I Went Viral On Substack, Twice — Here’s What I Learned.

2,000 Likes, 100s of Comments, and 400+ New Followers.

Substack “Viral-for-me” Growth

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It takes 1 post.

I’ve got lucky twice. I’ve never been strong with content. Always struggled to grow a following. But I crossed paths with luck twice.

First, on TikTok a single post got 225,000+ views taking me from 0 to 5,000 followers.

Second, on Substack. Two Notes that took off together bringing me over 400 new subscribers and plenty of followers.

Today, I will share the lessons I’ve learned from the luck of virality.

Going viral beats a double scoop of pre-workout.

It was just another dark morning.

Walking to the gym at 4 am sipping on 2 scoops of Blue Raspberry pre-workout.

I looked down at my phone — 82 Substack notifications.

I almost spat my pre-workout out…
I couldn’t believe it. How? I thought to myself.

People were responding to my “Substack is different” Note I posted the day before.

You can read it here: https://substack.com/@landonpoburan/note/c-65326931

Emotions coursed through my body.

The dopamine hit of likes and comments flowing through your veins beats a double hit of caffeine. Any day. It’s a high.

I immediately took a screenshot. Proof or it didn’t happen, right?

What happened next I could never have expected.

I started to see likes and comments for another post… Something I couldn’t even remember posting — It was over 3 weeks old.

My body was vibrating for days.

I spent 60+ minutes daily responding to comments.

A quick debrief.

Here’s a quick recap of the stats (at the time of writing this).

Post 1: Substack is different.

• 709 likes.

• 84 comments.

• 23 restacks.

Post 2: $6 Coffee.

• 1,468 likes.

• 92 comments.

• 79 restacks.

Happy little side effects:

• +414 new followers.

• Increase in engagement on ‘Posts’.

• Increase in engagement across other Notes.

• 25 new email subscribers — I launched a lead magnet the week after my growth.

• Only 2 negative comments.

Is there a magical virality formula.

If there is, I don’t have it.

When posed with the question of “how I did it”.

My response was:

• “I don’t know.”

• “Luck.”

I don’t mean to be anticlimactic.

I don’t have a new ‘Viral Notes’ course being released next week. I wish I had the recipe. If I did I’d be repeating this shit out of it.

I’m here sharing the honest truth about being in the arena creating content.

The reality is that I never anticipated the first post to hit.

It was a pure stream of thought. I wrote it off the top of my head as the idea came to me. It was an observation with zero ‘strategy’ placed behind it.

I woke up to a week-long dopamine high.

• 100s of Substack notifications flashing.

• Inbox blowing up.

• Dms filled.

I believe luck was involved. And is involved in many success stories.

Here’s the kicker…

Luck is earned. Luck may be ‘chance’ but you gotta put yourself in its path.

Did I get lucky? Yes.

Would I have gotten lucky if I hadn’t posted Notes consistently? No.

Here are the biggest lessons I learned from my viral-for-me moment.

Don’t strive for virality — Put yourself in its crosshairs.

Luck is always involved. You cannot predict it. But you have control over putting yourself in situations where it can take place and benefit you. Every time you post, it’s another chance to be seen and another chance to gather data.

Restacks are everything.

I believe the most important engagement metric is restacks. When someone hits that beautiful little button it immediately puts you in front of their followers. Creating an engagement flywheel.

Your back catalog is important.

My experience leads me to believe there is a bit of an algorithm at play. When people engage, follow, or subscribe, I believe it begins to show people more of your Notes. This indicates that content has a longer shelf life. It’s not one-and-done like an Instagram story. My post with 1,400+ likes didn’t take off until 3+ weeks after it was posted.

Substack really is different.

Almost 200 comments, only 2 negative comments, and ZERO AI-generated comments. It filled my heart reading and responding to every single comment. Thoughtful, kind, and positive.

Compared to other platforms like LinkedIn where comments are 99% AI-generated, useless, from engagement groups, or just because you’re told that commenting leads to growth.

Reply to every comment.

I spent over an hour a day replying to comments. Not “Thanks” but thoughtful comments. Which encouraged more conversation. I believe this sends a positive signal — I can’t confirm this but I think responding to every comment is beneficial.

Substack is still young.

This taught me that Substack is still in its infancy.

The notifications are clunky. They are easy to miss. Comments aren’t easy to respond to. The website is slow — It took me considerably longer to respond to comments compared to other platforms. The interconnection between Notes, Posts, Chats, Followers, and Subscribers is a bit confusing.

Data is valuable.

The two posts that “hit” provided me with insights/data. I learned that people on Substack are interested in “Balance” and learning about “Substack.” This was not just because they got likes and comments but also because of the sentiment expressed within the comments.

You don’t need to go viral to gather this type of data. If 7 posts get zero likes, and the 8th gets 1, that’s a data point.

The 7 Habits that put me on the path to get lucky.

I’ve written on Substack for almost 1 year.

• I’ve written 60+ Newsletters.

• Built a 230+ day writing habit.

• Written 100s of Substack Notes.

Consistency is the throughline.

Here’s the blueprint I’ve been following on Substack:

1. 1x Weekly Newsletter.

2. 1-3x Daily Notes.

3. Comment daily on Notes/Posts.

4. Building relationships with people through DMs.

5. Experimenting with Chat to build deeper connections.

6. Watching the performance data and iterating.

7. Continuous experimentation on (and off) Substack.

If I could distill this down into the single most impactful habit I’ve created?

It would be my daily writing habit.

Those 7 habits above aren’t where I started 1 year ago, though.

I treat Substack like a game.

I gained experience and progressively increased the difficulty. Here’s a Note I shared about this and a roadmap that might be helpful.

Start with your MVH - Minimum Viable Habit.

Progress as (or if) desired.

And keep things fun along the way.

And, here’s my plan moving forward.

Maybe it only takes 1 post…

I’m not yet sure if this is motivating or defeating. It only takes 1 post to go viral, logically, but that post might take a year, or five, or it may never happen.

While it’s cool that this happened to me I’m not trying to replicate it.

I’m not just here to go viral.

I’m here to create, educate, grow, and have fun. The real magic lies in those core daily habits and most of all keeping it fun.

(Trying to go viral and obsessing over checking my phone for new likes and comments is stressful — Not fun)

Back to the daily routine. Back to the basics.

Hope this helps.

Landon

PS

If you’re looking to grow on Substack I recently shared a Newsletter on how to take a single Note and generate multiple Post ideas from it.

I walk through how the insights from my viral post instantly inspired 5 post ideas on a short 10-minute walk to Starbucks. You can read it here.