I often find myself freezing in front of my schedule. And while frozen, I think. It’s not that I lack a plan, or the talent to fulfil it. It’s more that I get lost in the pre-production of it all. I keep endlessly researching and get obsessed with finding a better way of packaging something, or some key information that might make everything come together much better. Right now, I am sitting down in front of my laptop, knowing what I need to write, having it outlined, and my brain bursting with ideas. But I am not writing, I am wondering something else. You see, dear reader, I am trying to make it as a writer, so I have a blog. And dear reader, nothing is more disheartening than being a nobody with a blog in this day and age.

No one wants to read. Like, no one wants to read books, magazines or even Instagram captions, let alone random blog posts. Correction, almost no one wants to read, there is a small portion of the population that wants, and they are writers. Since the beginning of the internet, writers have found a way of digitally calming their insatiable need to show their pieces. The fear of shouting to the empty abyss was gone, for online forums were invented. And nothing would ever be the same. Now, when typing into the world wide web, you can do it anywhere.

So here I am, sitting down, thinking about how to optimise my posts, instead of writing. This thing of wanting to optimise the marketing of a product without even having said product, this thing of extensively researching all the possibilities to make sure that we have covered our bases. In my case, I have a blog and a Substack, thinking about how I should connect them because no one will be ‘interested’ in my blog, I am not interested in the SEO and my Substack posts are getting good reach. And yes, I do hate that I have learnt all this marketing lingo against my will. Regardless, I will try to give some insights after my obviously useless research, not in vain do they call me the hero of insights.

The pros for Substack are that you can do paid subscriptions, have other writers recommend your work, be plugged into the Substack network, etc. You can still link to whatever professional website in your profile and in email footers. What’s nice about a blog is that the reader is already there and can explore other possible services.

I don’t want to charge (not yet, hello imposter syndrome!), and I don’t offer any other services apart from proudly showing off my inner world.

For some, Substack replaced social media writing, Patreon and/or their general monthly newsletter (in platforms like Mail Chimp).

I don’t think this is my case either.

Apparently, duplicate articles on your website and Substack can hurt the SEO. Reddit is unclear about this. They do talk about canonicals, and I did some research and is absolutely beyond my comprehension. Although when having more than a copy of a piece, Google might favour one of them over the other, depending on domain authority (which I don’t even know what it is) and traffic.

And since I don’t actually care about any of this because I just want to write and be red, I shall duplicate blog posts and link my personal blog at the bottom of each of my Substack posts. Because covenience is king on the internet. Someone on Reddit said it beautifully.

Bottom line: artists without marketing teams shouldn’t think too much about how to optimise anything, and we should, perhaps, just write more.