ENGAGE: Iceberg It!

When your subject deserves more words but common sense says it is getting too long

Reader Iceberg

Emails should be concise, succinct, pithy ... SHORT! Or so says a lot of writing gurus. (I like to write short so I tend to agree ... however, sometimes a subject has nooks and crannies that readers want to explore further.) 

What to do when you start seeing that warning message that the email is going too long and may get cut off?

Substack has a solution. I’m not sure their solution was designed to fit this problem, but it’s here and available, so let’s use it.

What’s all of this iceberg stuff?

Many years ago, I started thinking about creating an “iceberg book” where the visible part would be the main channel of the book and all the optional side trails would be branching off below the water. Basically like a website but starting with a printed opening. Since paper isn’t a good hot link media, the idea never jumped the technology gap. (I am so open to someone enlightening me.)

However, email would be a perfect starting place for an iceberg with the primary thread telling the story or outlining the information and offering links to the deeper material.

There is a significant difference, though: rather than just linking to an outside article, you could have an interlinked group of related web posts. Substack allows you to publish a post just to your home page without going through email. Those posts can be accessed through hot links.

Here’s an example: I recently posted a Substack Workbook focused on the ENTER phase of the Reader Engagement Model and based on 14 web posts. Putting all of those posts into one HUGE post (for free subscribers) would have been about 14,000 words. The actual post is an ICEBERG … readers can skim the top or dip into the articles below the surface as desired.

Here’s a link to that post which was emailed earlier this week to all readers as an ICEBERG … or index. Click here: ENTER: Index of Posts

To create a web post … simply UNCLICK this box just before you publish your post. Your post will show up on your home page but will not be emailed to your readers.

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Here’s another article of interest for writers of long articles … click here:

How to make a Table of Contents in Substack

A short guide to sections, anchor links, and improving navigation

And that article prompted a comment offering “an easier way to make a TOC” (love this community!) Click here:

a quicker way to make a table of contents in substack

sharing a little script that makes it faster to make a table of contents