NewsWhip adds comprehensive Substack catalog to web coverage

August 30, 2023

Written by Benedict Nicholson
As of the beginning of July, NewsWhip has added all Substack subdomains to its web library, giving us complete coverage of the platform. 

Users will now be able to search Substack newsletters in NewsWhip the same way they would any web coverage, and see how that level of engagement compares to other publications around the web.

What is a Substack?

Substack is a content platform that allows creators to create newsletters and more, which they can then use the platform to monetize. While a lot of content is delivered free of charge to readers, some of it is also behind a paywall, and only able to be accessed at the various membership tiers.

Some Substacks, such as Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, predominantly feature the work of a single author, while others such as Bulwark Plus feature multiple authors regularly, though the former tends to be the more common business mode.

A number of celebrated writers moved to Substack in recent years, when the platform made a push to attract big-name stars to its network.

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How can I track Substack posts?

NewsWhip Spike’s new Substack subcategory offers an easy way to keep up to date with what’s being written about on the email platform.

Substacks in NewsWhip have all the same data available that our general web coverage does. That means you can see which articles have been engaged with the most widely across Facebook and Twitter. You can see an example of that from the last week below.

Screenshot showing top substacks in NewsWhip Spike
Some of the top Substack posts every month receive tens of thousands of engagements, and can be influential conversation starters on social media. 

The top authors can get into the hundreds of thousands of engagements every month, with the aforementioned Heather Cox Richardson a prime example of that, achieving some 118,000 engagements in the month preceding this article. 

Using this new NewsWhip feature, you can compare the influence of Substacks on social media, either directly with each other, or with the wider web at large.

If you want to learn more about monitoring Substack using NewsWhip, you can get in touch with us here

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Benedict Nicholson

Benedict is the Director of Content at NewsWhip, where he focuses on researching trends about how news spreads in the online ecosystem. Email Benedict via benedict.nicholson@newswhip.com.

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