect, you know, through that and through the work that both of us do, and super stoked to be here and talk about all this fun stuff of so, of social media and getting away from it, and staying sane and, and 2:40 be, and still being seen, and, and not, like, dropping off the face of the earth if you ever leave it, 'cause I- it won't happen. Yeah. 2:45 [laughs] I feel like when I was first starting to write on Twitter in 2021, and the Jay Clouses and Justin Walshes of the world were like, "Hey, you need to start a email list because one day social may not be there for you in terms of reach and engagement." 3:03 And I was like, "Oh, social media's not going anywhere." And I think that's still true. It hasn't gone anywhere, but I do think my relationship has fundamentally changed with social media platforms. Yeah. 3:15 And I am more at peace than ever that I now feel comfortable stepping away from social media and understanding how to market myself and grow my community outside of social media, especially now that I have an email newsletter community as the foundation of my business. 3:35 I feel like maybe a greater way to talk about that value proposition is to say that having a newsletter de-risk a creative business in a multitude of ways, first of which is making you a little bit more algorithm-proof. 3:49 We had a conversation in the comments about me [laughs] spending years writing daily on LinkedIn, growing to 12 and a half thousand s- followers, and now being like, "Yeah, I want to not do this anymore. 4:02 I want to not post every day." [laughs] Yeah. 4:06 So I would love to maybe hear some of your advice around, I'm sure there are other creators who have built even bigger followings who are looking to step away and take that leap into just really banking on their newsletter. 4:17 What are some of the conversations you've been having with people about that? 4:21 One of the biggest things is that muscle memory or muscle memory, urge, habit, whatever you wanna call it, of posting on something like LinkedIn all the time, or a Twitter or what- or a Substack Notes, is 4:36 putting that in a different place. Using that same energy, but putting it on your website, because it's still, it- that's still building something valuable. There's definitely the, "Oh, but no one looks at my site." 4:50 No, well, 'cause you don't put anything on your site. So if you put stuff on your site, eventually people... Like, why do I go to Seth Godin's blog every day? 4:58 'Cause he, I know that he's gonna post something there every day. Why do I log into Substack Notes? Because I know there's going to be something new there every day. 5:07 So I, I really feel as we build ourselves as a brand, as a known person for what we do, eventually I feel like there should be that, that muscle memory, that habit, like just as I go to Seth Godin's site or Darren Fireball, uh, is I'm gonna go to Angela's site to read your quick updates and stuff like that. 5:28 I don't have a LinkedIn account, so I'm missing all that stuff that you wrote, you know what I mean? But what if you, that whole time, had been doubling that content and putting it into space? 5:37 Now you would have this full archive of everything you wrote about there, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think one thing that has made me shy away from doubling in the past- Mm-hmm... 5:48 is feeling like I'm duplicating effort without a way to measure return on that effort. Okay. Have you heard people talk about that? And I could expound on that too. 5:58 I think, for example, there's a lot of people who talk about using Medium, for example- Mm-hmm... 6:03 or like you said, just- Having a duplication of their Substack articles on a website that they own, and some people just either stopping because they feel like their SEO value isn't there, or they don't get a lot of website traffic, whatever the case may be. 6:18 You know, they feel discouraged about that. Oh, yeah. 6:21 That's the allure, that's the magic, that's the drug of social media, is you can post something and four seconds later there's gonna get a-- someone's gonna leave a heart emoji in your comment. 6:32 Like, there's always the immediate satisfaction, and it's by design. Like, social media's made that way, and our websites aren't. They never were. So it's h- 6:46 when we send a newsletter, and you know how this is, you send a newsletter out to how many number of people you have, what's the response? Where is it? Where's the comments? Where's the... 6:56 Especially with so- with Substack, now there's likes and comments with our newsletters, not just replies, not just open rates, and there's all this, all these numbers to look at. 7:06 So yeah, the discouragement is we've bought into the immediate gratification of everything. Like, post and we should see something, post and we should see something. 7:17 And I've been updating finally, like I g- I got my own personal blog going, back going in 2018. 7:27 None of that stuff has more than 20-- Most of those posts don't have more than 20 views or whatever, but I don't care, because it's also... 7:35 One, it's for me to be able to look back through my archive and see what I was writing back then. But also t- if anyone is like ner- wants to nerd out and be like, "What? 7:45 Wait, I went to Seth's blog, and it goes back to 2004. What? Let me click on 2018. What was Seth writing in 2018?" It's a mystery to me. I don't-- I f- So it's, I don't know. 7:57 I kind of think having that, your own space, and maybe it's doubled up content, maybe it's not, maybe it's just throwaway posts. I have plenty. Believe me, there's plenty of throwaway posts on my blog. 8:08 But I think all of that shows our humanity, shows that we're just normal people. It shows a growth in our ideas over, like I said, 2018, over the past decade, whatever [laughs]. 8:22 Like, almost I wish I had kept the same blog going back to 2001 when I got started and all. I don't know. 8:28 I think especially time, i- in this time now of AI and everything's perfect and everything's polished and looks great and is perfect, like I say, let's not be perfect and just write blogs again and let it be not polished and, and human, 'cause I, I s- 'cause that's what we all are, and we connect, I think, with that, so... 8:50 A couple of thoughts on that. First of all, wow, you've been writing for a long time. I cannot imagine what it would be like to view, if I was doing personal writing, to view my personal writing from 2004. 9:02 I'm already embarrassed from what I was writing a year ago on Substack, so I can't imagine the embarrassment I would feel [laughs] from like years and years passed. And I'm sure I'm gonna get as I continue to write. 