Want to use Substack to Market your Second Blog? Don't.
Why trying to use Substack as a marketing funnel for Ghost is a flow chart with no flow.
This will be a short post, but it might save you some time.
As usual, it starts with another "big idea" I had. I have a Substack blog and also a blog on Ghost.
I thought, maybe I should try using Substack as a marketing channel for my Ghost blog. With Ghost, you have to build the audience yourself. And any outbound links in Facebook and LinkedIn are throttled. So I sometimes wonder, why write there, if it's all confined to the compound.
My big idea was to have a wee version of that blog on Substack, with teasers and linking to the main post - a classic "read in browser" model. Then I could also use Substack notes to promote it.
A whole weekend gone on this stupid idea. Someone at Substack is ten steps ahead of me.
There was the issue of people signing up for both this new Substack and the Ghost site, and possibly getting duplicate posts. I thought, I won't take subscribers own Substack - but there's no way to switch that off.
And the main thing - in Notes, you have your name tied to one blog. So if someone reads your note and thinks, I'll check their writing out, the link will take them to your main Substack, which might be about a totally different subject.
The workflow is just bad. A flow chart with no flow.
Which is why search is still so important, if you have an independent publication. Here is a guide to SEO for Writers I wrote - with a section on GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation). That is, how to start the compounding machine for your blog posts on search.