Substack and PR: how to use the subscription platform to enhance your PR

Here at Words + Pixels, it’s our job to stay up to date with all of the latest PR trends, and one thing that we’re watching closely is the rise in popularity of Substack. 

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What is Substack?

Substack calls itself a ‘world-class reading, watching and listening experience’ but it’s better known as a newsletter network offering subscriptions to writers and creators. Substack is free to publish on and (importantly for creators) ensures that all work remains owned by the publishers themselves. Once writers have grown an audience of subscribers, there is the option to monetise the content - not by ads - but by charging a paid subscription model to their subscribers.

Guardian speculated in 2021 that “popular writers make vast sums from the platform, with its top 10 publishers bringing in $7m (£5.1m) per year between them”. With traffic to the site growing in large volumes (January 2024 saw 49 million unique visitors, up 41% since August 2023) it’s vital to note this shift in audience attention from conventional publishers to this platform.

The London Spy are an interesting example of this and one to bookmark for London-centric activations. Edited by Guardian journalist Alex Clark, the London news mag launched in summer last year. From their 5000 subscribers, 230 instantly signed up to the paid option when it launched in May 2024. 

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What does this mean for PR?

Freelance journalists, podcasters, vloggers and influencers are heading to the platform partly for an additional income stream, but also due to frustrations with click-bait journalism and promotion on traditional social media platforms. Content creators, in particular, have long complained about the constant yo-yoing of social media algorithms which affects the visibility of their content, especially on Instagram.

Instead, Substack offers a simple solution: a direct line of communication with your audience.

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What should I do about it?

We'd recommend using Substack to create a new media list. Firstly, identify which Substack writers are relevant to your brand, review the sort of content they are posting, and evaluate if there is a natural fit for your brand. Once you've identified the writers, we'd suggest carefully tailoring your pitches based on what they’re talking about to their subscribers.

A secondary use of Substack is to use it as a sleuthing tool - or, better put, a tool to better understand the journalists you're pitching to. Remember how following a journalist on Twitter was a shoe-horn back in the early 2010s to understand what they were working on? Now it’s time to shift your focus over to the disruptive subscriber platform Substack. You never know, you might unlock an opportunity to understand your target media list by engaging in their subscription content.

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