Podcast recap: Substack, blogging and writing online
Snippets from my guest appearance on the Alternative Stories podcast
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This week, I was very honoured to be a guest on the Alternative Stories literary podcast—all off the back of this Substack blog! Host Chris Gregory and I chatted in depth about blogging/newsletter writing (has anyone worked out what to officially call this yet??), lifestyle journalism, poetry, and the ever-changing world of writing online.
The full episode is available to stream on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. But - given that half of what we discussed focuses specifically on the
platform - I also thought I’d pop a few of my favourite excerpts here, too.Huge thanks to Chris for being such a welcoming host. And an even bigger thank you to you - my readers and subscribers - for giving SILT the support you do. It honestly makes my heart swell.
Love,
Alanna 🫶
Chris: Did you get into blogging because you're a frustrated journalist? Or do you find that your blogs give you a freedom that more conventional journalism might not?
Alanna: I think it's both, really. I have experience as a lifestyle journalist - I've written for Cosmopolitan, Metro and Stylist - and in the last couple of years, it's become noticeably more difficult. You can spend a lot of time writing up these pitches and coming up with the idea, but even if you've got a relationship with the publication, often they don't get picked up. And when they do, you don’t get paid very much for the effort. So there's that element.
But also, as you say, blogging allows you to be more opinionated and less neutral. You are the brand behind the blog, so you have complete free reign over what you say. And I think that can actually make for more interesting journalism.
C: How much does your expected number of reads play into your decision-making process about what to blog about?
A: It's funny, I've been doing this for a while now and I still can't ever guess which ones are going to get a lot of attention and which ones are going to get less. But, when you give up on the idea that every blog has to be more popular than the last, it actually becomes quite a good data exercise!
There's also a fine line between choosing a topic that's going viral and then a topic I think people will find interesting. I only publish once a week, so something that's going viral on Monday might be such old news by Sunday that people are just done with it. And that is one of the things you notice on these kinds of platforms: people do write about the same subjects over and over again. Even though I think that's natural, I try not to be that ninth or tenth person talking about a subject. So sometimes I just have to wave goodbye to something that I would otherwise have spoken about.
C: You aren’t afraid to put your feelings on the line in your blogs. How do you go about pitching a piece like that, in terms of the tone, how much you share and what you withhold?
A: Well, it is actually quite difficult. I have a graveyard of personal topics that I scrap halfway through because, as I write them, I'm suddenly like: I don't know if I want the whole world to know about this. Women's stories - usually traumatic ones - do the best. And it's because we want to read them, but I think it can be a bit sticky because you don't always want to be baring your soul in order to get clicks.
But on the other hand, I'm happy to talk about things like body image because that's not a solo experience. That’s when it becomes rewarding rather than just vulnerability—when it's not just you shouting about your insecurities into the void, but someone’s actually like, “Oh my god, this made me so happy.”
C: We talked about your Sunday morning blog publications. Do you have any thoughts on the regularity of blogging? You've gone down this weekly route. Is there something about that regularity that you think maybe boosts your audience?
A: I think if you start to treat your blog like a publication, people start to see it that way. If you have a structure - a day that you release a piece - you begin to get more loyal subscribers. And they also, as you've kindly said, start to look forward to your work.
C: Do you think that, as a blogger, you should have some sort of house style or set of topics you often discuss?
A: My main source of income is still in copywriting. That's what I do as my day job, so it's completely ingrained in me to follow rules. I follow both grammatical rules and stylistic rules, then I also adhere to a topic niche. But I think that’s almost as much to help me as it is to help other people—because that's just the way my brain works. There's this trend on Substack at the moment which is all about writing in lowercase and I can't bring myself to do it because the copywriter in me starts to itch!
Then, with topics, if you’re too all over the place, your audience doesn't know what to expect. Unless you're a celebrity, people need to know what they are subscribing to. They don't just want to hear me talk because it's me—they want me to be writing about the kind of things that made them subscribe in the first place.
C: Let's assume some of our listeners might have had their interest piqued by this discussion and want to start their own blog. Can you give us a few do's and don'ts please, Alanna?
A: I would say this as a writer, but don't plagiarise or use AI. More and more people are realising you can cheat the system by either copying someone or using chat GPT to write an article and then paywalling it. But, at the end of the day, the most rewarding thing about writing - or being creative in general - is the reward of getting better at your craft. Similarly, a lot of people are now using AI to come up with imagery for their blogs, and it's such a turn off. It's not getting me excited to read your work because I'm already getting the AI ick.
Similarly, don’t get too caught up in growth hacks. These blogging sites can end up being a bit like LinkedIn, where everyone's obsessed with growth and making money and “here's how to do it really, really fast.” But the only real way to grow is just to produce great work. The time you can spend trying to hack the system into getting subscribers is just time you could put into writing about something that you love.
In this internet era that we're living through, there are also loads of buzzwords and online slang that we use day to day. But if that kind of terminology is going to date the tone of your voice really quickly, I'd leave them out. Just so that, as far as you can, you're not looking back at the blogs you wrote two years ago and completely cringing because you used vernacular that is now really out of date, or even offensive.
But the main piece of advice I'd give to anyone who wants to start a blog is to write about what truly interests you. Don't look at what someone else has done - even if it's done really well - and think that that's exactly what you need to be doing. Because the reason it will have done so well is because that person genuinely cares about the subject. If you write from the heart, your audience will find you.
To read more of my work, follow me on Instagram @alannaduffield.