Ever since Substack introduced Notes in 2023, I’ve been getting questions about my Notes-strategy—especially because I literally made the course on setting up your Substack for small business owners, freelancers and creatives (updated in 2026!). I don’t have one. The algorithm looks for people whose interests overlap with your existing audience, which means a new or niche newsletter gives it very little to work with, and the way around that is posting daily, for months, before much happens. That’s more time than most of us running a business alongside our newsletter can spare—and it’s time I’d rather spend on growth outside the platform.
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What is Substack Notes?
While many joined Substack for long-form, algorithm-free content, a quieter alternative to social media, that bubble burst in April 2023 when Substack introduced Notes. Notes is essentially Substack’s version of old-time Twitter: a feed, managed by an algorithm, that will show you Notes and posts by people you subscribe to, you follow (yes, those are two different things), and that you’ve never heard of. And, in both instances, the order in which you see the notes will not be chronological, mimicking social media algorithms.
The good news is that Substack isn’t influenced by your subscriber or follower count when it decides who to show your note to—although, obviously, if you have 100,000 subscribers, they will all see your post in their Notes feed; as will your 2 subscribers if that’s all you have.
Much like other forms of social media, the algorithm works based on what it knows about you:
We take a look at who you are as an individual opening the Substack app, where you are in the world, what language you speak, what things you’re subscribed to, who you follow, and what interests you’ve specified, among other things. We try to turn that into a numerical representation so that we can compare it to things that you might want to load in your feed. (Mike Cohen, Substack head of machine learning)
Importantly, it tries to figure out who your audience overlaps with, and then shows your note to those people. The downside of this is that if you’re new or have a smaller or niche audience, there isn’t much for the algorithm to work with.
Why I don’t (really) use Substack Notes
I never really got the hang of Notes, despite telling myself several times over the past couple of years that I would seriously experiment with it. And I did—for a week or two, or a little longer, only to fizzle out and realise that…I don’t really care. I realise that my experiments—which rarely surpassed posting more than three Notes a week—were too short and not extensive enough to lead to results.
I rarely navigate to the Notes feed (I stopped using the app years ago, so have to explicitly visit Notes in my browser). When I do, I sometimes find things I’m interested in. But I never venture beyond the ‘following’ tab, which shows only those people I subscribe to and thus automatically follow.
Not being much on Notes myself + not being willing to post as much as 2-3 times a day = not using Notes for growth.
-> Read more on how I grow my Substack newsletter: “How I grew my newsletter without chasing the Substack algorithm” and watch “Why Substack won’t grow your newsletter (and what will)”.
A return to social media?
So I’ve never really cared about Notes, and even shrugged off the “Substack has turned into social media!”-alarmism in 2023. But what I find disappointing is that Substack has started rewarding one of the main things I left social media for: frequency (and has claimed that yes, it is social media, but a different kind—which frankly I’m not convinced by).
Substack’s own advice is to publish consistently and frequently. What that means in practice, if you read the people who’ve genuinely grown this way, is daily. Not daily-ish. Daily, for months, with the understanding that very little will happen at first. As Carrie Loranger describes her successful strategy:
Post 2–3 Notes per day to start, rotate 3–7 repeatable Note formats, engage with other creators daily, track subscriber conversions instead of likes, and batch your Notes weekly so the system is sustainable. Once the algorithm understands your topic and audience, consistency starts to compound.
This might be okay if Substack is your entire business. But for me, and everyone who uses Substack as a marketing tool for their business, freelance services or art, this is nearly impossible to keep up with.
-> If you’re planning to use or are using Substack as a tool in your business, you’ll like “Is Substack worth it for small business owners? (2026)” too.
I don’t love the moves that Substack—disappointingly but predictably—makes to get closer to social media practices. In our current online climate, wherever you go online, you are the product—and retaining you and convincing you to pay is the key goal of the vast majority of channels. In 2025, these changes were enough for some top Substack writers, including some of my favourites, to leave the platform.
Should you use Substack Notes?
Of course, this is a personal answer—if you enjoy spending time on Notes, that’s reason enough. If you want to get serious about Notes and use it as a growth engine, you need to post a lot—and if that’s something you enjoy, go for it!
In theory, Notes can be a lovely way of building community—and I know for some people it works that way, both as readers and as writers. But of the 50 million active subscriptions, only about 1 million people are on Notes daily. The algorithm decides what people get to see, taking a chunk of agency and influence away from you. And there is some anecdotal evidence (backed by this writer’s experiment) that posting many external links, for instance to your own website, products and services, leads to the algorithm showing your Notes less.
There is also a certain ‘preaching to the choir’-dynamic happening on Notes: it’s a bubble in which the people that spend most time in it, are those that are so invested in Substack that they don’t only use it for their newsletter but also as social media. This, of course, is the reason that those selling Substack courses and support do so well on the platform.
But there is life outside of the bubble: if you want engagement, try asking questions in your newsletters and inviting people to answer. Experiment with discussion threads. Invite your readers to ask questions, which you’ll answer.
And if you’re looking for growth, look outside Substack too: more than half of my new newsletter subscribers come from outside of the platform (read “How I grew my newsletter without chasing the Substack algorithm”).
If you don’t necessarily get joy out of Notes but are thinking about adding it as a marketing channel, I’d think twice. Is putting the time and energy in it worth it for you? Instead of adding a new channel, you might think instead of going deeper on an existing one, or trying out a channel that works better with your needs and strengths (read more about this in “When your marketing feels off: three possibilities to explore”).
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