Join the Notes Experiment

Why it's important to A/B test.

Let’s experiment together

I’m sure you all know the importance of using Notes to grow your Substack…

… actually I’m not sure about that at all.

Collectively you are a very varied bunch of people who are here for many different reasons.

Your knowledge, or ignorance, of the technicalities of this platform will also differ massively, so my intention here is to not ‘bore the pants off’ the Seasoned Stackers while helping the Newbies get a handle on it all.

So, if you weren’t thinking ‘yes, yes, get on it with it…’ when you read that first line, then please take a diversion to this post from the Substack archives, and then take a good scroll down your own Notes feed to see what people are posting.

Then pop back here and we can have some fun with your new found knowledge.

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My intention here is never to waste my time rewriting the same information that many others have already done, and therefore not to waste your time re-reading it.

Instead we’re going to take the rather more entertaining path of experimenting with that information to gain knowledge about our particular Substacks and audiences.

If you’re up for that then please read on, if you’re not then ‘Toodles!’ off you pop, no hard feelings.

Photo by Tolga Ulkan on Unsplash

The importance of an A/B test

Back in my digital marketing days when I used to create Ad campaigns, I would always have at least six different creative versions of an Ad from the outset and release them all at exactly time, like horses out of the starting gates.

Betting on which ones we thought would perform the best also took place to build the excitement! Sportsman’s bets only, no money ever changed hands, it was just for fun… and education.

The interesting thing is, that no matter how much of a marketing guru you think you are, the results are always surprising.

Which is why the need for lots of versions, even if you thought a couple were lame, run them anyway, you just never know.

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After one week, there would be enough data measuring impressions, clicks and (hopefully!) conversions to see which ones are providing value and which are just wasting your money.

At this point you stop the underperforming ones and start refining those that are working. By which I mean launch yet more versions that are similar to the performing ones, but different in one way.

So the image might be slightly different but everything else the same, or the headline text might be different but everything else the same.

These incremental changes enable you to see if that one change has made it better or worse. Then you take the ‘better’ option and make it better still.

How is this relevant to my Substack?

I realise there are no ‘Ads’ on Substack, but each Note you publish is essentially a little Ad for you, your Substack, another writer, or their Substack.

Even the ones of your dog will let others know that you are a dog person… and they might be a dog person, so they will like you more knowing that… and therefore be more predisposed to checking out your Substack, in the safe knowledge that you are a dog person.

Some beautiful lilies that I’ve grown in my garden. If you also like gardening and grow lilies you will love these too and feel a little bit closer to me.

Obviously we can’t play the Ad Variant game on here because our audiences are far too small, and they’d get pretty sick of you (and quickly unsubscribe!) if you pushed out a similar Note everyday just to test the water.

But what we can do is find out what ‘kind of’ Notes our audiences prefer.

The 15 types of Notes:

1. Restack one of your own posts, without a note.

2. Restack one of your own posts, with a note.

3. Restack one of your own posts, with a quote.

4. Restack one of your own posts, with a quote and a note.

5. Restack someone else’s post, without a note.

6. Restack someone else’s post, with a note.

7. Restack someone else’s post, with a quote.

8. Restack one of your own Notes, without a note.

9. Restack one of your own Notes, with a note.

10. Restack someone else’s Notes, without a note.

11. Restack someone else’s Notes, with a note.

12. Restack one of your own Notes.

13. Restack someone else’s Note.

14. Compose a new Note from scratch, just text.
    (Ideas: wise words/quotes about writing/reading/procrastination/slagging off instagram)

15. Compose a new Note from scratch, text and an image.
    (Ideas: pic of your dog/cat/view/holiday/book/subscriber count)

Please note I have deliberately left out the option to compose a Note including a video because I do not want to encourage you to turn this beautiful ‘still’ space into TikTok.

The experiment

What you need to do:

1. Post a Note at the same time of day, every day for seven days. (It does not matter what this time is, so long as you’re consistent to within the hour.)

2. 20-21 Aug: Look at the results to determine which performed best (i.e. most Likes, Comments & Restacks) and which performed the worst.

3. 22 Aug: I will send out an email with my own findings from this experiment and encourage you to share your results in the Comments section, with links to those winning and losing posts.

Are you in?

If you’d like to take part in this experiment and learn how to boost your Substack more effectively with Notes, let me know in the Comments section below.

Here’s how:

1. Enter the Title of your Substack IN CAPS.

2. Enter the Substack subject (in one sentence).

3. Enter the number of Followers you have (not Subscribers, Followers are your audience for Notes).

4. Enter the time of day you will be consistently posting your seven Notes.

   

   Here’s how to locate your Follower number from the dashboard.

5. Have a look up and down the Comments to see who else is playing, then we can look out for each others Notes, and help them along with a few ❤️’s and kind words.

As ever, the quicker you get your Substack into the Comments, the more people will see you and connect.

Once the results are in we could then do a ‘Group Swarm’ for the best and worst performers, to see if we can trigger the Substack algorithm to start pushing them out again! 🎉

See you in the Comments! 😘

K8x

PS: Please ‘❤️’ below and Restack this post if you want to grow your Substack, as it will increase your visibility on Notes and help others find this post and join in the reciprocal boosting!

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