9:12 Um, be like, "Oh, yeah, I remember writing my first newsletter back in 2024, and it sucked ass." 9:18 [laughs] But at least it was the thing that got me st- you know, this is the messiness of growing as a writer and articulating your ideas. 9:26 When it comes to muscle memory, especially with social media and posting regularly on social media, one thing that I've noticed is that I'm not tempted to leave LinkedIn because my LinkedIn reach has gone down. 9:40 I'm tempted to leave LinkedIn and posting on any social media platform regularly because of the time that it takes for me to do that, when I could be spending more time writing a better long-form article. Mm-hmm. 9:54 And I think for me as a creator and as a writer, I am at peace with the fact that long-form takes longer time, takes more care- Right... 10:03 takes more planning, takes more thoughtfulness, takes more research perhaps, depending on the type of things that you write. But building that memory to say it's okay that a lot of this work is gonna be in private. 10:15 I'm gonna have multiple drafts that people don't see, and then I'm finally gonna hit publish, and I'm gonna have to erase my memory and go on to the next one and not care about the numbers. 10:24 I can only care about the engagement and the impact and the resonance and just continue to work on that. That for me has also just been like a complete, uh, mental exercise as well. Like, getting out of that 10:37 short form, "Oh, how do I package this in so many characters?" And really think about it's not about the characters. Mm-hmm. It's about the completeness of the story. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 10:49 You really hit on it too, and this is what I try to tell 10:53 or do talk about with a lot of artists, musicians, uh, creative people, is there, there's so much emphasis on the marketing of the work, which then is social media. 11:03 Gotta be on social media, gotta post, gotta do this, do that. And for a lot of people, they get sucked in. So it's more than an hour a day usually, if not it's two, that across multiple networks, uh, all that. 11:18 And I really stress to those creative people is that what if-- Well, just imagine if you practiced your guitar for three hours a day instead of, you know, being on social media. Again, you gotta market, you gotta... 11:32 But that three hours of practicing the guitar or writing music or writing, uh, pieces, longer pieces, 11:40 I think would then a year later compound and make you that much better at what you do and would naturally then attract the right people to what you're trying to do. 11:51 Rather than be in a rush to pull everyone into our current busy, harried world, where we're pulling our hair out, trying to make everything work all the time. Like, what if we just, like, be peaceful and calm with it? 12:06 Not worry about being forgotten and just become so freaking good and talented at what we do that, like, 12:13 a year d- literally, I mean, I started doing my weekly Zoom calls with my paid subscriber, my paid members, like, a year and a half ago. And let me say, like, when I started them, I was scared out of my mind. 12:24 Who, who am I to, like, host Zoom calls? Now I get 10, 15 people. I had s- seven, six or seven this morning at the last minute. It's amazing. But, like, 12:35 that work and not being on social media and, like, doing that kind of quiet behind the scenes thing... 'Cause if you, if... A year and a half ago, if anyone reached out to me and said, "Hey, will you speak at our event?" 12:50 No, I w- no, I'm terrif- I, I couldn't do... I know that version of Seth could not do that. And then just recently- Mm-hmm... 12:57 someone brought something up like that, that they're going to an event where they wanna be on a panel, and they were like, "You should do it, too." I'm like, "Hell yeah, let's go." 13:06 Because it's been a over a year of me not being on social media, not being on LinkedIn, not trying to appease and post, and just being, trying to be calm and cool and do what I do and, like, including those Zoom calls, which plays a part in, like, oh, a year later, like, I'm re- I'm, like, this new whatever. 13:24 I'm, like, ready for whatever, and I think that's 13:27 a big thing people miss, that, like, they think they're gonna miss out so much, all these opportunities on social media, whereas what if you just become, like, a 10X better at whatever you do without social media 13:40 a year later? Yeah. And I think that's a journey I'm excited for. And quite frank- a, a journey that I feel like I also started around the same time I started my newsletter. Mm-hmm. 13:52 So Please Help Us Responsibly, I think technically my first article was published late November 2023. Mm-hmm. 13:59 And 2024, I made my first original documentary short that no sponsors, no nonpro- like, no nobody, no physical sponsor, just me, small crew, and a subject. And we did a film festival run with that. 14:14 So trying, again, a different form of marketing, right? It's not, "Oh, we made it. We're gonna put it on YouTube." And there's nothing wrong with YouTube. I love YouTube. Me too. Hey, Stephanie. How are you? 14:24 Um, I think part of it was like how can we create a better, like, one-to-one experience for each viewer of this film before we put it online- Mm-hmm... and put it out there. 14:36 And by far, so many people walk up to me, even if they didn't or weren't unable maybe to support the crowd fund, even if they were unable to join us for our in-person and virtual film screens, two things I had never done before 2024. 14:50 So again, in your book, like, if you would've told me pre-2024 I was gonna be doing that and have 40 something people show up in person and almost 40 people show up virtually, I would've been like, "Who are these 40 people that are coming out- Yeah... 15:02 to see me [laughs] uh, and spend, you know, time with me?" 15:04 But by far the thing that we are, I am the most known for, and I'm getting a lot more recognition as a writer, as a producer, as a film director, way more than I did in four years of writing every day on social media. 15:17 [laughs] So it's also- Yeah... yeah, that project took me six months to make, and then another year basically of doing a film festival circuit. But it has paid off exponentially. Mm-hmm. 15:29 And I try to remind myself of that as I think about, "Oh, there's this... Oh, I should post this on LinkedIn." It's like, no, I shouldn't actually. I should let it cook. Let it cook. Let it cook. [laughs] Absolutely. 