What's Working On Substack Notes In August 2025

Photo by Nathália Rosa on Unsplash

It’s been 5 months since I did a Substack Notes algorithm update. That changes today!

Last week, I studied the Notes feeds of my

Tom Kuegler

profile and my

Thomas Kuegler

profile trying to find the kinds of Notes that are doing well right now.

I have a couple interesting insights for you that should help you out..

How I did my analysis:

• I analyzed the first 30 Notes on the feed of both my Tom Kuegler profile, and my Thomas Kuegler profile (60 in total).

• I noted:

  • Post type (photo, video, chat, etc.)

  • Relationship (people I followed, didn’t know, etc.)

  • Virality (amount of likes)

• I also take my own Notes performance into account.

Without further ado, let’s get into it.

1. 95% Of Notes Shown On My Feed Were Less Than 50 Words

This is a shocker that’s not a shocker.

I noted back in January and February that Substack Notes were getting shorter and shorter in length.

These days, the vast majority of Notes that get shown on our Notes feeds are less than 50 words—or are around that length.

2. 76% Of Notes Had Less Than 25 Likes

This was a little bit of a shocker to me. Out of the 60 Notes I looked at, only 14 of them had more than 25 likes.

That means 76% of Notes on my feed had less than 25 likes, which is up MASSIVELY from 41% in February.

I’ve noticed in the last few weeks that my Notes performance has declined a good bit. I’m not going to sound the alarm yet, because lulls in my Note performance are normal, but I feel that opportunities for folks to go mega-viral (like 500+ likes on a Note) are slim to none right now.

Even when you go to a Notes topic page, like Business, you don’t see many Notes over 100 likes there. And these are the most popular Notes in that particular topic right now!

It seems like Substack, for the time being, has nerfed the ability for folks to go mega viral with Notes. This happens sometimes—and next month it could turn around—so I’m not too concerned.

3. Photos Have A Much Higher Chance Of Doing Well On Notes

Of the 14 Notes I found that had over 25 likes, 7 of them included photos. You’ll find a couple of them at the end of this article. You might be shocked to see some of them have 1,000+ likes.

Notes have gone the way that many social media platforms go—it’s very visual now. I admit I haven’t played around with sharing photos too much on Notes, and some of my subscribers tell me they’ve seen great results when sharing photos.

This is a tactic I’ll be testing out in the next month or so.

4. Nearly All The Notes On My Feed Were From Folks I Knew, Or Had A Follower In Common

Back in February, I talked about how 85% of Notes on my feed were from folks I didn’t follow, and 50% of those Notes were from folks who have a follower/subscriber I know.

You can check whether someone on your feed has a subscriber or follower you know by hovering over their name.

You see that “Followed by Zain Haseeb, etc.” there? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

I’m here to tell you that this trend from February has changed. A lot.

The vast majority—about 90% of Notes on my feed—were from people I followed OR people who had a follower/subscriber I knew.

This means Notes are a lot more relational nowadays compared to February.

A few months ago, folks you didn’t know were popping up on your Notes feed a LOT more, but now? Substack seems to be giving you:

A. Folks you follow, or
B. Folks who have followers you know

A LOT MORE.

If this is indeed a trend, I like it! I’m happy that Substack is trying to be more relational, and hopefully this means we’re getting in front of our followers a lot more.

5. ≈25% Of Notes Were Article Shares

I wanted to include this just as an FYI. About 25% of Notes were article shares, which is basically the same as it was back in February.

Here’s A Couple Fun Notes I Found, And What We Can Learn From Them

As I perused my Notes feed, I wanted to pull out some of the more viral Notes to see if I could glean any lessons from them. These were a few of the ones I found.

Photo + Inspirational Story

This Note I found from Lisa was wonderful.

It’s about 125 words, with photo attached, and tells a short story about her recovery.

Free tip: Do you have any stories of how you overcame the odds and got your life together in a tough moment? Share that story in less than 125 words, and share a clear, high-quality photo of yourself from the last year along with it.

Life Transition + Story

Along the same lines as Lisa’s post, here’s one from Dawn I found that was doing well.

It’s less than 100 words, talking about a career transition and the fear she felt in that moment. I’ve realized that a lot of folks on Substack ARE 50+ aged writers who have recently gone through a career transition, and are coming to Substack with the questions like “Can I actually write here? Will people even care? Will I be good enough?”

The answer is yes to all of them. Whole-heartedly.

Free Tip: Have you recently undergone a career transition? Write about that in a Note. Make it less than 100 words. Talk about the emotions you felt going through that transition, and the lessons you learned from it. Photo optional.

Color + Photo

This is a tad basic, but sharing colorful photos of nature, your outfit, or whatever is around you can spark virality, like this Note from Shaun.

I saw this Note from James as well that backs up my color theory.

I don’t know, play around with color a little. Maybe this will spark a Note idea from you.

Article Link + Photo

This was the most interesting to me. So Sarah shared this Note, which, if you click into it, shows a photo along with her latest article.

I saw this format a couple times in my research, actually. Folks sharing a photo alongside their article link.

But here’s the important thing…

The photo needs to be relevant to the article. Sarah shared a photo of her on a bus in Amsterdam along with this article: ‘Amsterdam: a day in the life.’

If you’re going to try this strategy out, share a photo (preferably one that’s nice to look at), along with an article you wrote that complement each other in terms of focus.

Don’t share a photo of your dog next to an article you wrote about the economy. You get it.

How I Would Try To Grow On Notes In August 2025

Given all this information, let’s talk strategy.

Here’s a couple things I’d do if I were you to grow on Notes right now.

1. Substack Notes are more relational, so try to get more followers - If nobody is following you or subscribed to you, your Notes probably aren’t getting shown to anybody. That’s why, before you post more Notes, you need to get some followers. To do that, check step #2.

2. Engage more than you post - Right now, I’d actually be engaging more than I post. Scroll your feed, reply to Notes with a long, thoughtful comment. If you need help finding cool people to follow, check out this article of mine. It’ll give you tactical info on how to find fun folks to follow.

3. Curate your feed - Take a look at your Notes feed. Do you like what you’re seeing? If not, you need to curate it. Every time you see a Note you don’t like, hover over the name of the author to see if they have any followers in common. If so, click on the names you see there, and unfollow/unsubscribe from those people. I want your Notes feed to be easy to check into and engage with.

4. Share more photos - If you’re not sharing photos with your Notes, try it out more. It’s evident that Notes with photos ARE getting more engagement on average, so jump on that trend.

5. Keep it short - For the most part, keep your Notes short. Less than 50 words.

6. Once a week, share an inspirational story - Talk about a tough moment you were in, the emotions you had going through it, and what it taught you. Make it about 100-125 words. Share a photo if you want.

7. Wait out the algorithm - It seems going mega viral isn’t in the cards like it used to be, but the algorithm changes all the time. Wait it out, don’t lose faith, and build up your inner circle of followers in the meantime. It will help.

If you liked this Notes update, give this article a like/reshare! :)

If you want help writing better Notes, try out my NoteSmith tool.

It mimics my Notes feedback, and it’s pretty freaking amazing. You can use it to send in your Note draft and get tips to improve it within seconds.

If you want to try it out for free, sign up for it here.

You’ll be given 3 tokens (or 3 uses) for this tool.

If you want 50 tokens per month, become a paid subscriber to The Writing Long Game right here.