Why Smart Community Builders are Ditching Facebook for Substack & Skool

Starting in April of 2024, Facebook started to do something that I saw as the beginning of the end for really having effective communities. You may ask, what was that? It was stopping the use of 3rd party live streaming into groups directly. This created technical challenges for people who weren't tech savvy, as they could no longer just go live and engage with their groups like they used to. Then in February of this year, Facebook took the live video challenge a step further, they limited live storage to 30 days and then your live video would be deleted. For me, this was the final straw in whatever value Facebook may have had as a creator or community builder, so I started looking for other options.

Substack roles out live video

As I started to do my research, I came across a couple of things. My friend

Ross Brand

had started to livestream his podcast on Substack and then I found out you could livestream in the Substack app and ask others who were on Substack to join you. Back in March, I found out from my friend

James Hicks

that you could now use 3rd Party streaming software like Ecamm , StreamYard , Zoom , and others to go live on the platform. Here is the livestream and article I did on Substack showing this.:

Going Live with Substack with 3rd Party Streaming Software

For me, this was huge, as Substack not only was great for already sharing written content with your own Publication, but now allowed you to add audio, recorded video, pictures, and now live video to your content. The added bonus, anyone that subscribed to you were given their email address and could now email them your new content.

The cost for all of this, FREE. In addtion, Substack allows you to create both free and paid subscriber tiers, allowing you to choose to gate your content as well as monetize if that is your goal.

Substack is a new category design as shared by

Christopher Lochhead

, Direct to Creator. Now you can intereact directly with your community through the app or browser depending on your preference.

Facebook always made this difficult, and doesn't really give you a good way to share your new content will all your Facebook Community members.

Skool Provides the Educational Backbone

As much as Substack gives you some great community-building and content creation sharing options, it still doesn't give you a group setting that allows you to do some of the next steps in community, like courses, forums, etc. That is where Skool comes into play.

I was introduced to the power of Skool by

Madalyn Sklar

with her Social Media & AI Shorcuts Community

I quickly learned that Skool had introduced a $9 a month option that gives you all the benefits or their higher plan, minus a custom domain, which to me at the moment isn't that important. What has excited me more is that Skool as well, is upgrading the ability to bring video into the mix, with not only the ability to upload native video, but very soon, the ability to livestream in your Skool community as well.

If you are a community builder, why wouldn't you want to make the investment into Substack and Skool to truly tighten your network and help others shine.

Both Substack and Skool continue to impress me, and even if you say you are on rented land, I do get the email list that allows me to move my community if that were to become the case down the road.

LinkedIn has still not figure out the dynamics of making groups useful, and at this point as an entreprenuer, I don't have time to wait on them.

Do you have a Subtack? Connect with me on mine

Jim's Writing and Video Journey

We also created one for Dealcasters Live

which you can subscribe to here:

Dealcasters on Substack

How are you building community as things continue to change and evolve in the digital space?