I'm exhausted just reading this, but you've provided some really good and helpful information here - thank you. I've been using PublishPress content calendar on my own blog - more this month than ever since I first installed it, years ago, and it's helping a lot. Now I need a submission tracker. I like your Notion view, but I think I can do this in either Access or Excel. (Excel would be easier. Access might make more sense. I don't know.)
Thanks for this educational guide, Sharon. I recently bought StoriPress for my non-Substack ventures, and it uses Kanban functionality out of the box. I hadn't considered saving spike content, though: I generally keep such content in a local folder labeled "Abandoned".
I have been publishing on Substack weekly, since Jan. 2023 and it is hard! But, once I have an idea, organization is super simple:
1. Write everything in a text file on my hard drive. The article file and the folder where it resides is named with the issue number and title. All assets for the article get dumped into the folder.
2. Copy and paste the text contents into Microsoft Word for spell-checking, grammar, etc.
3. Paste the edited file back into the text file for archival purposes. (The naked URLS are right beside the intended link text, again for future reference.)
4. Paste the edited file into Substack
5. Cut each naked URL, highlight the link text, hit Ctrl-K and paste the URL. At that point, YouTube embeds are auto-generated. Substack offers to embed their own links to other Substacks, which I may or may not do.
6. Find all image place holders and upload images.
DONE! :)
The rest is just sending a test email, resizing images and scheduling the post. I never work directly in Substack or ANY online editor, since my WordPress disaster of 2005. LOL
I'm sure there are many other options, Holly. Some also use Airtable. Interested to hear how you end up doing this, if you do.
Excellent tips! This is a masterclass!
I'm exhausted just reading this, but you've provided some really good and helpful information here - thank you. I've been using PublishPress content calendar on my own blog - more this month than ever since I first installed it, years ago, and it's helping a lot. Now I need a submission tracker. I like your Notion view, but I think I can do this in either Access or Excel. (Excel would be easier. Access might make more sense. I don't know.)
Thanks for this educational guide, Sharon. I recently bought StoriPress for my non-Substack ventures, and it uses Kanban functionality out of the box. I hadn't considered saving spike content, though: I generally keep such content in a local folder labeled "Abandoned".
I have been publishing on Substack weekly, since Jan. 2023 and it is hard! But, once I have an idea, organization is super simple:
1. Write everything in a text file on my hard drive. The article file and the folder where it resides is named with the issue number and title. All assets for the article get dumped into the folder.
2. Copy and paste the text contents into Microsoft Word for spell-checking, grammar, etc.
3. Paste the edited file back into the text file for archival purposes. (The naked URLS are right beside the intended link text, again for future reference.)
4. Paste the edited file into Substack
5. Cut each naked URL, highlight the link text, hit Ctrl-K and paste the URL. At that point, YouTube embeds are auto-generated. Substack offers to embed their own links to other Substacks, which I may or may not do.
6. Find all image place holders and upload images.
DONE! :)
The rest is just sending a test email, resizing images and scheduling the post. I never work directly in Substack or ANY online editor, since my WordPress disaster of 2005. LOL
This is so, so helpful! Thank you for talking us through your process!!