📝 Come join the Substack Notes Sprint!
How my 30 days of Notes went (plus a couple of invites)
Tami from Buffer <[email protected]>
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Substack promotes the Substack Notes Sprint, a challenge to post on Notes every day. The campaign shares results from a 30-day experiment, including impressions, reactions, and new subscribers. It invites readers to join a new challenge starting October 26 in Buffer's Discord.
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📝 Come join the Substack Notes Sprint!
How my 30 days of Notes went (plus a couple of invites)
Tami from Buffer
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September’s experiment is officially over, so this is the results issue. The goal was to post on Notes every day for the whole month, which I kicked off in the first issue of this series.
I didn’t quuuiiite hit it, as I posted 35 times in September, though I did double up some days and skip others (more on that below), but I came out of the exercise with a much clearer idea of what works for me on Notes and what gets in my way. And I’m turning it into something you can try too, starting October 26 in Buffer’s Discord. Details below!
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How the challenge went
I posted on 21 of September’s 30 days, not all 30. On many of those days, I posted more than once, so it came to 35 Notes.
Here’s how those 35 Notes did:
4,840 impressions in total, or 127 per Note on average (the median was 91, so a handful of Notes pulled the average up)
118 reactions, 14 comments, and 12 restacks
10 new free subscribers that Substack credits to Notes
WHAT DID WELL
Surprisingly, my best Note of the month (450 impressions) wasn’t about Substack, Buffer, or anything I’d been researching. It was a five-line list of what I do to fill my cup creatively, posted on September 21 with no link at all. It’s a good indication that the right infusion of personality, even on a brand Substack, can resonate.
The next two were closer to what I expected. My recap of Kevin Indig’s Open Tabs got 340 impressions and brought in two of the ten subscribers, and my list of brand Substacks from part 3 got 326 impressions and one subscriber.
So the most reach came from the personal Note, and three of the ten subscribers came from Notes that pointed to an issue.
WHAT DIDN’T DO AS WELL
The days I missed (nine in total) all followed a similar pattern. Six of the nine were weekends, and I didn’t post on a single Sunday all month. One of the nine is September 1, and I didn’t start until the 2nd, so that one’s a bit of a technicality.
I had a backlog of ideas saved in Buffer the whole time, so it wasn’t that I’d run out of things to say. I think on weekends, posting meant opening Substack on a day I wasn’t working, and most weekends I just didn’t.
What helped was getting early access to Substack in Buffer. Once I had access, I spent about 25 minutes scheduling Notes in Buffer for the week, and that week became my most consistent: I posted on six of the seven days, and seven of those 11 Notes went out through Buffer.
The second half of the month was better overall, too (12 days posted versus 10, and 149 average impressions per Note versus 105), and scheduling played a huge part in that.
MY TAKEAWAYS
Here’s what I’m taking from the challenge:
Scheduling a few days at a time worked better for me than remembering to post on the day, and weekends are where I need it most.
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