15:41 Let it cook. [laughs] Uh, too, like, the, all the daily grind of you working on a project like that, the people behind the scenes, you said the circuit, all the people you met, like, the, 15:57 uh, like, people are the multiplier in that. Like, the, you, you, there's so much energy I think in that face-to-face or the Zoom call whatever stuff. 16:07 That just amplifies it, and you become amplified by it too because each one of those interactions, like, the risk involved in posting on LinkedIn is minimal. If, if you post something that just doesn't hit, no one knows. 16:24 You can't... You're probably not... And people do this, but you and I, we're, we're... We've seen how people get fired on social media 'cause they do really dumb shit. You gotta go outta your way do that, you know? 16:39 But, like, other, otherwise, the, for, if, just our normal day-to-day, we're not gonna get fired for what we do on social media. We're not all that. 16:48 So there, there's just less risk where if you hop on a Zoom call with a potential, like, uh, th- that's, that's gonna help you do this, like, there's risk involved in that. Yeah. There... It could fall flat. 17:00 The vibes could be off. Like, you don't know, or you do the, the screening, you know? Okay, every, y- you, we can have people here to... Oh, no, only two people might show up. That's scary. 17:11 Who wants to put yourself in that position? But by doing that, like, you're just, like, strengthening yourself for whatever's next down the road. And whereas social media just doesn't sharpen you like that. 17:26 That is such a great point, and I hadn't thought about it like that too. Yeah. Because, yeah, today you're hosting six people on Zoom. 17:36 By the time it gets to 100, then everybody's gonna be asking, "How'd you get 100 people on Zoom?" It's 'cause I showed up for the six, and I got better. Oh, yes. 17:46 Like I said, a year and a half I was terrified doing Zoom calls and inviting people in. Not to say I'm bulletproof now. Uh, like I said, a couple Thursdays get, like, 15 peop- like, what the... Okay, here we go. 18:00 B- but yeah, I, I say that to a lot of people too in my client work of I only have X amount of subscribers. And then what are you doing for them? Oh, I need 100. I need 500. I need 1,000. 18:09 What are you doing for the 24 you have now? Like, how- Learn how to appreciate and work with and appeal to and delight 24 people on your email list today. Show up for those two people on your Zoom call today. 18:23 'Cause you don't want, you don't want, you don't wanna go from zero to 100. You don't want a perfect launch. Like, "Oh, I guess I'm doing Zoom calls now," and 100 people show up, and you're like, "Oh, what do I do?" 18:35 Yeah. 'Cause that'd be terrifying. And then you're not any good at it, not 'cause you suck, but just 'cause you didn't do it. So doing a documentary, like, 18:45 you know, the, the, you do the first one and then the second one, and it's like, they get a little better as you go. That's just the way it is. Like, you wrote a piece a year ago, and maybe this one next week is better. 18:54 I don't know. I think there's so much to be said for just, like, doing the work rather than just being really good at the marketing of the work. Oof. Yeah. 19:03 Okay, so I wanna touch on that, but I also wanna get into some of these comments here, 'cause I think you have a question. It's not letting me scroll. Okay, here it is. 19:11 Danielle says, "Do you host them," I think she's r- referring to your Zoom calls, "the same time every week?" 19:17 Yeah, I do them Mondays at 9:00 AM, Thursdays at 2:00 PM, and a couple in between, but yeah, if you go to my profile, 19:24 if you, in the app at the top, there'll be a link, and then you can go to my Substack, and then there's a thing for the schedule and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and I do co-working on Tuesdays. 19:34 I've been meaning to make the co-working. I'm just not a morning person, so please don't judge me. I moved it. It's now at 12:30 now, 12:30 PM. Oh, perfect. From 9:00 to 12:30. Perfect. Yeah. 19:44 We got a bunch of people showing up tomorrow. It's gonna be great. Yeah. It's the biggest one. Mm. Okay. Um, okay. Do you see the question from Jennifer here? I do. My fr- Yeah. 19:52 "My friend with over 40,000 on Instagram had one sign up to an event she posts." Ouch. That's rough. Yeah. "I had dozens of signups via my email list of 6,000. I left Instagram shortly after that." That'll do it. 20:04 That'll do it. That'll do it. Yes. Yes. There w- there was a great... Cody Cook Parrott just posted about, they did a workshop, I think it was last Saturday, the weekend before, a three-hour workshop. It was great. 20:18 A Zoom call with I think there were 37 people or fif- I don't know what it was, but they broke down that, like, afterwards they broke down, like, "Hey, I have this many people on my email list," and then this many people, like, actually s- and they didn't post about it on social media. 20:32 This many people on my email list, this many people signed up, and it made X amount of dollars, and it turned out to be, like, 0.5% of that big audience. But it was, like, a full class. They made money. 20:46 So, like, with just 0.5%. Yeah, to, to Jennifer's point here, you have dozens of signups via an email list of 6,000. Boom. Like, 6,000's attainable. M- much more so than 40,000 on Instagram. Get out of here. 21:04 That's tough. Yeah. I wanna touch on that percentage that you mentioned as well. So we have a couple things I wanna go back to, but I definitely wanna highlight some more comments here. 21:14 Kareem Arthur says, "Yes, trust the process. Lessons come from mistakes." [laughs] I know we've made some. Uh, looks like you got a new subscriber. Love that for you. Yay. Danielle. Ready. Stephanie Graham. 21:26 Hey, Stephanie. "I was just there this morning, but also you do the Zoom calls as a paid benefit." Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I d- uh, Tuesdays is free. Do, and I do, do, I have a free, not free trial, paid trial, whatever. 21:38 Get in touch. Whatever. Come hang out. Love to have you. I wanna start with the most recent thing you said, which is about the percentage of- Yes... 21:47 conversion and how, like, we can go to Instagram, we can go to LinkedIn, any, insert any social media platform. 21:55 If you were to put together a media kit or just a post, um, that said, "My engagement rate on this platform is 0.5%," people would laugh you out the door. They would say, "That's terrible. That's abysmal. 22:07 That's not gonna convert." But if you say 0.5% on an email list, that's a much different story. 22:14 It's a higher quality engagement point, and scale for email has a much better return on investment than scale on social media. 