A quick note before we start: The whole article is free to read, and so is the video. But at the very end, our paid members will find a Hero Post Template to easily create their own hero post in no time.
If you're showing up on Substack consistently and your subscriber growth still isn't matching the effort you're putting in, this piece is for you.
One simple post on your publication can do more sales work than every other post combined, and for most creators, the platform is picking that post by default.
Your publication page is doing conversion work whether you know it or not
Let’s quickly imagine the journey of a reader who isn’t subscribed to your publication yet: Someone finds you through a Note, a collaboration, or a comment on someone else’s content. They like what they see, so they click on your publication.
They aren’t subscribed yet, and they don’t know what you write about. They don’t know if you’re the person they want to spend their attention on. They’re standing at your front door, trying to decide whether to step in or leave.
What they see first on your publication page within those few seconds basically does the heavy-lifting of turning them from a stranger to a subscriber.
And usually, they check out the top section of your homepage - the prime real estate on your publication:
Featuring your latest post at the top is a missed opportunity
Now look at what’s actually in that spot in your publication right now.
By default, Substack puts your most recent post at the top of your homepage. For most creators, that’s what a new reader sees first.
But your most recent post isn’t necessarily your best work.
It isn’t necessarily representative of what you actually do.
It isn’t necessarily applicable to where a new reader is in their journey.
The odds it happens to be the perfect one-post introduction to your entire publication are close to zero. And leaving that spot to chance means leaving subscribers on the table.
What a hero post is, and what it has to do
A hero post fixes this. It’s one post pinned to the top of your homepage, designed to convert readers. Its job isn’t to be your latest or your smartest piece.
Its job is to turn a stranger into a subscriber.
When someone lands on your publication for the first time, a hero post has to answer four questions in the first few seconds:
What is this publication about?
Who is it for?
Who is behind it?
Why should I subscribe?
That’s a different assignment from a regular post. A regular post assumes some familiarity. A hero post assumes a first-time encounter.
The ingredients that show up in hero posts that actually convert
Every hero post that answers those four questions looks different, because every publication is different. But the ones we see converting the highest share a handful of ingredients.
The strongest opens don’t drop the reader into content the way a regular post would.
Instead, they welcome the new reader, so it’s obvious the post was built for them. That’s followed by a specific tagline in the first few lines.
Not “welcome to my newsletter,” but one clear sentence stating who the publication is for, what they’ll get, and what makes it different.
A new reader should be able to answer is this for me by the end of the second line, or the tagline isn’t sharp enough yet.
Then a personal photo, and a short intro to who you are.
New readers subscribe to people, not to publications. A photo and a few sentences about how you got here build trust faster than any paragraph of content ever will. A short video or audio version of you talking to the reader makes it even stronger.
From there, the hero post gets specific. It names the topics or pillars the publication covers, two to four of them, so the reader can find the thread they care about.
It links to your best posts, not your newest ones, because you’re curating the first hour of a new reader’s experience and you should send them somewhere they’ll enjoy.
And it carries two or three subscribe buttons placed at natural breaks through the post: A reader who’s sold at the halfway point shouldn’t have to scroll to the end to find the ask.
One extra move worth stealing: State what the publication is not about. A reader who realizes it isn’t for them moves on, which saves both of you time. A reader who realizes it’s exactly for them subscribes harder.
Two other things creators get wrong
Two patterns are worth flagging, because we see them cost creators consistently:
The first is the title. Don’t call your hero post Start Here or Welcome. Both sound like a placeholder. A new reader scrolling past sees the title, learns nothing, and clicks something else instead. Give it a title that makes a specific promise. Something like “Want to navigate an uncertain economy where the old rules no longer apply? Start here.” is doing the work of pulling the right reader in. “Welcome” is doing nothing.
The second is the About page overlap. A common hesitation is: My hero post is going to sound like my About page, and I’ll look repetitive.
But you aren’t repeating yourself, because your reader hasn’t been paying that much attention to you. You’ve lived with your work for years. They’ve been on your page for less than a minute. The About page and the hero post are two different entry points into the same publication, and a lot of readers will only ever see one. Say the same core things in both, and know that saying them twice is closer to the right number than you think.
If you’re not sure what to write, write it anyway
There’s one more objection we hear from creators putting this off, and it’s simpler than the first two: I don’t know exactly what my publication is yet, so I can’t write a hero post.
But writing the hero post might actually lead to more clarity because it forces you to sit down and answer, in plain language, what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for.
If you already run a business or a coaching practice, that clarity is worth more to your revenue than any single “growth hack.”
And don’t forget that you can always go back and edit or replace your hero post. Your publication will evolve, and the post will evolve with it. Doing the exercise now with the information you actually have is worth infinitely more than waiting for a future version of you who has it all figured out.
Your homepage is a conversion asset, not a scrapbook
The hero post is one lever, and it’s the biggest one, but it isn’t the only one.
A dynamic call-to-action on your publication. A featured section of your two or three biggest subtopics, so a new reader instantly finds the thread they care about. A layout that has one clear primary choice, not six competing headlines fighting for the same click.
Every one of these is doing the same job as the hero post: Making it obvious to a new reader that they’re in the right place, and easy for them to subscribe when they realize it.
Most creators spend all their energy chasing new readers to their publication and almost none on what those readers see when they arrive. The math on that is bad. You worked hard to get them there, so give them a reason to stay.
If you already run a business or a coaching practice, and you’d rather not spend the next year figuring Substack out through trial and error, that’s exactly what we built the Substack Accelerator for. It’s direct coaching from the Write • Build • Scale team, applied to your specific publication, built around one outcome: Becoming a Substack Bestseller and building real income on top of it.
It’s application-based, because we only take on people we’re confident we can get to Bestseller status in 12 months. If that sounds like you, apply here: substackcoaching.com
For Our Premium Members Only: The Hero Post Template
The information above is useless if you don’t actually sit down and create your hero post.
That’s why we created a comprehensive template to make it easy for you to take instant action:
Listen to this episode with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Write • Build • Scale to listen to this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
