Where should I post my blog? LinkedIn or Substack?

I often get the question, “where should I post my blog?” With so many different platforms popping up over the last decade, including Substack, Medium, and a personal website, many people get confused. To add to the complication, legacy social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter have added features to attract more blog writing. Finding the answer to this question is pretty simple, but first, you will have to answer some questions about your particular strategy.

Write Blogs for Anchor Content

Long-form blogs are just as important today as they were a few decades ago when they quickly rose to prominence. The only difference is, now, a blog alone can’t build a large audience, but it does serve as a foundation to your content strategy. I often refer to blogs as anchor content. Anchor content is an asset that is rich in information that can be used to create other social media assets. It is the piece of content you want your target audience reading with anticipation that you can direct them to an action (e.g. visit website, book a call, DM). Some other examples of anchor content include research papers, podcast interviews, and newsletters. Ideally, this asset will have many different bits of information you can repurpose into ancillary content.

Deciding on an SEO Strategy

A search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is perplexing to many. Most people understand what it is at a high level, but not much else. Almost everyone wants an SEO strategy—who wouldn’t want to be first on the Google search results? However, when people hear how much time, effort, and resources go into it, they turn their attention elsewhere.

Deciding if you should implement one is simple:

1. Does your target audience/potential customers predominantly come through Google search?
2. Do you have a lot of time to write and understand keyword strategy, or significant resources to have someone else do it for you?
3. Do you have at least six months to wait for results?

If you answered NO to any of these questions, you should not focus on a comprehensive SEO strategy.

If YES to SEO strategy

I like Substack. They are at forefront of the alternative media landscape. Over the years, many prominent journalists, thinkers, and entrepreneurs have landed on Substack. However, if we’re simply asking the question for B2B leaders, should I post on LinkedIn or Substack—you should only post on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has a much better domain authority that helps with SEO and on the other hand, Substack does not offer canonical URLs, which is a type of URL that helps search engines find and organize information better. Substack not creating these URLs makes it hard for search engines to find your content, thus impeding SEO success.

If NO to SEO Strategy

If SEO isn’t a priority, and you’re not worried about cannibalizing your own keywords with two of the same blogs – you should post your blog on both platforms.

Posting on both platforms gets the best of both worlds. With Substack, a lot of their traffic comes strictly from the Substack ecosystem. And with quality content, that community will quickly start following and engaging with you. With LinkedIn you get the benefits of adding more content to the other posts you publish, which leads to more escape velocity and growth. However, if you post a Substack link on LinkedIn, its reach won’t be anywhere near the performance of a native LinkedIn blog. Because the platform wants the user to remain on the platform for as long as possible, the algorithm will prioritize its native content. Not only are you gaining blog readership, but you're adding followers and likely landing on non-follower newsfeeds.

Substack Posting

Substack is an excellent platform. However, there are fewer use-cases that demand a Substack-only approach. They include very niche or technical writing such as engineering, finance, or science-based blogs. On LinkedIn, these blogs would do fine, but on a platform that’s becoming more like X/Instagram than the other direction, it would be too dense or technical for a more general audience. Also, if you want to monetize your content, Substack is the place to focus.

Conclusion

Smaller startups and firms like VC or M&A firms don’t have the time and resources to employ multiple content strategies. Understanding your audience and goals is key to determining where you post, and in most cases, you should blog on LinkedIn.