As funny as it is to say, I recognized a while ago that I’m an old school new media marketer.
I love blogs and websites. I like long form content and photographs. I like CRM systems and automatic marketing that gives people what they ask for with timing and personalization that can turn spam into a thoughtful present.
That said, a good marketer has to go where their audience is. Attention is all you need. Brandon Stanton built Humans of New York by recognizing the power of Facebook in 2010. If you did dance videos, Tik Tok could turn you into Charli D’Amelio. Murad Osmann (@muradosmann) built his “Follow Me To” series on Instagram.
Even if you are not looking for a celebrity lottery win, it is good to put your work where people will see it. So to get the Pan America 1954 Boston to Rio story in front of people, I’m going to publish on Substack.
Panamerica 1954
https://panamerica1954.substac
Substack is an incredible story and the growth there is amazing right now. They are reporting over 2 million paid subscriptions, doubling from 1 million since November 2021. The overall subscription base is 20 million which makes it a significant and growing media platform. The number of high-profile writers publishing there is incredible, and it has a old-school approach coming from basically a reboot of listservers back in the day.
Will Substack go through an arc like Tumblr or Flickr? More than likely. At ICP, when we figured out how to get back into our Flickr account, we learned that nearly 10,000 images were slated to be deleted. I give them credit, they waited until we got back in before letting us know, but it reminds you that platforms are not permanent.
Substack also allows cross-publishing on your own blog and comes from a place of email newsletters which I find somehow retro. Like listserv 3.0 with a subscription system and payment gateway. Looking forward to learning more.
Regardless, it is important to publish because you like it. Who knows? With all of the political writing, maybe people need a break to learn about a crazy car trip in the 1950s.
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