Your 5 best posts on Substack are your welcome mats. Let's get them ready.
Use your SubSight data to find them, then spend some time this week inviting new readers to stay.
Your best posts are your best welcome mats.
Every post you publish on Substack has two lives.
The first is relatively short. It lands in the inboxes of subscribers who already chose to hear from you. They know who you are. They likely opened your email because it was from you. This is a good thing.
The second life of a post is longer and quieter. Over time, certain pieces of writing get shared, surfaced and found more than others — and the people who find your work this way are, effectively, strangers. They arrive completely fresh to your work, your writing and life, and then they are deciding in the first few lines whether you’re worth their inbox.
Most of us write for the first life of a post and never tend the second.
But your most-read posts are the ones living that second life hardest. Engagement is part of what helps Substack surface your work to the readers most likely to want it — so your top posts are the ones meeting the most strangers. This is why I find it’s helpful to think of them as the welcome mats of your publication. They’re what people are likely going to wipe their feet on before deciding to come in (aka subscribe to you).
This is where your SubSight data can help you because you don’t need to polish and improve every post — but it’s worth some time this week to identify which posts are already doing the quiet work of inviting readers in. And giving them a more intentional welcome.
Here’s how I’d recommend doing that this week.
First, open SubSight and look at your Post Performance Insights. It’ll look something like this:
That data helps us narrow things down quickly. Your top 5 posts are already calculated based on the last 90 days of interaction in your publication.
This week, let’s edit the five posts identified in your own SubSight data, adding in more specific, inspiring or creative calls to action (CTAs) to subscribe or upgrade.
Here are a few places inside the posts where you might add in some “welcome mat” CTAs:
At the top — this is where a stranger needs the most help, because they have the least context. Write a line or two on who you are and what they’ve walked into, then include a way to subscribe.
In the middle — a quieter nudge, placed right after the part that lands hardest.
At the bottom — your clearest ask, because they finished, and they’re warm.
The suggestions I’ve described above shouldn’t be used as a template you drop onto your top five posts. (There are endless options and ideas for how, when and where to place a CTA!)
The real question I want you sitting with for your Substack publication is this:
When someone meets my work for the first time, how do I want to welcome them in?
Writing a CTA that answers that question — warmly, in your own voice — is its own craft. So today I’m opening a chat thread for paid subscribers to work through it together.
Paid subscribers: Come think out loud with us. The thread’s open all week to share what you’re noticing in your top five posts, your questions and your first drafts. I’d love to see your relationship-building thinking in motion.
Not subscribed yet? Here’s your welcome mat.