22:25 Um, and I think that's been something I've been learning too, is, like, how do we think about scale, right? Because scale, as we think about it right now, 22:33 is it's, like, churn and burn, not very relationship oriented at all, very superficial, numbers driven, and again, just unsustainable, right? 22:43 At some point you either have to sell out, whatever that means for you, whether that's exiting a company or selling your social media platforms because you can no longer maintain the pace that is required to keep up with that amount of subscribers and growth, 22:58 or maybe you take the slower route, like we're doing, create a little more slowly, create a little more intentionally, make spaces for more intentional relationship building, and that 0.5%, 1%, even 2% click-through rate means a whole heck of a lot more, you know? 23:16 And I think, again, I don't know if it's 'cause we're too early. 23:19 I don't know if it's because maybe nobody's really looked at it, but that's not something that's happening in the mainstream conversations around newsletters right now. Yeah, because too, so much of it is not visible. 23:32 Like, on an Instagram post you could see how many people like it. But a newsletter, like I said, like, if you're doing whatever you're doing and, like, you send a newsletter and it takes a while for that stuff to, 23:45 to show up, if at all. Like, maybe it won't. Maybe that one email does not hit. Maybe that, like, it's a Tuesday or whatever. Like, it just, like, these are real people on the other side of the screen. 23:57 But yeah, to the, to your point though, that if you... People that are on your email list are engaged to begin with. Like, they, they went... 24:06 It's a lot harder to sign up for an email list than it is to subscribe or, or to follow on Instagram. On Instagram, you just click, boom, I'm followed, I'm followed. Then- 24:16 Like, they're already enrolled, and like as you put links through stuff... That's the thing too, is like you can have that giant email list, and not everybody's gonna click the things. Like, it can be this small. 24:28 It could be that. Y- I'm, uh, y- anyone can see it on Substack right now. I have 6,500 email subscribers, and like my Thursday paid calls have 13 or 14 or 15 people. What? That number's really s- But it works. 24:43 Like, there's magic happening [laughs] in there. It's never a point of, of fi- The audience is one thing, but yes, Max, perfect timing. My people. 24:53 [laughs] Like, you're trying to find your people, and we had that conversation a couple months ago on our own Substack live. It was like finding your people in that giant group to, to whittle down, and that's... 25:08 People want to believe as they get into the, especially now in 2025, if you wanna get into the email marketing game, great. I have 6,500 subscribers. 25:15 That must mean 6,500 people wanna click the link to buy my thing, and it's just not true. There's so many varying levels of, of engaged people on that list. 25:24 And not just engaged of these people will buy, these people c- Some people are just there for a little bit and disappear, whatever. Some people will click. People have got lives. They're not 25:37 probably hanging on to every word that you write in a email newsletter. Like, I sometimes skip Seth Godin's newsletters. It happens. 25:46 I wanna call out some of these comments, and I wanna keep going on what you're talking about. Clint Collide. Hi, Clint. Yes. Hi, Clint. Yes. Clint Collide, yes. Love the rage [laughs] and growth stuff you got going on. 25:56 Thank you for saying hello. He said, "Virality isn't sustainable. Slow and steady wins the race, in my opinion." We're all about it. Michelle, hey, girl. Relationship building is way underappreciated discussed. 26:08 This is true. Oh, yeah. Clint Collide, and there is no race. None at all, bud. [laughs] There's somebody on Substack posting about how to get big on Substack right now, I guarantee you. 26:18 [laughs] Danielle says, "I never assume people read all my emails." I know people don't read all- Oh, big time... 26:25 [laughs] That's why you gotta say your thing for email after email after e- You can't just say it in one thing and expect people to know about it four emails later. [laughs] Hey, Max. How's it going? 26:35 This is dovetailing perfectly into something that you said earlier, which is if we put more effort into the making and less effort into the marketing, the things that we're making will be so much better, so that if we are marketing it, then, then at least we know we're promoting and talking about a great product that people would really enjoy. 26:54 I think something that has also just been eye-opening for me since writing the newsletter, and this is even when I was still writing on Substack, so you know, my opinion, which is not as good as what it is now, but we're not gonna go there. 27:06 I've found that with a newsletter, it's almost like we're pen pals, and so when people see me in person, they're, like, surprised that I'm in the wild. They're like, "Why are you not writing?" 27:16 But also, "I read everything you write, so [laughs] what's going on?" Yeah. "What are you writing for me next?" Yeah. 27:22 And I've also had people who can pinpoint the exact article that made them subscribe, which is really interesting, because how many people can say which post you wrote on social media that made them follow you? Oh. 27:35 Probably nobody. Right. Yeah. Probably nobody. Mm-hmm. So the impact of an article is just so different. And to me, it just, like, 27:44 coming from that writing on social media muscle that I developed, and also just as a freelance filmmaker who's heavily involved in using video for marketing, I... 27:54 Part of my mind is always on, okay, making it is great, but how do we get people to watch it or view it or in- and interact with it? Mm-hmm. 28:01 And now it's like, oh, I get to slow down and think about, how do I make this the best that it can be, so that when I do talk about it, and when someone does see it, they want more? 28:12 I can care less about having some clever post on social media, and I can care more about having a really great post that's worth clicking on, worth reading in its entirety, worth engaging with, worth sticking around for. 28:23 And that has just been, again, just, like, these slow little triggers and, and signals that I should be spending more time on long form. Yeah. 28:36 Yeah, it also gives, I think, too, when you look at it from the outside that social media world to come, but for the people that want to trickle down, or even from a Substack newsletter for their own Substack notes, is that whole going deeper. 