MackCollier.com

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Blogging Isn’t Dead, it’s Morphed Into Substack

I started blogging officially in September of 2005. I launched my own blog for the first time in March of 2006.  This blog launched in June of 2009.

One of the things that blogging for that long affords me is the ability to know what blogging was like before Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

It was a different world. And in many ways, it was a better online world.

In 2024, if you want to catch up with your favorite content creator, you can likely find them on Facebook, X, Instagram, maybe even LinkedIn or YouTube. The point is, you have multiple options for engaging with them.

If you wanted to catch up with your favorite content creator in 2006, you had one option: Their blog.

Whereas social media is centralized today on massive platforms, it was decentralized then on blogs. Most people had a blog, and most people only created and published content on their blogs.

It meant we all blogged, and we all read blogs. That created a scenario where it was very easy to build community around your blog’s readers, and most of us did that.  We have a community of people that read our blogs, and we also participated in the communities on other blogs. Everyone engaged with each other via comments and it would even spill over to emails.

But the rise of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter changed all that. Conversations moved off our blogs, and onto social media.

Case in point: In 2011, this blog received 3008 comments.  That’s almost 10 comments every day.

Last year?  40 comments.  For the entire year.

As we all moved to social media sites, we moved off our blogs.

For the last few years I’ve heard that blogging is dead.  The precipitous drop in traffic and engagement on most blogs makes it easy to see why people say this.

But a few months ago, I decided to join Substack. Substack is interesting, it’s kinda like a mishmash of newsletters and social media.

At its core, Substack is a place for you to write a newsletter. But where it differs is that Substack has a robust social layer over its publishing function. You can publish a newsletter on Substack but Substack members can then engage with your newsletter, even if they aren’t subscribed to it.  Substack writers can then promote their newsletter to Substack users, which drives even more engagement.

Recently, Substack even added a Notes functionality, which allows you to post short (or long) messages independently of your newsletter. Similar to a Facebook update or a tweet.

I’ve started calling Substack ‘social blogging’. It’s not just a newsletter, and it’s more than just social media.

And for now, at least, the community on Substack is absolutely amazing. You don’t see the endless self-promotion on Substack that you do on other social media sites.  You see people sharing what they are learning honestly, you see people openly talking about their failures. You see people supporting each other.

You see a real sense of community.  It very much reminds me of the early days of blogging, before we all left our blogs and went to social media. It’s why I titled these post that blogging isn’t dead, it’s morphed into Substack.

Please check out Substack if you haven’t already. I really do love it there, and that’s where you can find me these days. I’ve all but abandoned Facebook and Twitter, and only spend a bit of time on LinkedIn.  At least 90% of my time on social media is spent on Substack.

Come see why.  Follow me by clicking here.

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The Backstage Pass is Moving to Substack

A bit of housekeeping: I am moving The Backstage Pass newsletter from Mailchimp to Substack.  Effective next week. If you haven’t yet subbed to The Backstage Pass, please do so over on Substack.

Why the change?  Substack has two key advantages over Mailchimp for me:

1 – I can add more social elements. I’ve growth and nurtured The Backstage Pass for over 10 years now. One of the nagging problems I’ve had with the newsletter is the lack of interaction I can have with subscribers. Unless a subscriber reaches out to me directly or vice versa, I have no clue if the content I am creating is resonating with them. Other than looking at Clicks or Open Rates and guessing.

But with Substack, I can add social elements. We can have chats for each newsletter issue, discussions about each topic. It’s so much easier to connect directly with subscribers. Now, they do need to be on Substack in order to connect with me on Substack, but the signup process is as pain-free as it is on any other social channel. Please follow me here if you join Substack.

2 – Substack has monetization options built right in. As a result, I will soon be offering a premium version of The Backstage Pass, which will have more ‘premium’ content. This will also allow me to devote even more time to the newsletter, which is something that I’ve always wanted to do. But prior, it was hard to justify spending more time on a stream that isn’t producing revenue. Substack will help me solve that problem.

 

So if you haven’t already subbed, please do so.  As for Substack itself, I have to say, I am really enjoying the experience there. There’s a strong community vibe, it feels like early days excitement there before all the ‘influencers’, marketers and gurus find it.  I’m sure that’s coming, but for now it feels super cozy. In fact, it really feels like what I think a lot of us wanted to see blogging become: A way for us to connect and support our favorite writers and content creators.