When and how to kickstart your publication chat!

Firstly, I want to say that these approaches are backed by my work steering a legal & privacy community, Openli, spanning Europe and US, the book Tribes, by Seth Godin, and my personal experience with Me Time. This info is built on professional experience not guessing.

Secondly, for the newbies, here is where you turn your chat on from and the settings to know.

These are the Chat Settings:

The first control turns on the chat.

The second makes it accessible only to paid subscribers (that’s what the celebrities do- mere mortals… dunno… you can also try if it makes sense)

Enable media attachments is a must, so people can share pics, and videos and things can be animated.

Now the strategic part. WHO can start new threads?

Remember, this advice is not a one size fits all. Go to the gurus for that kind of certainty.

Here are some things to consider:

1. If you do not have paid subscriptions on, it makes no sense to limit new threads to paid subscribers…. or founding. Keep it either open to everyone of just publication contributors- so you and if you have a team.

2. If you have paid subscriptions on it is a really smart idea to also limit new threads to paying subscribers BUT big caveat… you should do that when you chat is active or you make sure you regularly start threads for everyone so it feels valuable to be here.

3. Should you limit the threads to just founding…. I have not thought of many cases where this would be a good thing unless your regular membership is so so affordable, and founding is a bit higher but not that much higher…. or where your Founding perk is to start threads (you need to be pretty huge for that) This is my opinion. Thinking about it in general- because what we want is a bubbling thriving fun place.

Now for my top Chat TIPS:

Many gurus say you should not turn on the chat until you reach 1000 subscribers… so what 3 years after starting your publication? See these “recipies” lack nuance! They are not fit for everyone.

I challenge you to think a bit differently.

Are your 100-200-300 subscribers engaged? Are they devouring your content or asking you questions on DM? Do you wish you had a place where you could share more without it going on email?

Well that’s exactly questions to get you thinking of opening your chat “early”.

• For no reason, cause it’s there

• If you have an imported list and most users are not on substack (recipe for crickets)

• You have no idea what you want to do with your chat

• You don’t like chatting or another place for messages to you to die a slow death.

  

  By the way… I am holding a Me Time roundtable on the topic of getting the chat started where I will answer questions specifically about your chat. Because context matters and this article can only take us so far. Join live- THIS WILL NOT BE RECORDED. (3 tickets left- DM me for waitlist of to open a ticket for you if you really want in)

  Roundtable info

Seth Godin, the father of email marketing, and marketing via communities… wrote a book called Tribes. I highly recommend you read it. There he explains that you are the leader of your tribe. And as a leader you have a few “jobs” . The main one is to define the identity of your tribe .

How to do that? Just fill in these sentences:

People like us do …

People like us don’t …

See upcoming Roundtables

What binds people and creates a common identity is shared experiences. This is where the magic happens and this kind of magic can be made on the chat with a little bit of work.

Try some things, see what your tribe likes… or what they ask for. One of the best chat I have seen was one for a drawing challenge where the chat is where you shared the results of the challenge. And trust me, it built quite a fomo for the ones not participating.

Some examples:

• the classic notes or post boost

• collab threads

• share your weekend in one pic

• ask me anything

• write here if you found something changed in the Substack settings…

• post here video you think is AI let the group decide

• thread- example of a real life challenge working with ADHD and how you dealt with it.

These RECURRING THREAD TYPES need to be related to your niche, your publication…

I will dig deeper on traditions and ritual examples on the roundtables, but this is where you need to use your imagination and keep in the back of your mind.

What would be radically helpful or delightful?

Now you need to subscribe and join the chat to see what I do… and how I do it…

but I think it is pretty cool.

Me Time’s subscribers already know what’s coming. But… I am a big fan of visual prompts so when your subscribers see them, they know what to do.

And for Premium Me Time Subscribers this is your August Perk:

My Chat Templates you can steal

That’s it for today. These are my tips. If you want to talk about your chat and how to get it really started.

check out events

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