28:50 Like, if you have your own website, like a person can go from your Substack to your website and just dive deeper into what you're doing. 28:58 And I think by writing longer form stuff, by taking our time and building more of a, a body of work, an archive of work, gives people something to latch on. 29:09 Uh, in my world, in the music world, there are so many bands, artists out there, that their websites are just copy and paste of social media. Here, here's the embed of my Instagram. 29:22 Here's the widget that shows my tour dates. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else you need. I don't know what... Like, what am I going there for? 29:31 And I was just talking to someone recently about the whole website idea, and 29:39 you spend all this time going on tour, booking the tour, going on tour, spend all that time on the road, and all the story of that, the images, the crazy tour stories, there's so many t- stories from that. 29:52 It's all scattered on all these social media platforms, that eight minutes after tour ends, they're all gone. Like, no one... 30:00 But if you have a section on your website that's, like, the tour poster, and just a running list of every date, and photos, and stories, and then the next date, and the photos, and the sto- Like, I'd read the heck... 30:14 I would probably read the heck out of that if I'm not a fan of your band or if I've never heard of you. I would probably see that and be like, "I like this. I gotta check this band out, look at what they're doing." 30:24 And so I just think- Is there an immediate payoff to doing something like that? 30:28 You know, is there an immediate payoff of me putting my stuff on my socialmediascape.club website first, first before I put it in a newsletter? No. But this stuff takes ti- this stuff can take years to develop. 30:42 There's no... Five y- give it five years. I know no one wants to think that, but give this stuff five years, a decade. Yeah. 30:56 I think, one, I'm very happy that you brought up websites because I've alluded to some of your lore earlier on, so I wanna crack open that Easter egg for everybody. Sure. 31:07 So I did a Substack Live with Daniel Hunter a little... He sent me, via Substack DMs, a YouTube video that you did that I think is a recording of a Zoom call that you did talking about websites. Okay. 31:19 And, boy, you were on fire. [laughs] You were just like- I do get excited about this stuff, yes. 31:25 [laughs] Yeah, so in the video, I don't have the link ready to share easily, but it's on his YouTube channel, and he was basically just, like, going, "Substack is great. Beehiiv, whatever you use is great. 31:39 You need to have your own home on the internet that no matter what happens, like, if forever Substack cancels or deletes all of your archive tomorrow, you have a place where you can still send people." 31:50 If people that we know, though they may love you so much because they subscribe to your newsletter, are not gonna read every one. 31:57 If they just want to, instead of digging through their inbox, trying to figure out which ones they haven't read, just wanna go to your website, read them there in a calm space, they should be able to do that. Yeah. 32:08 Talk to me a little bit more about what you feel are some essential components to websites, because both your personal and Social Media Escape Club websites are actually incredibly well-designed and very enjoyable to hang out on. 32:21 Ooh, thank you for that. My big thing about, uh, our websites now, and this is where I get a little... Yeah, there we go, Jennifer. "Beware of, uh, what you build on rented land," yes. 32:31 My big thing on websites right now, and, and this gets a little sketchy, but I'm such a big proponent of the blog format 'cause I wanna go back to 2004, 2005 when my music blog started to take off. 32:46 The blog format, like, when you go there, the first thing to do is to read that first post, so there's that first thing there, and I see so many websites today, I'm sorry if I'm stepping on any toes, but with anybody listening, whatever, but it's just, it's just, like, these blocks and then eight links at the top of I do this, I do that, here's my about, here's my contact, here's my subscribe, and it's just... 33:12 And then you scroll down, and there's, like, H1 tag for this and a, a big photo, and it's like you scr- you just scr- and, like, you still haven't consumed anything. You're just, like, taking it all in, 33:24 which I think is the value of a blog is that, or your own website is curating the experience. It is not just throwing everything into it and been like, "Oh, figure it out." Like, here's everything I do. 33:38 I ra- I, I relate it to IKEA. Like, IKEA has 10 billion items, but there's a route they want you to take, you know? The, the... It's not a gr- it's not set up like a grocery store. Yeah, there's aisle five. 33:50 I don't know what's there. So for me, a blog is, like, so gigantic because it... in all of this, it shows who you are. Like, you don't have to share everything. You don't have to go super deep on everything. 34:02 That's not how it has to work. That's not how blogging has to work or writing in general, but it's just a curation. Like, in today's blog post, yo, this is what I'm talking about. Here we are, 34:14 and, like, then the one below that is, like, this is what I was on yesterday or last week, and then you can just dig through that, and I don't know. I th- I think curation with a website is like key. 34:27 I don't think it's just about having a website. I think curation is the big part of them. You came to my website, and this is... Someone asked me, like, "Oh, why doesn't... 34:35 My website doesn't get the same engagement as, say, a LinkedIn." Well, yeah, 'cause LinkedIn is built for engagement. There's all these things to click and do and this. 34:45 Whereas your webs- most websites are just like, here's a big picture. Here's eight links. Here's the... What do you want me to engage with? 34:52 Sorry, I'm, I'm getting fired up here, but I think that it, it gets the engagement that you... I don't know. If you just put there, like, a big question with your email, 35:02 I bet people would email you, like, the people that are into what you do or, you know, this, that. So if you build it that way or, or your front page is a contact form. 35:13 Here's my thing, and then it's like, put your name, email, and a contact, and like, yeah, you'd probably get some emails from that. 35:18 Not many people put their contact page as the front page, but d- you would get emails, and I think if you put a blog as the front page, as a lot of websites used to be is, you know, you... 35:32 I think that would show a lot, and so much of this, I think, is just showing people who we are and not just what we make, and I think a blog can big time do that and be helpful in that, 35:46 and curious people that wanna know more about what you do, like, I think they could be drawn to that and then send you an email and hire you or say, "Hey, what's up? Let's get on a Zoom call." Love that. 36:00 I wanna take just a small break as we've been going for 40 minutes. I want to invite it- people who are hanging out with us, all 46 of you, thank you. 36:08 Jump in the chat if you have questions for me or Seth about LinkedIn, social media, writing, websites. We got some OG bloggers here. Danielle said she's been blogging since 2015. 