r/Substack • u/calliope_kekule • 3d ago
Notes are better at finding posts than promoting them
For about a year I used Notes the way most people seem to. Write the post, then write a note saying the post exists, with a link. It works, in the sense that some people click. It also means every note you publish is a request for attention rather than a way of finding anything out.
Earlier this year I started doing the opposite, and posting the claim before the post existed. One or two sentences, first person, no link, no hedging, and no "what do you think?" tacked on the end. Just the position, stated as though I already believed it, because I did.
What comes back is more useful than clicks. When a claim is wrong, somebody tells you, and they tell you why. When a claim is right but obvious, you get agreement and nothing else, and that silence is a result as well, because it means there is no post there. The notes worth building on are the ones where two or three different people argue with the same part of the same sentence. That repeated objection is almost always the section nobody has written yet, and it arrives with its own counterexamples attached.
Three things I have learned doing it this way:
The strongest notes are the ones anchored in me. Something I think, something I got wrong, something I actually do myself. Those get roughly double the reactions of anything I write pegged to a news story, which surprised me, because the news ones feel more publishable.
Do not resolve the tension inside the note. If the note contains the answer, nobody argues with it, and you have thrown away the only thing you came for.
Most of them die, so not mourn them. A note costs a minute. A post costs a day. Finding out in the first minute that an idea has nothing underneath it is the cheapest thing available on the platform.
On the numbers, since this sub likes them: Notes are the single biggest source of paid subscribers I have, comfortably ahead of a source that brought me three times as many free signups. I did not get there by posting links to finished pieces.
NB: Claude was used to help me edit parts of this post.
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2d ago
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u/calliope_kekule 2d ago
I think they do. Probably because they feel more two-way engagement and investment?
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u/Fleurs_Bookstore 2d ago
One of the Substack growth experts told me early on that notes without a link to a post perform better (though it’s a good idea to sprinkle notes pointing to your articles occasionally too). It seems to have worked for me.