Algorithms Are Silencing Great Writers

Why Substack isn't working very well!

I have absolutely loved my foray into the world of Substack. So much about the site is wonderful and I feel blessed by the opportunity to publish my daily articles. I love the editor, the email templates, the many layout options and of course the subscription model. It is a truly innovative platform. However, there seems to be an issue, and I’m not fully convinced it’s my writing. The problem is getting exposure in the Substack community.

I’m not a fan of Notes, especially. There can be a little buzz writing a note and an even bigger buzz if it appears to get noticed, but what writers on Substack really want is the articles they labour over to be read. I’m not denying Notes can help a little to gain exposure on here, but the compulsion to post note after note with the hope of getting a response is laborious and doesn’t seem to work very well. I follow some amazing writers on here, and it frustrates me greatly that they post so many thoughtful and well written articles which are met with silence. And with such a huge community! It’s not right.

I think there must be things Substack could do to improve the discoverability of publications from writers who are less active in the Instagram-esque Notes feed. We don’t want a treadmill where everyone has to post fifteen notes a day to have any chance of getting their work discovered. That’s just messy and noisy.

One writer had a helpful suggestion, which is that what we need is a feed similar to Notes that shows people’s articles, or at least excerpts from them. I appreciate the search bar on the homepage, which does seem to include all publications in the results, and I see no reason not to keep this. But we need more ways in which writers without a following can get noticed.

This is a problem that is deeper than just Substack. I have been a WordPress blogger for around fifteen years, and in recent years my articles have seemed to get less and less exposure and less interactions. It seems that now it’s only occasionally someone will stumble upon my blog through search and subscribe, despite my 400+ articles that used to garner quite a lot of attention.

Perhaps the search engines aren’t working like they used to. I’m quite sure algorithms have changed in a way that has made things worse. I came off social media a couple of years ago because my posts on Instagram and Facebook were simply not reaching my friends and contacts, so it had become like posting into a void. I really don’t want Substack to be that way.

Please keep reaching out to the Substack support team insisting that we need new ways for lesser-known writers to be discovered. This feeling is not just coming from me, I know that for certain. I only hope it’s not too late for Substack to make some major changes to the functionality of the site, so that it serves all of its users and not just those who currently enjoy popularity.