36:20 [laughs] And then she says, "Ooh, I def need to share my archive and newsletter somewhere." Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Jennifer, again, she said, "Beware of what you build on rented land. 36:29 That's what made me stop posting my classes to Skillshare and start my own membership." Love that. Yeah. Owning what it is that you write, no matter who your newsletter host is, I think is important. Mm-hmm. 36:42 Yeah, whether it's- A button down or a kit or whatever. Like if, if, if that's the big thing, if the newsletter is your big thing, yeah, you gotta have a backup of that. Like, you gotta have that somewhere. 36:55 You have to have an archive of... Because again, if Substack, I started on Substack in 2021. If it goes down tomorrow, like I'm gonna lose a bunch of stuff. 37:04 Like, I haven't moved everything over to my blog yet, and that's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. Put it on your own site. I've got a question from Clint. He said, I ca- they, not sure. 37:13 I came in late, but from your POV, is there a reason to use LinkedIn anymore? So many bots. I have thoughts. You want me to take that one? [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Go for it. Go for it. Um, I would say yes and no. 37:25 I think that the value proposition for LinkedIn, at least for me, in terms of converting people from LinkedIn followers, LinkedIn connections to newsletter subscribers, the best way I've been able to do that is to jump in the DMs. 37:43 I've done it manually for a little while. I used a service called Octopus CRM, which is a little more manual. 37:50 That company made a parent product that now automates that once you segment the people that you want them to outreach, and build funnels that way. 37:59 And that, for me, has been the most relevant use case of funneling people from LinkedIn to my newsletter. So not posting, not commenting under three people every day. Just like one-to-one conversations with people. 38:15 That's it. 38:16 I think that if I was still angling my business to be majority freelance income, I would still be using LinkedIn, because the people that are likely to hire me and work for organizations are still on LinkedIn and looking for contractors, freelancers, creators in that space. 38:35 If you are solely looking to grow a following on LinkedIn because you want to be a LinkedIn creator, and you feel that growing a following on LinkedIn will inherently push people to your newsletter, I will say that is probably just simply not going to be the case anymore, and your effort will be better spent 38:55 writing better articles, curating those articles for your current audience, and learning how to market and build community off of social media. So that's, those are my thoughts on that. Yeah. 39:12 To your point, the DM part of that is, is just still so much part of the people part of it. Yeah. 39:18 If people love your work and this and that and they probably missed or didn't know that you even have a newsletter, just DM those people, and- Yeah... 39:26 obviously you can't do that 100 times a day, but, but yeah, drip by drip. Yeah. The next one, Jennifer says, "I was reminded again about renting land when I jumped into Substack. 39:37 About 10 posts in, I realized I was building a bla- a great blog that wasn't on my site, so I changed plans." Yeah, good stuff. What are you using, Jennifer? I think that'd be great to know. Are you using WordPress? 39:48 Are you using Framer, Webflow, Wix, Squarespace? What's working for you? How do you like it now since you've made that move? 39:56 Stephanie: "But then do you copy what you wrote on Kit and copy and paste it into a blog post on your website?" I think you can. Y- yeah, you, if you put it there first. Yeah. 40:07 What I do is I write on my blog first, and then it becomes what... It goes into Kit or Substack, and then I don't necessarily then have to move it. Yeah. I write on my blog first now. Okay. 40:19 Think the next one is Larry Brown. Hey, Larry. I think he's checking in from Anaheim. "I'm currently publishing on Substack and LinkedIn, but I want to start moving content over to my website. 40:30 What's the best way to start transitioning to my websites? You guys have me paranoid [laughs] about losing my content on Substack now." Don't be paranoid. Be prepared, that's all. Yeah. There you go. That's right. 40:42 Best way is I think you can export it and import it and this and that. It never worked for me, so I've been copying and pasting my old posts manually into WordPress, 40:52 which is fun though, because it allows me to make edits to it and freshen it up, uh, before I put it then on my blog post. I just do... 41:00 Again, I've, ba- dating back to 2021, so I have a bunch, but you just do a couple a day. Just set a reminder and do a couple a day, and you're good. Jennifer. I write a bl- oh. Okay. 41:12 "I write a blog now, then my Substack posts are, 'Hey, I made this blog about this cool topic with enticing pics.'" Mm-hmm. "And link over to my blog." Okay. There you go. Yeah. 41:21 Okay, so it's using your website as your social media feed of, "Hey, I wrote this thing. Go check it out." Yeah. That's interesting. Elena Lugo, "I have 24% of engagement. 41:34 I have four months doing regular posting on my newsletter. Thanks for letting me know I'm doing great. [laughs] Slow and steady." I'm glad you feel great. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, absolutely. Yep. 41:45 Emily, I'm probably gonna say the last name wrong, so I'm not gonna say it. "Personally, if I get too many newsletters, I won't read them, and I also think most people now don't read long content. 