I know, I know. This does not sound like the most exciting video I’ve ever made.
But hear me out — there’s something quietly clever going on with how the internet is starting to make a new kind of sense. After years of platforms becoming ever more isolated, to the point where simply posting a link to another site can get your posts silently suppressed on Twitter or LinkedIn, over here in the world of newsletters the opposite is taking place.
I use Substack for this newsletter, and they’ve been doing some joined-up thinking when it comes to multiple platforms. On the one hand, Substack itself is becoming increasingly diverse in its capabilities: you can write text articles, obviously. But you can also publish video, audio and livestreams. It handles long form essays as well as short form notes. You can embed links to other places without being punished: Substack’s designers understand that being a place to discover other things (especially things which are not on Substack) is what gives it value as a platform. This is a lesson that Twitter learned and then forgot.
There’s a flipside, though. Substack doesn’t care about your work only being on Substack. The reality is that no matter how much they add video features, they’re not going to get to a YouTube-scale audience, and YouTube already has wide support across devices including televisions. While you can listen to audio in the Substack app, people already have their preferred podcast apps.
Not a problem. When you publish using Substack’s tools, you can automatically distribute that material to YouTube and podcast libraries, as appropriate.
This video, for example, will also be available on my YouTube channel. The voiceover audio from my usual weekly posts also goes out on Spotify, Apple podcasts and YouTube podcasts. Readers, viewers and listeners don’t have to use the Substack app. They can use their favourite apps and encounter my work without having to learn something new. I can go to where those people already are, and I don’t have to do anything extra — after the initial setup, Substack does it all automatically when I hit ‘publish’.
As such, I can concentrate on making the best article (or video, or chapter, etc) and publish via my newsletter. Almost for free, I then get new stuff showing up on YouTube and in podcast libraries. We can all have a DIY mini-media empire without having to jump through lots of flaming hoops.
It’s very empowering, and something of a quiet game-changer. That’s what today’s video is all about. I hope it’s useful!
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