A Substack Notes Reality Check: When 1 Note Brings in 20,000 Subscribers
It's not going to last
*Your personal Notes-writing-session PDF is below for you to keep!
Did you hear about the woman who got 20,000 subscribers from one Note?
Subscribers. Not followers.
All because her Note went viral.
Below I tell you the story of that viral Note, plus the difference between Substack and Notes and subscribers vs. followers, the evolution of Notes, the viral nature of ‘The New Notes.’
I also give you a writing guide for Notes, opening lines techniques—including three types of effective hooks—and a step-by-step process for writing genuine Notes that can serve to strengthen your writing.
Enjoy!
Understanding the Basics
Let’s pause for a quick Substack/Notes, subscribers/followers breakdown.
Substack vs Notes: The River Analogy
Your Substack is your home with all your content and your subscribers, i.e., your email list.
Imagine Notes is a river down the road from your home. When you restack or write a fresh Note, it goes into the river of Notes with all the other Substackers’ Notes. You can do this or not. Totally optional.
Subscribers vs Followers: What’s the Difference?
You may have followers who see your Notes, but they don’t subscribe to you. But all your subscribers—if they hang out in the river of Notes—see your Notes because they’re automatically following you. (If you have 2000 subscribers and 3000 followers, you actually have 3000 people in your orbit, not 5000—2000 subscribers who are also your followers and 1000 extra people following you on Notes who don’t subscribe to your Substack.)
If you stay in your house and never go to the river of Notes, only your subscribers will see your posts and growth will be much, much slower.
And before we go on, let me say that I love Substack with all my heart. It’s still the best place on the internet.
Now, back to the story of the woman who got 20,000 subscribers (not followers, subscribers) from one Note…
It made me slightly envious, worried, and a little sad.
Envious because I’ve never gone viral and every once in a while I forget about all the people I’ve known who’ve gone viral and been minorly or majorly traumatized (lowercase ‘t’) by the experience. Envy is a perfectly normal response from a human who is evolutionarily designed to believe we have to fight our competitors for food and survival. For a moment, I also forgot that I’ve been on Substack long enough to see that there’s plenty—plenty—to go around.
Worried because it was another sign that Notes and the platform were changing—really changing—and fast.
The Evolution of Notes
Notes: The Early Days
Notes launched in mid-April 2023 and was mostly idyllic though not sustainable or necessarily ideal. It was only Substack writers. I used to refer to it as an office party without the boss present. We shared each other’s posts and our own in a way that really was sharing, not promoting or begging for subscribers. It was, Hey, check out what I just wrote, not I wrote this, look at me, subscribe to me, validate me. No one was on there selling cheap Subhacky tricks because those people were still on LinkedIn or Twitter or Medium or wherever selling cheap tricks and hacks and hadn’t heard of Substack yet. There was occasional unpleasantness but mostly it was a haven for real connection and community—full of people who’d left other social media platforms because they were tired of the culture of let me tell you more about me and vicious bickering. And going viral meant getting a hundred or a couple hundred likes—at the most.
(There is an earlier Notes era—the beta version of Notes, c. fall/winter 2022/2023, which I was lucky enough to take part in. Let me tell you, that was a blast but more exploratory and not really relevant to what we’re talking about here.)
October 2024: The Seismic Shift
Then suddenly (it seemed), in October 2024, Notes lost its uniqueness. It now has all the me!-me!-me! of Facebook and performative check-me-out of Instagram whereas before it was about our Substacks and getting to share not ourselves but our hard work. Notes also suddenly had all the combativeness of Twitter—complete with trolls—perhaps due to the election but maybe not.
Some Notes started to go legit viral with thousands of likes. The ones that did go viral were straight off social media: let me tell you about me, check me out, or contentious.
The New Reality of Viral Growth
There’s nothing wrong with this and in some ways, it’s what those of us writing on Substack should want. The old Notes would never have attracted people who weren’t on Substack because it was too different, too insular, too much about the people who were making this platform what it was.
Because Notes now looks more like every other platform, more people will come to it for that reason. Ostensibly, that could help us build our Substacks.
Which brings us back to the story of the woman who got 20,000 subscribers (again, not followers, subscribers) from one Note…
The Woman Who Got 20,000 Subscribers from One Note
The woman who got 20,000 subscribers from one Note made me sad because it seemed like Substack had gone off the rails. Before, the way to succeed on Substack was to plod along producing quality post after quality post with integrity. You’d hope to be featured by the platform (!), get a nice boost in subscribers, and feel like we were doing our jobs really well because there was a standard to uphold.
Now, it seemed we’d have to pander to some inane algorithm, which, although Substack says the algorithm is always changing, was behaving a lot like a teenage boy who’d had way too much Red Bull spiked with vodka.
That kind of viral growth went against the very ethos of Substack.
But here’s the thing: The woman who got 20,000 subscribers from one Note, Julie Fratantoni, PhD, is a neuroscientist writing about brain health. (Yes, I think said out loud, At least she’s a neuroscientist.) And her Substack is wonderful.
Her Note wasn’t anything special. Just her introducing herself and her wonderful Substack Better Brain. That’s it. No pandering. No disingenuousness.
I felt relieved.
But then I heard of a woman who got 2500 subscribers off one Note. That’s fine except she was brand new and had only one post on her Substack. (One!) This made me think that maybe, when people see Subscribe, they think they’re subscribing much the way we do on YouTube, not actually agreeing to receive emails.
