In this conversational coaching session, Nicolas Cole (joined by Dickie Bush and audience members) reveals what he calls the single biggest missed opportunity for Substack writers: treating comments as short‑form content and using them to drive traffic. He outlines a concrete, repeatable 30‑minute‑a‑day routine where writers scroll through the platform, leave brief, thoughtful comments on about 20 posts, and then immediately repurpose those comments as notes on their own profile. The session includes a live demo of copying a comment, posting it, and turning it into a note, emphasizing that this process should be quick and low‑effort—not a War‑and‑Peace‑style composition. Cole stresses the importance of giving oneself permission to act, avoiding over‑thinking, and focusing on execution rather than talent. He answers audience questions about how to select whom to comment on (no need to chase follower counts) and shares insights from running over 20 Ship 30 cohorts, noting that the primary reason writers don’t gain traction is simply not doing the work. The overall message is that consistent, small‑scale engagement and content repurposing can dramatically increase visibility and newsletter subscriptions on Substack.
Chapters
So what are some little things that you can do to get notes traffic going on Substack? I want to point out the single biggest missed opportunity on the entire platform. Aside from you writing your own content, what do you think is the single best thing that you could do on the platform? We should probably engage with other people on the platform, because the thing that a lot of, a lot of times writers forget is that writing a comment is literally the same thing as writing a short-form piece of content. A comment and a piece of content are the same exact thing. So if you, if you're like, what is my fastest path to generating traffic? What is my fastest path to starting to build my audience? What is my fastest path to getting attention from Substack's ecosystem over to my newsletter. The fastest path. Let me— here's the secret, everyone. You block 30 minutes in the morning and you go comment on 20 people's posts.
I'll never forget, Dickie, you remember doing those first month that Cole and I got together in person in Miami, 2022. We get to WeWork at like 7:45, 8:00, pull open our laptop, post our piece of social content and write. 20 to 30 minutes of replies manually every day.
Yep, every day.
And it crushed.
Yeah. And so, you know what, I just want to give everyone permission here, and I just want to show you how your laptop will not explode if you do this incorrectly, okay? This is not worth overthinking. So we're going to literally do this live right now, okay? Now watch how, watch how this works. Roman, thanks for posting this. Totally agree. I like to think of my library of content as one giant repository for stories, insights, templates, prompts, cheat sheets, etc. The more I write online, the more training data I have to play with. Is there any difference between this comment and something that I would write as short-form content? There is no difference. There is no difference. And anyone want to see something really cool? Okay, ready? Watch what— watch what we're about to do. I'm going to copy paste this. I'm going to post this as a comment to Roman's piece, and then I'm going to go and create a new note. And I'm just going to delete totally agree, and then I'm going to post the same exact thing as a note on my profile. What do we think? Should we have sat here and thought about this for 90 minutes before we pressed enter? You think we should do some overthinking? No, this is what you should do. Every morning for 30 minutes. And you go find, scroll through your feed, find 10 people that you can comment on, and then maybe as you're writing comments, you go, "Oh, that comment is actually, that's a pretty good, I like how I worded that." Okay, great. Copy paste the thing that you just wrote as a comment and go post it as a note. The big idea here is that on the internet, your content is yours. You can do whatever you want with it. You can copy-paste it, you can remix it, you can combine it, you can expand it, you can compress it, you can cross-post it, you can do whatever you want with it. And this is just one of those things that a lot of people don't even realize that they can do. Your newsletter was— you did all the hard work. You took the time to sit down and clarify your thinking. You took the time to write out the long-form version. Right? Which means everything else, it's not about like writing other things. It's about taking the thing you already wrote and going, how do I chop it apart in 100 different ways? That is the game. Makes sense. Everyone here, permission. Do you feel like you have permission? You've given yourself permission to go do this. 'Cause what I don't want is I don't want you to open up your laptop tomorrow morning and then go, "Okay, Cole said I gotta go comment on 10 people's posts," and then you open up one post and you sit there and you're trying to write the next War and Peace. That's not what we're talking about. You pick something, you quickly give a response, and then you move on and you do it again, you do it again, you do it again. Yeah, Irene, how do you choose the people to comment on, number of followers? Don't overthink it. Like, literally, I'm just— I'm going to scroll through. We're going to do it again. I have no idea how big Jake's following is. I've been on Substack for over a year now. If you're new, I would love to support you. Let's grow together. Nice. Thanks, Jake. And great to see fellow writers becoming friends here. Post. Did, did my laptop explode? Did anything bad happen? Nope. I have no— I have no idea who Jake is and I have no idea how big his audience is. But you know what? Now I have another piece of writing. I have another comment living on the platform, living within Substack's ecosystem. I want to, like, harp on this for everyone. Okay? If you're sitting there and you're asking, is it okay if I— yes, it is. Should I? Yes, you should. Can I? Yes, you can. After running however many cohorts we did of Ship 30, Dickie, like 22, 21, something like that. And we've, I mean, we've walked north of 15,000 writers through frameworks like this. I will tell you, overwhelmingly, the number one reason why people do not see traction is not because they lack talent. It is not because they don't know what to do. It is simply because they don't do it. That is fundamentally it. It would be very hard for you to not see something happen if you prioritized doing this every morning for 30 minutes a day. It would be very hard for, for like nothing to happen as the result of that.
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