The Notes Prompt That Keeps Going Viral (Now Updated)

1,007 Likes From One Post. Here's the V2 Prompt Behind It.

Three months ago, I published a post about turning your Substack archive into Notes. I shared a prompt I’d iterated on 20 times. I expected maybe 50 likes and a few nice comments.

It got 1,007 likes. 204 comments. 544 shares. 84 restacks. Over 10,000 views. And 241 free subscribers from a single post.

I’m not listing those numbers to brag. I’m listing them because something unexpected happened after the initial spike.

The engagement didn’t just die. It cycles.

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The Pattern Nobody Talks About

Most posts on Substack follow a predictable arc. You publish, engagement peaks in the first 48 hours, then it drops to near zero. That’s normal.

This post did something different. Every few weeks, it surges again. New likes come in clusters. Fresh comments appear from people who clearly just discovered it. The subscriber count from that single post keeps ticking up.

I started tracking it. The pattern looks like this: spike, plateau, small dip, then another spike. Not as high as the original, but consistent. Every cycle brings in new readers who find the post through Notes, through shares, through Substack’s recommendation engine.

Here’s what I think is happening. When someone discovers the post and uses the prompt, they start posting more Notes. Those Notes perform well because they’re pulled from proven content. Other writers see those results, ask how they did it, and get pointed back to the original post.

It’s a referral loop that feeds itself.

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Why This Post Specifically

I’ve written posts with better prose. I’ve written posts I’m more proud of. This one outperformed all of them combined, and I think I know why.

It solved an immediate, specific problem.

Not “here’s how to think about content strategy.” Not a listicle of growth tips. The post said: you don’t know what to write on Notes, here is the exact prompt, paste it in, and you’ll have 5 Notes in 3 minutes.

The gap between reading and getting a result was almost zero. That’s what made it shareable. People didn’t just bookmark it. They used it, saw it work, and sent it to someone else.

What I’ve Updated Since the Original

The prompt has gone through a few more iterations since November. Nothing dramatic, but a few tweaks based on patterns in the 204 comments.

People wanted more variety in note length. The original had four length categories, but medium and long outputs showed up too often. I adjusted the weighting so micro and short notes appear more frequently. Those tend to perform better anyway.

The style variations got a small update too. The Confession format was generating the most engagement by far, so I added a second variation of it. The Data Truth format needed tighter constraints because outputs were sometimes too dry without enough personal context mixed in.

If you haven’t grabbed the original prompt yet, I’ll add it below. Everything I’m sharing today builds on top of it.

The Note Scheduler (Free With Your Subscription)

After publishing that original post, the most common question in the comments wasn’t about the prompt itself. It was about timing. People wanted to know the best posting times, the right number of Notes per day, and whether to space them out or batch them all at once.

Timing matters more than most people realize. Substack’s algorithm processes signals fast, and posting when your audience is actually scrolling makes the difference between 12 views and 1,200.

So I built a Note Scheduler. It’s free for all Level Up with AI subscribers.

Here’s how it works.

You generate your Notes using the prompt from the original post. Then you load them into the scheduler. It queues them up and spaces them out across your peak activity windows so you’re not dumping 5 Notes at once and competing with yourself.

The prompt gives you what to say. The scheduler handles when to say it. Together, they turn a 10-minute session into a full day of consistent Notes going out at the right times.

Your 10-Minute Action Step

1. Get the upgraded prompt below

2. Pick one post from your archive that’s at least 3 months old

3. Run it through the prompt to generate 3 to 5 Notes

4. Head to my Notes Scheduler and queue them up in the scheduler

5. Post your first Note today

The system works when you use it. And based on 10,000 views and counting, a lot of people are putting it to work.

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Let’s Get To The Good Stuff - My Updated Viral Notes Prompt

And I show you that it works.

Ready to get more subscribers?