What These Stories Tell Us
Ultimately, we have to make the New Notes work for us. And if you’re new to Substack, I encourage you to make the New Notes work for you from the get-go. That means not getting sucked in too much, using it strategically (which we’ll continue to talk about in SW@W), and absolutely not taking it too seriously when you do go viral or when you don’t.
Many of the widely shared Notes do seem to be authentic moments from people’s real lives that make others feel less alone.
How to Go Viral and Be Genuine and (perhaps) Become a Better Writer
Basically, what I did is take classic how-to-go-viral on Notes and social media advice and turned that advice into a creative writing exercise and process that will be valuable to you beyond just trying to go viral.
The social media “hot tip” and step-by-step Notes writing session below ↓ was going to be for paid members to SW@W, but I’m sharing them with all 23,000+ of us.
The SW@W community is full of the most genuine, good-hearted, wildly talented writers and creators, and I want us all to start seeing Notes as an opportunity to play.
If you prefer this in PDF form, here you go!
Notes as a Genre
We can use Notes to strengthen our writing. Someone who engages with Notes this way—not to strengthen her writing because she’s an amazing writer but as a creative endeavor—is Laurie Stone.
Think of Notes as a genre, and you are simply writing in that genre. As with any genre, there are conventions. Here are some.
Your opening is everything
You have 7 seconds—or less—to stop someone from scrolling past your Note. The first line does 90 percent of the work.
3 Types of opening lines that work
The Raw Confession
‘I just fired my biggest client.’
‘This morning, I cried in my car for an hour.’
‘My marriage failed. I never told anyone why.’
Variation: The Time Hook
‘20 minutes ago, I made a decision.’
‘8 years ago, I graduated with $200,000 in debt.’
The numeral matters. As a grammarian and stylist, it drives me to distraction but no spelling out numbers in social-media/the New Notes land.
*None of these are taken from my life: I have never fired a big client, I don’t own a car, I’ve (thankfully) never been married, I didn’t make a decision twenty minutes ago, and I’m not (thankfully) in debt.
The Interrupt
‘Delete your to-do list.’
‘Stop trying to be creative.’
‘Your mentor is wrong.’
The Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Notes That Make You a Better Writer
Treat the prompts and process below as creative writing exercises. I like them because if done genuinely, they might actually produce something interesting to you and perhaps others—and strengthen your writing.
(*Some of what’s below is based on suggestions given to me by Claude. This is one of those situations where I needed help. I’m not a social media person (I’m not on Instagram or Facebook because I’m deep into my passion project of putting Mark Zuckerberg out of business and Twitter/X was always a hard no), but I am a writer and a creative writing professor, so Claude and I working together is basically your dream team.)
These are meant to be done quickly, but make them work for you.
Step 1: Choose Your Prompt
Choose one of the prompts below.
I’ve given you three types with 3-4 different prompts within each type.
PROMPTS
Share a Turning Point
The moment you realized you needed to change. Really describe where you were and put us in the scene with the right details—though not too many. Selection is everything. This will exercise your scene-setting muscles.
When an interaction changed your entire approach. This could be an interaction with a painting, a book, meeting someone, etc.
Personal setbacks that led to breakthroughs. We don’t have to be saccharine about this. When a character “wins” in a narrative and there’s a happy ending, something has to be lost.
The moment when you gave yourself permission to think differently about something. Again, think about the catalyst. It might have been watching a ladybug.
Use these prompts to tell a story. Keep the story short.
Why I now…
How ________ changed how I view ________.
The embarrassing ______ that made me _______.
Share the Messy
Post about the projects that didn't work.
Show early drafts or prototypes.
Document your learning process.
Share real numbers and results (both good and bad).
Note: Don’t share a struggle or anything emotionally fraught that’s fresh. As the wonderful Sari Botton said, Write from scars, not wounds. (Someone else may have said it, but she was the first I heard say it.) This is social media. Be careful with yourself.
Step 2: Freewrite
With each of these, set a timer for 2 minutes and freewrite on it.
Step 3: Shape Your Draft
Take the raw material you have and shape it into a draft of a Note.
Write it to someone like you’re texting a friend, maybe even start with Dear ____, and then write it and delete the salutation.
Step 4: Tips on Structure
If your Note tells a story, you can structure it this way:
Start with curiosity; end with resonance.
Open with intrigue
Build with specific details (What happened, what happened next)
Peak with a revelation/the surprise
Close with reflection/why it matters
If your Note doesn’t tell a story, structure it this way:
Every line must push the reader to the next line.
Each line creates a new question
Hold the resolution until the end
No line should feel skippable
Example:
Step 5: Test
Someone should be able to understand your Note by reading:
Only the first line
Only the last line
Any random line in between.
Step 6: Post!
Remember, this is just for fun and there are of course many, many ways to write your Notes. The point is that going viral could be less satisfying than building your creative and writerly muscles.
Notes—no matter what Notes becomes—has changed and we can change with it. I don’t believe there’s any way to prevent it from fully becoming like other social media platforms at this point—and I could be wrong.
Substack Writers at Work is always your home away from home.
Sending you lots of support,
Sarah
P.S. If you think others would benefit from this post, please RESTACK it to Notes but not ‘the socials’ because, well, I’m just not that into them.
Or we could just still use it for genuine interaction and stop trying to game the system. There's that 😁
Very interesting to look at Notes as a genre. That makes sense, and also makes it feel more like a creative challenge. Great advice, thank you!