Substack Course for Creative People 04

What you will learn in video 04 is:
  • How to write and post your own newsletter on Substack
  • Trying out the editing controls in the editor (headings, block quote, etc.)
  • How to add an image into your newsletter – very important!
  • How to embed a video into your newsletter
  • How to create a link inside the newsletter
  • How to make an image a link
  • How to add buttons to your post
  • How to publish the finished post
  • How to decide who will get your post
  • Who can comment on your post
  • How to customize your email (newsletter) preview
  • How to schedule when your newsletter will be sent
  • How to edit an archived newsletter that is already on Substack

 

TRANSCRIPTION OF SUBSTACK VIDEO 04:

The next thing I want to show you is how to write and publish your own post on your newsletter. Go over to dashboard. Click on [New Post].

The first thing to do is enter a title.

Next, there’s a few controls here that you can use when it comes to your post. And I’m going to give you some examples of each one, just by typing out a little test post here.

“I’ve been interested in Bigfoot since I was a young boy. Over the years my fascination has it grown into an obsession. I remember a famous quote, by someone, I can’t remember quite who. But they said Bigfoot is a frame of mind.”

Hello and welcome to Bigfoot Country. So I can make this a heading.  And I can make that a heading 3, if I want to. So a smaller one right here where I say I remember a famous quote by someone I can’t remember who, but they said big was the first one, I can take that and make that quote.

Then I can also add an image. I can copy (and paste) an image or I can upload an image. Very intuitive.  I can change the size of the image if I want to.

And if I want to reference (add) a video, I can easily come over to YouTube or whatever and get the URL for the video.  And I will enter that URL.. When I enter that URL, it will enter it as a simple video right there embedded on the page.

Another thing I can do is I can highlight text.

And I can click on my link button and I can link out to another newsletter post that I published, I can link out to another article somewhere else, I can link out to anything that I want to. It can be an affiliate link; it could be anything.

Also you can link your images as well. Just click on the image and click this little link button. And you can enter in whatever URL you want. And then hit OK. When you do that, if people click on your image, they will go to the URL that you have listed.

Another cool thing you can do is you can add buttons to your posts. So what you want to do is put the cursor where you want the button, come over here and you have a list of buttons that you can add here if you want to. They’re already pre done, which is great. You can also leave a comment, share The Truth about Bigfoot. The Truth About Bigfoot is the name of this newsletter. And then obviously enter your link. Very simple, right? Pretty awesome.

So once you have your post the way you like it, then you click [Publish]. This is going to take you to a publish page. On this page you can edit a few different options for the post that you just created.

Number one, you can decide whether this post is going to be for everyone or only for paying subscribers, if you have that turned on.

The next thing you can decide if you want comments to be allowed from everyone or from no one or just from paying subscribers. If that option has been turned on, you will see that option right there.

Next, you’ll be able to customize your social preview. This is the little bit of the posts that everyone will be able to see whether they’re a paying subscriber or just a free subscriber. This is just that little bit that they’ll be able to see before they really get into the article. You can edit that, you can also edit the image.

The next thing, decide is if you want to send this to your entire email list. Or you can unclick that and make it just on the (Substack) website. You can just publish it on Substack without actually sending an email out to everyone.

And then finally, you can click on schedule for later, if you don’t want this post to go out right now. But you want it to go out at a separate time, you can schedule it for whatever time you want. Pretty awesome. We’re going to cancel that scheduling option; we’re going to go ahead and send to everyone now. And boom, boom, boom, there is. So now you can see that my post has been published on Substack.

If I had any email subscribers to this newsletter, this post would also have been sent out to all of them because I had that particular box checked that keep in mind, I can edit this at any time on Substack. However, if I sent this newsletter out to my email list, obviously I couldn’t edit that. It would have went out to all of them and they would have already received the post that I sent out to them all. But I can edit this on the Substack (platform) at any time. And that is how you publish a post on Substack.

Note: If you want to know how to save a draft and finish it later, contact me (Elaine) and I’ll send you the instructions. They are very easy.