Substack vs Medium
Why using both makes sense to grow the digital footprint of a business.
“Medium is a launchpad, Substack a destination. You build an audience on Medium, monetize it on Substack. Medium rewards virality, Substack rewards loyalty. Medium amplifies your voice, Substack gives you a microphone.” - irevuo, redditor (full response: https://tinyurl.com/yc5r9tb4)
Writers today have many platforms available to create content, and where there are writers there will always be marketers. Writing content is essential to foster both the Web3 community, as well as any other community's interest towards a product. Somewhere, there has to be a platform that allows one to lay it all out, share intellectual ideas, and get the truly great followers, the ones that actually care about the impact one’s product has. Besides this, blogs are key to a strong SEO. To this end, in Web3 we use several platforms, and the ones that writers talk about and compare the most are Medium vs Substack.
I will come straight out of the gate and tell you that I like Substack much more. First of all, it’s a newsletter. This means that if people truly like your content, they will subscribe and you will slowly build an audience which has chosen your content. The newsletter is created in a high-quality format, where it’s both hard to ignore and doesn’t go to spam. Moreover, Substack allows you to put your name into the link address for the blog. This means that you are building your brand from day one. Third, Substack has a wonderful feature where it creates a nice social media poster for any article you write. For a person that doesn’t have the ability to make designs for my articles, this is super helpful, and once again, Substack is focused on making the creation of your own brand very easy. There are ways to make money by writing in Substack. This can be done by asking subscribers to become paid subscribers, but I don’t recommend this unless you are a writer publishing short stories or have a very selective niche. What I will say is that all in all, Substack is an excellent, free tool, to create your own audience, retain it, and express intellectual ideas while building a unique online brand.
Now on to Medium. Medium doesn’t have the same quality newsletter vibe, as many times their email notifications about the new blog go to spam. I have always found, in general, that Medium emails have a spammy feel to them. Medium’s interface for writers is also not as intuitive. You have to put in more work on Medium to make it look pretty, which for a person like me, makes it much more inconvenient. It may be easier to make money on Medium, since if your articles get chosen by the Medium team, and you get enough views, claps (yes such a thing is a thing), and subscribers, you will get some money for your writings. I personally find the whole thing wholly unconvincing, as in my opinion, the articles have to actually be on very specific topics, and as someone who has marketed and written on Medium for the six years I have been in Web3, I can assure everyone, Web3 ain’t it. Having said this, many writers do say that Medium is easier to monetize than Substack.
However, I will share the main reason I use Medium. Medium is completely preferred by the Google algorithm to Substack. If I type my name into Google, virtually no Substack articles will come up. However, you will see several of my articles from Medium. Much like reddit, Medium is at the centre of the Google searches, and so for us marketers, it remains a top tool to express long-form, intellectual ideas about technology, to set-up our digital footprint, and to optimize our SEO. Creating a net to catch leads via Medium is also not a complicated process. Add a bunch of links between your various social media accounts on the bottom of the Medium articles, and this will act as a good gateway for your new audience towards your digital presence and content.
So to do the final comparison, here’s a list of pluses and minuses of both platforms, from a marketer’s perspective:
Substack has a more intuitive interface.
Substack allows one to build a brand easier as links to your page are customizable.
Substack develops marketing content for your articles for free.
Substack shares your articles with your fans, in the newsletter format. The newsletter format on Substack is of a very high quality and does not go to space.
The newsletter format also allows you to get data in the form of subscribers’ emails and so allows for easy connection to your fan base.
However, Substack is not rated highly by the Google algorithm, and so there is less chance of content going viral and being at the top of the Google search.
Medium is very highly rated by Google. Content on Medium is usually at the top of the Google search, and is almost as highly rated by the Google algorithm as content on reddit.
Medium makes it easier for writers to make money off of their content because of the paid subscription policy Medium has. If your work is selected, you will be able to get passive income from readers reading your content.
However, only some and very specific topics get selected for monetization on Medium.
Because Medium is so highly rated by Google, content has a much higher chance of either going viral. If not, at the very least it will be easy to spot and will optimize your digital presence.
My personal view point is that it’s smart to use both Medium and Substack at the same time. Medium should be used, in my opinion, for SEO and to place content at the top of a web browser search. Substack should be used as a newsletter where a company or a content creator is slowly building their brand and audience. Substack can save the costs of creating digital posters for the blogs and articles written on it, so it’s also very good for a bootstrap business. On the other hand, Medium helps with SEO, and so again, for a bootstrap this is very valuable. In the end, both are strategic growth tools that boost the growth of a business.