Five For Friday (One Day Late), November 23rd: Substack, Mediated Media, OMG Ozempic, Okay Zoomer, Personal

Next week, 18 family members will be seated at our dining table and two folding tables for Thanksgiving dinner. The menu is on a google doc with people adding their contributions to the list. We still need someone to make the stuffing. Steve is making cranberry sauce right now using his great-grandmother’s recipe. It makes a giant mess, but it’s totally worth it.

I didn’t have a chance to publish my Five For Friday list yesterday, so it’s happening today instead.

Substack Success

I’m enjoying reading how super successful substackers describe their formulas for success. Writing two or three times a week is essential, says Nate Silver. 

Max Read says: “What most successful Substacks offer to subscribers is less a series of discrete and self-supporting pieces of writing–or, for that matter, a specific and tightly delimited subject or concept–and more a particular attitude or perspective, a set of passions and interests, and even an ongoing process of “thinking through,” to which subscribers are invited.”

While not a heavy-hitter myself, I have been doing this blogging/newsletter stuff for a long time. 

I know what works: 

• 90 percent predictable/10 percent random. People want to be surprised now and then. So, throw in a post about Prince Harry or your passion for airplanes. People like your crazy shit, too. 
• Mainstream respectability. If you’re a professor, a published author in a mainstream press, or the director of a think tank, people will take you more seriously. Tout your credentials.
• Write fast. Write well. 
• Know your shit. 
• Grab people with a headline and a lede. Most people won’t get past that. 
• Promote all the time. Every single post. I actually keep a log of everything that I produce with a column for social media distribution and cross fertilization. 
• Link to your friends, and they’ll link to you.

Read more at Apt. 11D, the newsletter