How Substack Notes Evolved in 2024—And What's Working Now

A complete 2,500 word history of Substack Notes this year

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

From March to June, I was gaining 2,000-3,000 subscribers per month for this publication. My Notes were getting thousands of likes sometimes, and it would be rare to NOT see a Note get more than 200 likes at least.

This drove an unreal amount of subscribers to me for months.

I felt like I bought Bitcoin in 2013 and I was right in the middle of the bull run of 2021.

Then in July, I sensed a disturbance in the force.

My Notes weren’t going mega viral anymore. I didn’t have a single Note get above 1,000 likes the whole month. My “average” likes per Note also decreased to around 150 or so. This continued into August, where I just accepted the new normal. I wasn't going to have 4,000 like Notes anymore that drove 500 subscribers in a matter of days.

Then September hit.

If you’ve ever watched The Day After Tomorrow, September was like the 100 foot tsunami that hit New York City in that movie. I got back from a short vacation and noticed, immediately, that my Notes were struggling to get even 100 likes anymore.

The game changed on Notes, and I was left picking up the pieces of a once great and powerful lead generation device.

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Welcome To The Volatility Of Social Media Algorithms

This is social media. The algorithm is really good, then people hack it, then people in charge say “We can’t have THAT type of content going viral!” So it changes again. It’s a game of never-ending tag with the algorithm.

In the summer, it was common to hear people say “I don’t want to see Notes about how to grow on Substack!” The people at Substack probably saw this and wanted things to change. And change they did.

And you know what? I’m happy that happened! Even I was starting to get bored of it.

Truthfully, there’s so many amazing changes happening on Notes right now, and I wanted to wind back the clocks and give you a history lesson on all the kinds of Notes that used to go viral, and what’s going viral now.

January - June: Notes About Substack

I consider January the moment when Substack Notes “woke up” and became an actual lead generator. Technically Notes was released as a feature in early 2023, but it wasn’t a factor in helping newsletters grow much that whole year.

It was a ghost town.

But from January to June, Substack Notes became dominated by posts about writing, social media, and Substack. I’m proof of that. Here’s a post that went viral in March about growing on social media.

It makes sense that the early days of Substack Notes were dominated by this kind of content. I remember getting on a now defunct platform called Bitclout a few years ago. I was excited to join, but quickly realized all anybody talked about on there was how revolutionary Bitclout was. 😅 There was nothing else. It was either posts about Bitclout or posts about Crypto.

It never grew beyond that, unfortunately, and I got bored!

This is just a natural phase of a platform’s evolution. When a platform is new, the users are just a bunch of super fans who only want to talk about how revolutionary that platform is!

Here’s a Note that went viral for me in April proving this sentiment:

In the first half of 2024, the users of Substack Notes were the creators themselves. Over the lifespan of a platform, though, you’d typically like to see that number decrease over time. Where were the readers? The people who didn’t create, and just wanted to consume? Where were the Notes about technology, or fashion, or politics? Substack Notes, while proven to be a bonafide lead generator, needed to grow up.

And grow up it did!

July-August: Memes, Graphics, Pets, and Landscapes

In the middle of summer, I noticed a change. My Notes weren’t going as viral as they used to. I wrote in my journal in late May that “the amount of hate that meta Notes about Substack are getting is increasing.” People started to complain about the very Notes they were cheering for in March and April. That’s social media, for ya. Public opinion can change quickly, and complaining ALWAYS attracts eyeballs.

Let me focus on this for a bit, because it’s a great lesson for you.

Contrarians are gonna contrarian. But also, in this fast-paced TikTok world we live in, people want new stuff. They want new shows and movies and formulas and messages. They don’t even want to look for it anymore. They just want an algorithm to spoon-feed all this new content to them with the swipe of their thumb.

In a nutshell, they got bored of seeing the same crap over and over again.

One common cycle of social media platforms is:

1. Algorithm changes

2. Somebody writes a great, heartfelt post that goes viral

3. Everybody copies them

4. People get sick of it and complain

5. Platform doesn’t want people complaining

Then the cycle repeats. Over and over and over again. There’s like 10% of creators who actually push boundaries and create something so beautiful that it dazzles people enough to go viral. Then people swoop in and copy it. Then they’re successful, and suddenly these posts are everywhere.

Here’s a post from Diana that went viral on Substack in the final days of September.

Suddenly, a few weeks later, I started seeing posts like hers all over Substack Notes.

Scrolling through the “Related Notes” section of these Notes is like looking at the Buzz Lightyear aisle.

And that’s social media! It’s a living, breathing thing, and watching the algorithm, public sentiment, and viral posts shape the landscape in real time is fascinating!

