How to Analyze a Competitor's Substack Notes Strategy

Published: September 2026

Copying what a bigger creator posts rarely works, because you're copying the output without the underlying pattern. A more useful approach is treating a competitor's Notes history as a dataset — what format do they actually rely on, what topics recur, and which specific Notes broke out from their usual average. Here's a framework for doing that, backed by a real analysis of thousands of Notes.

What a real cross-creator analysis found

One of the more rigorous public breakdowns of this comes from an analysis of 3,230 Notes across 9 AI/tech creators (Build to Launch), which classified every Note by format and engagement, then looked for patterns across accounts rather than within just one. A few findings worth stealing directly:

• Format matters more than most people assume. Plain text Notes consistently outperformed Notes with images or links. Notes that just linked out to something else underperformed unless the Note's own text was a complete, standalone thought — the link was a bonus, not the point.
• The most-used format was the worst performer. Among the creators studied, link-posts were both the most common format and the lowest-performing one — a mismatch between what creators default to and what actually works.
• Two Notes went genuinely viral (1,800+ likes each) — roughly 80x the average for that group. Both shared the same shape: they opened with a concrete, specific claim (e.g., "works 90% of the time"), delivered something immediately usable within the Note itself, and stayed under 60 words.
• Volume didn't explain the gap between creators. Three creators each posted between 475 and 499 Notes, yet their average likes per Note ranged from 8.7 to 37.7. The difference wasn't how often they posted — it was whether a reader could tell what the account's perspective was just from the opening line.
• Comments and likes measure different things. Likes tend to reward Notes with clearly useful information. Comments spike on Notes that name a behavior or feeling people recognize but don't usually say out loud — naming something without necessarily solving it is what gets people replying.

The analysis also grouped high performers into five recurring shapes: a Tactical Revelation (specific claim + something usable immediately), a Named Behavior (calling out something readers recognize but don't discuss), a Worldview Statement (a clear, minimally-hedged opinion), a Milestone Done Right (a personal update with one transferable detail), and a Post-Link Done Right (a complete standalone Note, with the link as an addition, not the payload).

How to run this on your own competitors

You don't need a research pipeline to get most of the value here. For each competitor you want to study:

1. Pick 3–5 accounts genuinely close to your niche — not just the biggest names, but the ones whose audience overlaps with yours.
2. Classify their last 20–30 Notes by format: plain text, text + link, text + image, question, personal story. Don't judge quality yet, just tag the type.
3. Note which ones clearly overperformed their account's usual pattern (you can often tell from public like/restack counts even without their internal analytics).
4. Look at the opening line of their best Notes. Per the pattern above, a strong hook is one of the most consistent traits across viral Notes — see if there's a repeatable structure.
5. Track posting frequency and day/time, if visible, to understand their cadence rather than just their content.

Doing this by hand for one competitor takes maybe 20–30 minutes. Doing it properly for 3–5 competitors on an ongoing basis is where it becomes worth automating.

Where NotesIQ shortens this

NotesIQ's Competitor tab does the lookup step automatically: enter any public Substack handle and it surfaces their content mix, posting patterns, and best times in one view — the same kind of format/frequency breakdown above, without manually tagging Notes one at a time. It's read directly from their public profile, so it works on any account you can already see on Substack, including ones outside your own niche if you want a wider comparison set.

Pairing that with your own Content Type Breakdown lets you compare directly: is a format working for a competitor because it's genuinely effective, or because it happens to fit their specific audience? That distinction is easy to miss when you're only looking at their numbers in isolation.

The point of doing this at all

Competitor analysis on Notes isn't about replicating someone else's content — it's about noticing what a working pattern looks like in your niche before you spend weeks finding it yourself by trial and error. The creators in the study above didn't win by posting more; the ones who stood out had a consistent, recognizable voice from the very first line. That's the thing worth studying, not the exact words.

Study any public Substack account in seconds. NotesIQ's Competitor tab surfaces content mix, posting patterns, and best times for any handle you look up.

Sources

• Build to Launch — analysis of 3,230 Substack Notes across 9 creators