115 Comments

Golden nugget stuff from start to finish! Learnt a couple of new things from it. 🙏🏽

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I'm enjoying notes, but realized notes are sent to subscribers. This means my subscribers who have signed on to receive my newsletters, and who aren't otherwise on substack are now receiving "occasional" spam. I can't turn it off for them, and it requires a lot more effort for them to figure out how to do that than it is for them to simply unsubscribe. This means the social media aspect is more important to substack than the newsletter service that I moved here for. I'm torn. And frustrated.

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So insightful!!!

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Thank you for this clear breakdown. So helpful for someone like me who is new here.. It feels a little bit sad that I wasn’t part of this amazing community earlier. Because as platforms grow, the community does as well and most of the time that isn’t the good thing..

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This was super interesting for someone new to notes but writing on substack for a while. Looking forward to playing!

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Hey there - new beginner on Substack. I write about my own spiritual journey and share my learnings in my publications. Please have a look and subscribe if you like it! https://coachjoscha.substack.com/p/why-i-joined-substack?r=2gw61

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saving this to do freeform writing from your prompts! thank you for the suggestions.

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Great advice! I have been mistakenly not spending much time on Notes to grow my subscribers (despite gaining about 150 new ones from ONE single Note). Excited to test out your suggestions!

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Interesting takes; thanks for sharing these helpful insights. I have to say I tend to switch off when I sense a 'hook', the classic social media "7 years ago today, I (insert confessional/emotional breakthrough/performative vulnerability, blah, etc.)" I am drawn to the Notes feature here because it feels creative, authentic, positive, more about sharing joy and supporting each other and less about winning the algorithm. I think people have had enough of that. Thanks again and wishing you a wonderful new year ahead.

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These kinds of titles really make people click, don't they? Thank goodness the story had useful insight.

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Nice shout out to @Laurie Stone

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These are really good suggestions. I'm going to use your model and see how many new subscribers I get in two months.

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As a new Substacker, I’m grateful for the explanation of how Notes and Substack work alongside each other, and the interplay between followers and subscribers - thank you!

The Notes advice is very helpful. It will certainly help me, treating it as a genre, once I’m a bit more settled in.

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Thanks for the mention! I wish I could take credit, but "Write from your scars, not from your wounds," is something I learned from a storytelling lecture by The Moth's Catherine Burns. She said it's one of their tenets. (In workshops I'm always sure to give credit, and say, "As they say at The Moth: Write from your scars, not from your wounds.")

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Many thanks for sharing, that has totally changed the way I’ll write Notes in future.

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Holy crap, really? One note, 20k subs? Wow.

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