And look. I don’t blame any of these creators for jumping on the bandwagon and making their own version of this original Note. Heck, I teach paid subscribers how to copy the structure of my own viral Notes every month.

But that’s just something we need to understand about human nature, right?

We copy each other.

And on one hand, thank goodness we do! If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be where we are today as a species.

Anyway, people in charge of Substack Notes likely took notice of this growing anti-meta-post sentiment, and knew that if they wanted Notes to keep growing, this had to change. So, things changed.

This summer I started seeing four main Note types going viral more.

1. Memes

2. Graphics

3. Pets

4. Landscapes

I remember seeing people talking about pets near the end of June and into July. PETS! Post pictures of your pets and go viral! And go viral they did. Whether they attracted subscribers to their newsletters about, you know, insert super niche topic that isn’t about pets right here is up for debate.

Then we had graphics. I jumped on this bandwagon, actually. I shared a graphic from Pinterest that got 400 likes in late August.

Yep. This worked for a while, but I don’t see many graphics anymore. I honestly think the algorithm stopped boosting them so much.

Then there’s the memes. Everybody became a meme lord this summer. It reminded me of Facebook from the early 2010’s. Memes must have gotten nerfed, too, because I don’t see them much anymore.

Another interesting thing that happened on Substack this summer is everybody started sharing landscape photos of sunsets, hikes, and their general environment. I love how we all became landscape photographers for a few months and milked that trend for all it was worth. 😅

But alas, all good things must come to an end.

September: Introducing Myself Here!

In September, I noticed that Substack really shrunk the reach of my Notes. I also noticed that nobody was really going viral anymore. I hardly ever saw Notes in my feed with 1,000’s of likes, and the ones that DID get close to that number were introduction type posts from Substackers telling us who they were and what they write about.

It’s odd sometimes how clear it is what kinds of Notes Substack is trying to boost in their algorithm. It was, like, very clearly THAT for an entire month. I guess Substack wanted Notes to be a lead generator for more writers. I felt like they went too far in that direction, though.

They seemed to dilute and divide views amongst people, resulting in a platform where more creators were getting more likes (maybe 10-20 per post instead of 0?), but not enough likes to really move the needle (500+).

It kind of became like eating semi-warm soup. Sure, it’s not cold soup, but it ain’t hot either. It’s just kind of meh. And while likes seemed to be shared more amongst the community, it was never enough to make a big impact on anybody’s newsletter growth.

October: Personal Stories, Return of Virality, Topics, And Formatting Changes

I’m writing this newsletter now because October has been such an interesting month for Substack Notes. There seems to have been so many developments, like:

1. Virality is back (more 1,000+ like Notes in my feed)

2. Personal stories are going viral

3. Substack has “topic” pages now for Notes

I saw this Note from my friend Michael Thompson the other day that went viral.

I think this might be his most viral Note of all time, and he’s been on Substack since around June.

Here’s another Note I found on my feed with over 1,000 likes from early October:

I can’t say this enough. I just did not see any Notes in September with more than 1,000 likes. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

Personal stories are also killing it right now on Notes.

Here’s one from Tina Hedin:

Here’s another from Tom Selby Edge:

Before October, I never really saw personal stories like this crack more than a few hundred likes. This platform is growing up, and showcasing real stories from people that are resonating with audiences.

Then on October 11, I noticed a new “tags” feature at the top of my homepage. I wrote a note about it:

For the first time ever, there’s a Notes “Index” where you can find Notes about topics that interest you.

What’s The Future Of Notes?

Over the last 10 months, Substack Notes have changed again and again and again. What will the future of Notes look like? My favorite way to analyze this is from the perspective of Substack. What kind of short form platform, historically, are they intending to build here?

Well, they seem to want:

1. More diversity of topics in the Notes feed.

2. Notes to be less “growth-hacky” and more real.

3. To improve discoverability and indexing of Notes.

These seem to be the through-lines of the last 10 months.

I was able to really “hack” Substack Notes with meta content in the Spring of this year, but those days are over, I think. At least for that type of content it is. You can still go mega viral if you write a really great story or share a really important insight—and that’s great news for you reading this.

That means that you don’t have to be a writing expert to go viral on Notes. You can just talk about your story, and your life, and little moments you enjoyed. That’s beautiful. While there’s less opportunity for me to go mega viral, there is way more opportunity for all of YOU to go mega viral now. In every way, Notes is a better platform for you now than it was in the summer.

And I intend to keep following Notes Trends closely with this newsletter moving forward, dropping new updates of Notes trends, and any changes to the Substack Notes UI every few weeks.

I hope you follow along.

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