How to Win Subscribers & Influence Influencers

the only post you need to lead you to success

I walk in the well-heeled footsteps of motivational giants. My profoundest gratitude to Dale Carnegie, for this post could not have been plagiarized without his 1939 How to Win Friends and Influence People. That said, I suspect Adolph Hitler was familiar with the book too since he had a knack for influencing people. If that’s true, Carnegie may be indirectly responsible for the death of 70-85 million people in the 1940s, not to mention all the numerous coups, bombings, and wars since then that have been righteously excused as manly Churchillian preemptions against the Second Coming of Hitler, that beloved paper tiger of jingoists. Thanks a lot, Dale.

This is Dale

But enough chatter over politics. Today, we are mid 1900s businessmen. So let’s pop open the briefcase, dispatch the secretary to the coffee machine with a cheerful smack on the rump, and get to the task of winning subscribers and influencing influencers.

PART ONE - Fundamental Techniques in Handling Potential Subscribers

PRINCIPLE 1: Don’t criticize, condemn or complain

If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive. Criticism is futile. Instead make people feel important. Let’s pretend you are commenting on a poem. Here are some examples of comments you should make (and remember, you need not read their poetry, because who on Substack has time for reading?):

• Forget Emily Dickinson, YOU are the thing with feathers!

• Eat your red wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams!

• Rage rage against the dying of your influence, Dylan Thomas!

The only exception to this rule is if it involves politics, in which case you should attack in the most partisan, demagogic, character-assassinating manner possible. Feeding into our basest impulses and avoiding nuance guarantees success in political writing.

PRINCIPLE 2: Give honest and (in)sincere appreciation.

Everyone wants to be special, and no one more than a writer. These are people who spend their lives alone making hieroglyphics in the faint hope that someone, somewhere, long after they’re dead, will hang out with them. Moving, but sad. Sadder even than those brow-beaten slave morality Christians caricatured by Nietzsche who labor under the illusion that by turning the other cheek and taking it up the arse they’ll secure paradise. So be a good soul and extend to your fellow Substackers a carrot-stick.

How do you do it? For starters, did you Like at least 100 posts today? You don’t need to read them, so lack of time is no excuse. Observe: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ See, I just created 25 love packages in under five seconds. All one needs to then do is ship them off, which takes more time, but not that much more. You can easily do this on 25 random Substack posts during the commercial break of your Amazon Prime Video viewing of Saltburn instead of reflecting upon that grave scene that you can’t unwatch:

So now, rather than curse Jeff Bezos for slamming you with ads despite your paying $139/year for Amazon Prime, you can turn a viewing inconvenience into an opportunity. This is what business leaders call The Alchemy of Turning Turds into Gold.

Over time, people will realize you offer false flattery, but this time they won’t mind because every heart, every comment, and every restack is another number in that noble quest to be like those desirable oversubscribed blue-check Substack elite who are lauded for churning out banality. As H.L. Mencken put it, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”

Employ this strategy to your advantage in the comments of your own posts. Anytime someone comments, shoot back Thank you! No thought is required. Just pump the numbers. Thank you, Madeline! Thank you, Cornelius! Thank you, Gretchen! Thank you, Pritchard! Heap praise on everyone. Ask questions to elicit engagement with your commentors. Add forced humor when appropriate, ideally humor relevant to writers. All this will bump your comment stats. For example:

Reader: Thank you for this

You: Thank you! How are you today?

Reader: Great, thanks

You: It’s so great that you’re great. Knock knock

Reader: Excuse me?

You: Knock knock!

Reader: Um, who’s there?

You: To

Reader: To who?

You: Actually, it’s To whom 🥸🤣🤣🤣 How about you? Know any jokes?

High drama indeed. To sum up, make every post a circle jerk of appreciation. You will find many writers on Substack who employ this strategy with great success. Don’t be shy, don’t overthink it, just smile and stroke away. Because, remember, Substack is about COMMUNITY.

PRINCIPLE 3: Arouse in the other person an eager want

Successful fishermen know that while they may like strawberries and cream, fish prefer worms. To lure in more subscribers, give others exactly what they want.

In some areas, you can be shrewd and cultivate stock phrases to then carpet bomb with Pavlovian effect. Examples include Slava Ukrani! for Democrats and America Israel First for Republicans (this one works for most Democrats too, unless you are the President, in which case it risks you losing an election). You can even use emojis, like 🚀💥👩‍👧‍👦🪦💃💃💃 to cheer on the latest weapons package Congress has pushed through.

For efficient high-volume commenting, consider limiting your comments to acronyms and letters like BLM for social justice warriors and Q for conspiracy-wresting freedom fighters. A few well-placed letters can do a lot of work for you IMO.

Two final tips

1. Remember, the goal is to fertilize Substack with your seed. Go sow your oats, young man! Wait, are there any young men on Substack?

   

   Reading Festival, UK, where young men apparently are crazy about reading

2. Be that Substacker who knocks on every window and says “hiiii, it’s ME!!” and then moves on to the next one. There are so many windows out there. Someone, somewhere, sometime is bound to remember you.

Again, Reading Festival. Your future fans

The second half of this post – How to Influence Influencers – will be published once I have successfully influenced an influencer. Until then, go win some subscribers, you brilliant groundbreaking writer you!