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I ignored Substack Notes for the first three months I was on the platform. It felt like Twitter had moved into my newsletter dashboard and I did not want anything to do with it. Then I watched my subscriber count sit flat for weeks and decided I had nothing to lose by trying something different. I started using Notes consistently for 30 days. My subscriber growth that month was higher than the previous three months combined.
Notes is the feature I underestimated the most. I cover it in full alongside the rest of Substack’s growth tools in my ebook Substack 101: A No-Fluff Guide to Building and Growing a Paid Newsletter at ballenpublishing.com for $27. Here is my Notes routine.
What Substack Notes Actually Is
Notes is Substack’s social feed. Short-form content, reposts, and comments from writers and readers. The critical difference between Notes and every other social platform is the audience. On Instagram or Twitter you are competing for attention in a feed full of content from every corner of the internet. On Notes, Substack’s algorithm surfaces your content specifically to people who already subscribe to newsletters in adjacent topics.
When I post a Note, the people most likely to see it are people who already read long-form newsletters and have demonstrated they are willing to subscribe to writers they trust. That is a fundamentally different audience than a cold social media feed, and it converts into newsletter subscribers at a much higher rate.
My Daily Notes Routine
I post one Note per day. Short and specific. A quick observation about something I am working on, thinking about, or noticing in my business or in the topics I cover. The Notes that get the most traction are never the ones I spent time on. They are the ones I wrote in two minutes because something clicked and I wanted to capture it while the thought was sharp.
Notes that perform well say something specific rather than general. They reveal how I actually think, not just what I know. They either confirm something the reader suspects or challenge something they assumed. The best Notes make people want to respond, and that response triggers Substack’s algorithm to show the Note to more people.
Restacking Other Writers
When I restack a Note from another writer in a complementary niche, my name and newsletter appear in their followers’ feeds alongside their content. Readers who follow that writer see my restack and some click through to my newsletter. I restack selectively — only things I genuinely think my audience would find valuable — because sharing generic content for the sake of reciprocity sends a mixed signal about what my newsletter is about. When it is genuine, the reciprocity tends to come back around in organic ways that help both newsletters grow.
Using Notes to Drive Article Traffic
When I publish a new article, I write a Note that teases the core idea without giving it all away. The Note surfaces the article to followers who might not have opened the email yet and introduces it to new readers in adjacent feeds who have never encountered my newsletter. The Note reaches casual browsers. The article reaches people who committed to reading something substantial. Both matter. Notes keeps casual readers engaged between issues, and those readers are often the ones who eventually convert to paid subscribers after being in my world long enough to trust me.
What Changed After I Made Notes a Habit
Daily Notes created a feedback loop my newsletter alone could not provide. I started learning which ideas resonated before I wrote full articles about them. A Note that generated 20 responses was almost always an article worth pursuing. A Note that landed silently told me the angle needed more work. Notes also brought me into contact with other Substack writers I would not have found otherwise, which led to recommendations and collaborations that grew both of our lists. The network effect inside Substack is real, and Notes is how it operates.
The Full Growth System
Notes is one part of the Substack growth system. The full picture includes recommendations from other writers, Substack Live, video, podcasts, pricing strategy, and the paywall decisions that convert free readers into paid subscribers. All of it is in my ebook Substack 101: A No-Fluff Guide to Building and Growing a Paid Newsletter, which covers 16 chapters, a 30-day launch plan, and a full tools list. It is $27 at ballenpublishing.com. If Notes convinced you there is more to Substack than sending a weekly email, the ebook shows you the rest of the platform.
