Dear Readers and writers,
Our chief editor Dr Mehmet Yildiz published the Chapter 17 of his best-selling book Substack Mastery for free for our community. His goal is, while educating our community, to obtain feedback from beta readers to improve the quality of this exceptional book for next versions and make it a valuable tool for our community and beyond.
As the editing and curation team of ILLUMINATION publications on Medium and Substack, we found this chapter very helpful and turned it into a short interactive podcast using Google’s NKLM tool for busy people so that they can quickly understand the value and benefits of this important and easy-to-use tool.
According to Dr Yildiz online polls on Substack might take your newsletters to another level. He posted a sample poll from his Content Strategy, Development, & Marketing Insights newsletters. If you are interested, you may participate in this poll.
As a Freelance Writer, Which Writing Platform(s) Do You Prefer?
You can listen to the podcasts via this link or clicking on the image below.
Purpose of Chapter 17 in Substack Mastery Book
In this chapter, you will explore why freelance writers should use polls, the benefits they can derive from them. He provides examples, and shares best practices to inform, educate, and inspire you to use them in your craft.
For those unfamiliar, Dr Yildiz’s definition is “an online poll is a digital survey tool used to collect opinions, feedback, or valuable data from participants over the Internet using various sites and tools. These polls typically consist of a question or series of questions with predefined answer choices, allowing users to quickly select their response.”
“Here are 8 Reasons Why Freelance Writers Might Use Online Polls
1 — Validate content: Test new ideas or angles before fully developing them into articles.
2 — Boost engagement: Polls encourage interaction, making readers feel involved in the content creation and marketing processes.
3 — Gather feedback: Understand your audience’s preferences and tailor your content accordingly.
4 — Build community: Create a sense of belonging as readers share their opinions and see the responses of others.
5 — Increase Open Rates: Using polls in your newsletters can pique curiosity, encouraging more readers to open up and engage with your content.
6 — Inspire New Content Ideas: Discover topics your audience is eager to learn about and use them to guide your content calendar.
7 — Enhance Personalization: Ask readers about their specific interests or challenges, which allows you to customize content for different segments of your audience.
8 — Drive Subscription Growth: Use polls to understand what motivates your readers to subscribe and what additional content they value.”
Here is a Summary of 7 Best Practices for Using Polls to Get Optimal Outcomes
“1 — Design Clear Questions: Create concise, easy-to-understand poll questions that encourage thoughtful responses.
2 — Determine Optimal Frequency: Conduct polls every few weeks or months, depending on your content schedule and audience engagement. Too many polls might bore readers.
3 — Analyze and Act on Results: Analyze poll results to gain insights, inform your content strategy, and document them in your stories as references.
4 — Engage with Poll Respondents: Follow up on poll results by acknowledging reader input in your next newsletter or article, creating an engaging dialogue.
5 — Promote Poll Participation: Encourage readers to participate by highlighting the importance of their opinions and how they shape your content in the introduction section of your polls.
6 — Share Results: Transparently share poll results with your audience to cultivate a sense of community and encourage future participation.
7 — Test Timing: Experiment with the timing of your polls (e.g., after a specific article or at the end of a month) to find when your audience is most responsive. Unlike LinkedIn, the substack allows unlimited time for your polls.”
He published the book chapter for free on his website and also on Medium for his followers. You can access to all his chapters from the following links. He provided the free version link at the top of each story. If you are not a member of Medium, you can read the chapters from his website for free.
Preface of “Substack Mastery” for Beta Readers, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17
We will do the same for previous chapters soon and share them on our newsletters here. Thank you for reading, providing feedback to improve this book, and also subscribing to our newsletters.
Our senior editor Britni Pepper summarized the first three chapters and the 4, 5, 6 in similar audio format in two different posts we link below. We believe these summaries will speed up your learning and save you time. Our goal is to make your journey easier and more enjoyable with editorial and curation support.
The Substack Mastery Podcast: Hello!
The Substack Mastery Podcast: Diving Deeper
Aiden MC , our editor/content curator, a YouTuber and our media coordinator will also convert them to YouTube videos on our new channnel Substack Mastery.
Subcribe to Our YouTube Channel
We curated many great newsletters from our community members and will share them in another post soon. For those who missed, here is the latest episode of our curated newsletters.
Substack Mastery Featured Newsletters: Episode 12
For Medium, writers, we are now updating submission guidelines of our 15 publications to align with our new strategic direction. Here are the links of updated guidelines so far:
New Submission Guidelines for ILLUMINATION, Curated Newsletters, SYNERGY, and Technology Hits.
For those interested in our 3-Tier Service Model, please check out this bulletin posted by the ILLUMINATION team and authored by Dr Mike Broadly our sponsor and lead founding member.
The Strategic Move: ILLUMINATION Community’s Commercial Arm for Charitable Success
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