Substack Notes Vs. Twitter Faceoff: 10X+ Subscribers, 2X Engagement

Results from a week long experiment of posting on both platforms

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If you’re anything like me, when Substack Notes came out you probably thought that the app looked quite familiar to another one you used to…

Despite mildly cringing at the thought of yet another place to distribute content, I couldn’t help but wonder how spending time on Notes might compare to its nearest comparison, Twitter?

So I decided to set up an experiment where I would default to publishing on Substack Notes first and then would republish the same content on Twitter. 

My goal was to understand whether publishing on Notes was a good use of time relative to Twitter.

For one week (4/11-4/17), each time I had a fleeting idea or created something new worth sharing, I went straight to Notes to publish. I then would have my assistant publish the same content the next day on Twitter. Republishing was important to me because I wanted to compare the engagement and impact 🍎 to 🍎.

In some cases, the notes I wrote were too long for Twitter so I had my assistant use ChatGPT to transform them into tweets which I would then check before publishing on Twitter. 

Here were the results: 

Substack doesn’t make it easy to measure Subscriptions directly generated from Notes. So to do this I took the weekly average new free subscribers for the last month and compared them against the performance over the week I did the experiment.

I also looked at Twitter's historical contribution to understand whether posting on multiple platforms skewed Twitter’s referrals due to reposting fatigue. The contribution was minimal to begin with so didn’t really have much to lose anyways.

What’s incredibly obvious is that Substack Notes was a HUGE DRIVER for email subscriptions. In one week, it generated more subscribers for me than Twitter has my entire time on Substack.

I don’t have a massive Twitter audience. I had to start from scratch after a post hacking → multi-year hiatus so perhaps the outcome would be different for someone else.

What’s also interesting is that there was 1.5-2X engagement on Notes in terms of likes and comments relative to Twitter.

At first glance, it seemed like Notes not only introduced my work to more people resulting in subscriptions but also created more opportunities for me to connect and engage with others.

I’m not shocked by the subscriber growth lift due to the lack of friction to subscribing on a Note vs. Twitter where there’s the additional step of clicking through and entering your email address.

My Substack following is also much bigger than my Twitter following which might account for the increased engagement.

Nonetheless, all of this data makes it clear that in my unique circumstance, Substack notes introduced my work to more people today than Twitter, all else being equal.

So Whose On Notes?

The other interesting thing about Notes is who is hanging out there right now. 

I’ve written about this before, but one of the best opportunities for growth on Substack is to connect with other authors. Writer recommendations continue to be one of the best ways to introduce your work to new people. 

Right now it seems the main power users of Notes are other authors. 

This means that a lot of the people who are subscribing to your work and engaging in comments are also people that might potentially enjoy recommending your work to their audience eventually. 

This is a huge opportunity in my opinion. Your subscribers who are writers are always going to be your lowest hanging fruit for generating writer recommendations. I wrote more about this here and how to find these people.

Twitter Is Still Interesting

Understanding the audience of Notes still makes Twitter compelling. The truth is that there are many people who aren’t writing on Substack that might be interesting to connect with. Many of these people have been probably using Twitter for years and the switching costs are too high to switch their default short-form content experience.

Therefore, I still plan on posting on Twitter because I think it’s mostly a different audience right now. I don’t know that the wholesale reposting strategy that I used in this experiment is sustainable, but I’m sure I’ll find a way to share my ideas in both places without causing fatigue.

Where Do We Go From Here

The data makes it clear that Notes is a compelling place to continue to experiment and engage with others so that’s what I plan on doing. There’s a lot more to learn here on how to reach the right people with the message you care about and I’m excited to continue to tinker with the best ways to do that.

If you’re excited about learning the outcomes of these experiments and others, I encourage you to subscribe to this newsletter!

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