Repost Substack Notes to Other Social Platforms

When Substack first released Substack Notes, I was intrigued. But I quickly abandoned the task of posting to Notes because it was one more social feed to manage. Not only that, but Notes doesn't work with any of the social media scheduling tools. Which is par for the course with Substack as a platform overall — it doesn't integrate with other products.

But a few months ago, I decided to give Substack Notes another try. I was really surprised by its impact on my subscribers. Since I started posting to Notes (just restacking quotes from my published articles), my subscriber count has grown – substantially.

Seeing the benefits, I wondered how I could re-post my Notes on other social platforms, without copying and pasting.

The answer is really simple: use an RSS feed to send the text of Substack Notes to a social media scheduling tool.

Step 1: Create an RSS feed

I used Open RSS to create an RSS feed for Substack Notes.

For Substack, the feed is https://openrss.com/substack.com/@yoursubstackusername.

You can confirm it's working because you'll see the feed in Open RSS. Copy the URL, because you'll need it in the next step.

Step 2: Set up a Zap based on the RSS feed

Next, you'll set up an automation in Zapier based on the RSS feed.

(I use RSS feeds quite a bit in Zapier, like sending newly published content to my social media scheduling tool.)

The app for this Zap is RSS by Zapier, and the trigger is New Item in Feed.

On the Configure tab, you'll enter the "Feed URL" from Open RSS. You don't need to do anything else on the Configure screen.

Step 3: Send the text from the RSS feed to your social media scheduling tool

Next, you'll send the text of your Substack Note to whatever social media scheduling tool you use (I use Buffer).

You'll select whatever social media scheduling tool you use as the App, and then you'll create an item to schedule as a post. In Buffer, I use "Create Idea."

On the configuration screen, you'll see fields that are specific to whatever tool you use. For example, Buffer lets me add a "Title" to the item (I use "Repurpose from Substack Notes" so I know that the item came from this automation.)

You'll add the "Text" of the social media post from your prior step. In Zapier, you'll click on the (+) in the field and you'll see the data from your RSS feed. You can select either the "Title" or the "Description" (they're the same) – either of these are the text from your Substack Note.

You can see in this screenshot that my "Text" has been added with the text of my RSS step.

Buffer also has additional fields for "Tags" and a "Group." I have a group set up for Bluesky, since that's where I re-share my Substack Notes. I'll schedule it to publish later.

I could publish the Note directly to the queue of one of my social media channels. But each social media channel has it's own character limit. So instead, I publish to the "Create Idea" space in Buffer so that I can edit it and make sure it's the right length before publishing.

There's a bit of a delay between Substack Notes and Open RSS. It's not too long, but it's not instant (just in case you notice that your published Notes don't show up in your social media scheduling tool right away).

I love this automation because I get more use out of my content from Substack Notes, without any additional work.

Additional resources:

• I Publish on Substack, Ghost, and Kit. Here's Why.
• Automatically Add Substack Subscribers to Kit
• Technology Skills for the Next Generation

I created the screenshots in this tutorial using Scribe – it's one of my favorite tools. You can check out Scribe here [affiliate link].