41:56 Just look at the successive notes versus subscribers. We've unfortunately evolved that way. What's your take on it?" Can I go first on this one? Please, yeah. Go ahead. Um, yeah. 42:07 I think, one, if you get too many newsletters, don't feel bad about unsubscribing to ones that you don't read and giving more space in your inbox to the ones that you do read. 42:19 Um, there's a couple ways to make your newsletter feed a little more manageable. 42:24 You can try, um, getting the RSS feeds to your newsletters and having your own feed on Feedly or something like that, where you bring in, you know, articles that way. 42:35 I've seen people make newsletter aliases with their, uh, email address, so only newsletters go to a certain email address, and that helps them curate their inbox a little bit better. I personally use Hey email. 42:47 I know there's some other options like Paste and things like that that allow you to- Flag an email as a newsletter email, and so they go into a separate inbox than your regular inbox. 42:58 So for me, that's what works, and on Saturday mornings, I scroll that feed in my Hey email and I read my emails and newsletters for that week. So that, for me, has been great. 43:08 On the perception that people don't read long-form, I think people first started honking this horn when short-form video came, and they're like, "People don't watch long-form video. They only want TikTok." 43:21 Well, let me ask you, did you watch The Last Dance on Netflix? Were you a part of the Nickelandria Love Island fandom? Are you watching anything interesting on Netflix, Hulu, any streaming platform? 43:34 Yes, because you love it, because you can sink your teeth into it, because you're getting to know the characters, because you're invested in the storyline, because you love a little petty mess. We all do, okay? 43:44 [laughs] And we're not getting it in 60 seconds on TikTok. Will there be short-form video here to stay? Absolutely. Does that take away from really incredible long-form video and written work? No. 43:57 Did podcasts die overnight? No, they never will. I think this perception that, "Oh, people aren't gonna read it," yes, they will, if you write something worth reading, if you create something worth people's attention. 44:10 And that, for a long time, felt like this pie-in-the-sky abstract concept. Well, how do we know if something is good enough for someone's attention? 44:18 And I think maybe to Seth's point, and I'm sure he'll expound, you won't. 44:23 Maybe give it five years, and then you'll know what your audience likes and what they engage with the most and what resonates heavily and what things you should maybe double down on or that are still of interest to you as your taste evolve and your career evolves as a creator. 44:36 So my biggest thing maybe is to just motivate you to not give up on long-form and understand that as of right now, Substack Notes is not curated in a way that we have decided. 44:50 The people that show up in your Substack Note feed have n- very little to do with who you follow and who Substack decides to feed you that day. 44:58 So you're still following into the trap of an algorithm that you are not curating, so- Yeah... my thoughts and two cents there. Yeah, just look... Nicole, just look at the success of Notes versus Subscribers. 45:09 You can keep your Notes. Like, I got my email list. [laughs] Like, my email list eats for... Like, I'm not... If so, yeah, sure, the... This is how social media works. 45:20 There's people on Notes that, yes, go viral, that get 1.7 thousand likes, and s- fine. Yeah, and then how many of those people say, "Yeah, and it got me three subscribers"? Like, it's... Who cares? 45:35 Sure, some of them hit it big and get 100 subscribers, sure, but the casino has to pay out, or else people stop going to the casinos. 45:43 Those people just happened to win that day, and tomorrow someone else will win, and the day after that. Like, the Notes is, is just the cas- it's, it's the food court at the mall. It's the blinking lights. It's, it... 45:57 You can't stay there. Yeah. L- long, long-form works. Yeah. Also, just going back to something I said earlier. Let's say you hit it viral on Notes, or maybe you get a couple of Notes that are getting 100 likes. 46:12 How many people are gonna run into you on the street and say, "Oh, I remember that Note you wrote"? [laughs] That's true. I can't remember anyone what I wrote today. [laughs] Like- Yeah Oh, man. Um- Right. 46:23 Jennifer said she uses WordPress. Go WordPress. That's what I use. I still don't use WordPress. I haven't been indoctrinated yet. My personal website is on Framer- Yeah... 46:32 and Framer has CMS, so I'm probably just gonna start copy and pasting stuff there. Um- Indoctrinated. So what, I'm in the cult now or something? Yes. Thank you for asking. [laughs] I've been using it since 2004. 46:43 Leave me alone. Michelle says, "Angela, that's a really interesting point, where your position and focus depends on who you would like to be paid from." Very mu- No one on Notes is paying me. Nah, 46:56 but your email subscribers are. Clint, he says, "Thank you, Angela. Smart feedback. Co-signing Larry's question." Alyssa, "Hey, girl." I think she's from Durham. Hey, Alyssa. 47:05 Also, will this recording be available somewhere? The... Yes. So Substack will allow both me and Seth to have a recording that we'll post after this. 47:14 Michelle says, "I post totally different content on my blog versus what's on Substack." What are you posting on your blog and not on Substack? 47:21 Because I know your Substack is creators getting paid, Michelle, so what's going on your blog? I'm curious. Hmm. Jennifer says she just copy and paste, and Larry says, "Okay, cool, cool, cool." A lot of long-form stans. 47:33 Michelle and Kareem- Yeah... they're all about the long-form. Yeah, yeah. [laughs] Propaganda. Propaganda about short-form. Yeah. It's a plant. It's a social media plant on here. That's so funny. 47:44 Uh, Alyssa says, "The long-form video essays are thriving on YouTube right now. I think the videos are getting longer, to be honest. It's just a different audience who prefers that style of content." 47:55 So right now, part of it, YouTube is like a chicken-and-egg game when it comes to long-form video essays. 48:01 Part of that was probably sped up by YouTube making a podcast section, because now people are using the YouTube TV app to watch long-form content, right? 48:13 So again, YouTube, yeah, they created Shorts just to compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels, but the other half of this is they're like, "Oh, no, I can put five ads in a one-hour video versus one ad in a 60-second 48:28 video. What is better for me?" The- Hmm... 48:32 [laughs] basically advertiser platform for these video creators, it's a long-form video, and they are making, to my understanding, a lot of effort to make the YouTube TV experience better and better and to mimic Netflix. 