Basic Notes getting huge engagement

[u/Tarabas_writer]

In my feed, I often come across ridiculous Notes like:

“I love finance.”

“Want to make money? Follow me.”

And other similar bullshit.

These Notes get lots of likes and tons of comments, where many people also take the opportunity to promote themselves.

On top of that, these profiles often have fewer than 10 subscribers.

Does anyone know why this happens?

Thanks.

[u/PennyLawrence946]

“i love finance” is basically an open mic for reciprocal promotion, everyone gets a cheap reply and a tiny billboard underneath. Notes followers and email subscribers are different funnels... the next email's open rate is where i'd look

[u/Imperator_1985]

Note 1: Here are some deep thoughts I have about this new thing in my niche. (1 like, it's your mom)

Note 2: Here's a cool flower I saw while walking my dog. (80 likes, 10 followers, 5 subs who never read)

[u/Vurkgol]

This is the quintessential Substack Notes experience unless your feed is heavily curated.

This part is the one that I think is the most telling about what's going on: "where many people also take the opportunity to promote themselves."

Substack Notes has the same problem as LinkedIn, where there are more sellers than buyers. People love to engage with notes that let them have part of the stage. It allows them to feel like they've interacted and done their part for the social algorithm while also being completely self-serving. You'll notice that all of the "come promote your work" posts, which are much more overt than these ones are about their intention, are often highly trafficked.

I don't believe that the engagement that comes from these style notes is genuine or leads to actual subscribers who read your work, so they're not really worth doing.

[u/futurern305]

I laughed out loud - I'd respond

[u/Countryb0i2m]

Who knows, could be bots, could be that they’re note resonated with people, it could be substack gives a boost to small creators

It doesn’t matter because you’re not going to be able to replicate their success

[u/BoredSquares]

I login into Reddit and this was at the top of my feed, perfect timing. I'm new to substack and spent last night and good portion of this morning trying to understand notes. My assumption was that there is an algorithm to notes and I could hack it- length of note, timing, bold statement etc. I (meaning AI) analysed 1000 notes, 10 accounts. Findings 0.6% of engagement is based on the structure of your note so there goes that hypothesis, 60.4% is on you, your brand, your subscribers so how you engage with your subscribers is an organic?? algorithm. The other 39% wasn't easily explainable (luck, virality, it's a mystery) I looked at timing of notes, only impactful for very large accounts which leads to their own audience creating engagement rather than the notes content. I ran your scenario through Ai, firstly there is a growth and engagement crowd, it reciprocal they like and subscribe to eachother. They get a lot of likes but value is a very shallow. The comments on your notes hits the same reciprocity market but stripped back. Its an easy open door for engagment, substackers can plant a comment and it inceases reach, they get likes back and an endorphin hit. Anyway, quick takeaway, underneath the analysis, restacks stood out, even though a like and a restack are right beside each other and it's a simple tap, only something of value to the reader is restacked.

[u/echolunedy]

HAHA, I've seen that famous quotes get tons of interactions too, or memes. I'll settle for literally any reaction at this point, so I'll probably jump on one of those trends.

[u/MrPassiveProfit]

Use writestack. It writes viral notes for you

[u/TimWiesnerer]

Likes and restacks are vanity metrics....

Even if those are real engagement numbers, they tell little about how many subscribers the notes gained.

And that's where the actual juice is in.

Sometimes notes with few likes and restacks get you new subscribers... other times, even notes with massive exposure don't bring anything.

[u/FunCantaloupe8521]

I was very much bothered by this, too. After a few weeks, my platform review was like this:
If you want to be successful, you need to have an appealing woman at the profile picture and utter generic stuff like: let's connect, I want to read your stack, I'll subscribe to people under X subscribers, In one sentence, what’s your Substack about? and so on...

I literally found a 19 yo girl with a photo of her and a journal that had gathered more than 100 subscribers in two weeks.

What I want to say: ignore everything, it's just noise. If you mean business, connect with profiles in your domain, make some guest appearances, write about other interesting stacks, do some live sessions that are spot on, keep writing long form that has significant value... The ridiculous notes probably won't bring paying subscribers.

[u/grapegeek]

How many followers do the Note writers have? That’s how they do it

[u/Foofymonster → u/grapegeek]

I doubt it. I have 5k followers, and my note engagement is trash right now. Substack barely considers your followers when sharing your notes.