48:44 So again, part of it is because people like me, video podcasters, started posting long-form on YouTube, and the other half was YouTube saying, "Yeah, we're gonna reward those people and make it easier for their audience," so they're excited to see that. 48:58 Yep. Stephanie, right? How many times on short-form videos do you see people asking for a part two? Where's part two? [laughs] So she's saying you don't have to break up your content on long-form. 49:09 You can just make a nice long post where everybody can find what they're looking for on that topic. And you're always a student. Alyssa, she says, "The email list eats first." I love that. 49:19 [laughs] I guess you know what your next merch T-shirt should say, Steph. Um- I think so, yeah. [laughs] Um- That comes from the Grammys first. I, that's one of my... I try to say that- Yeah... quite a bit. 49:28 Larry says, "I only engage on Notes to help grow my email list." Valid. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, another T-shirt design, the casino has to pay out. [laughs] This is great. It's gonna pay out. It's gotta pay out. No, no, go. 49:41 Uh, Joshua Tomlinson. "No question, just wanna say thank you for all the information helping everyone out." You got it. We are happy to be here. Stephanie, "I'm about to be a copy and paste baddie." [laughs] Love it. 49:53 [laughs] I love that. Oh, God, lots of propaganda. This is crazy. The chat is going wild. [laughs] It is. 50:00 Michelle says, "I will record different content that specifically is designed for the website, SEO/AI search type of content, answers to things. I'm also adding parts of my creator interviews to the..." Okay. 50:12 I like that. I like that. Okay, different tactic, if you will. So. Yeah. If something happens with Substack, I'm okay. I'm glad you're okay. We want you all to be okay. That's why we're here. Yes. 50:24 Yeah, the, uh, there was a comment earlier of, oh, g- getting paranoid of Substack. 50:29 That stuff happened, and there's people that th- have accounts suspended, uh, because of spam or s- they don't even know why, and it's, it was an accident. Oops. 50:38 There's a lot of things that can just break here on Substack, which is weird. Yeah. That's kinda why, yeah, I... Basically, I started making moves and really bolstering the website stuff once I saw Lucy Warner 50:52 lose her website, uh, or all her content on her Substack and her paid subscribers. Yo, messing with my, her livelihood here. And so it was just like, I'm gonna make some moves now. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 51:05 I think too- But that's always the... But it's always, export your email list. I export it, like, every other day. I just tuck it away in a folder on my desktop just in case. Probably smart. 51:15 Danielle, I low-key wish I could, like, add you to this stream because here's the thing about Danielle. Danielle has, like, 11,000 su- like, total subscribers. I don't know how many paid she has. Yeah. 51:26 But I am curious, like, how you have been able to justify the 10% that Substack gets plus the 3% that Stripe gets- Mm-hmm... 51:34 by scale like that because at that point you might as well just pay to host it on an actual- Mm-hmm... email hosting platform that's a little more secure that would allow you to have funnels. 51:42 Because your newsletter in particular is built for funnels, right? 'Cause she writes about grants for creators. 51:50 Now, there's a lot of upsells, cross-sales, experiences that people want to have that she could even make according to what type of creator they are. I don't know about... I'm trying to start shit, Michelle. 52:00 That's why I'm here. [laughs] So, yeah. [laughs] Yeah. And if they're an art, here are the artist-curated ones. Here's your preference. You can get them once a month, once a week, whatever you like. 52:09 If you're a podcaster, here's the podcaster one. I am so locked in. It is difficult to uncouple myself right now. Babe, get uncoupled. Daniel- Divorce. Danielle, can I say this? Divorce. Can I say this? 52:20 You can export your paid members to other platforms. Memberful is one of them. Uh, Buttondown is another. I moved all my paid members over to Memberful. 52:34 Uh, I became a best seller a couple, a bit ago, and two days later I moved everything over to Memberful. So yeah, uncoupling from sub- the Substack ecosystem is scary, but- Yeah... 52:47 the people at Memberful, and I don't have... This isn't an affiliate thing, but, like, they will get on a Zoom call with you and talk you through it 'cause it's scary. They will be there. They helped me step by step. 53:00 They were in Google Sheets with me matching stuff up. Like, they just completed a little upgrade thing for me on Memberful with start dates and stuff like... Totally boring meta stuff, but they did it. Like- Yeah... 53:14 I gave them the spreadsheet, and they did it. Yes, I pay them 50 bucks a month for it. Yeah, for that. 53:19 If anything goes wrong, if anything goes sideways, I can get in touch with them like that, whereas, like, Substack, I get a, what, a AI chatbot? What? Block their number. Who said that? Who said that? 53:32 Block the AI chatbot. Who s- Heck yeah. Why do you need that? Yeah. [laughs] Absolutely, yeah. Go check out Memberful. 53:41 They'll do a, like a discovery call with you, and of course they will, 'cause they would love your $50 a month, but they are rock solid. I can manage all my members on that site. 53:50 We may need to do a part two 'cause this has been great. There we... Didn't we talk about part two back there in the chat? Oh, they're gonna do part two. Yeah. Come on. 53:59 That's funny, but we just wanna say thank you guys for hanging out with us on your lunch break on a Monday. Absolutely, yeah. We have 56 people here. My goodness. Yeah. 54:09 [laughs] She said, "I feel like my favorite hairstylist is about to move to a new hair salon, and that's fine with me." [laughs] So good. So good. Yeah. Thank you, guys. 54:17 [outro music] If you've been getting value from Honey & Hustle, I need a quick favor. Would you take 30 seconds right now to leave a review? 54:27 Reviews help other people discover the show, and honestly, they help me know what's landing with you. Whether it's this episode or one from a few months ago that stuck with you, just share what made it worth your time. 54:40 You can leave a review wherever you're listening right now, and I appreciate it in advance. See you in the next episode. [outro music]
