24K Views, $1019, and 7 Lessons On The Makings of a Viral Article

What you can learn from my mega-viral Medium moment

I didn’t come to Medium with the intention of making money. I don’t have the time or creativity to crank out an article every day. I have little inclination to write about digital technology and kinky sex (or digital sex and kinky technology) which seem to be the big money categories ‘round these parts. I certainly don’t have the massive follower count to compete with the platform’s heavy hitters.

I do enjoy sharing my slightly twisted thoughts via the written word, so I came here with the hope of reaching an audience that could draw some enjoyment from my brain droppings. Whatever stray dollars should happen to trickle into my Stripe Account would be an added bonus.

You can imagine my shock when one of my articles, seemingly at random, went viral. I’m not talking about the proverbial “Medium Viral”, described by many publication editors as 1000 views. I’m talking, bona fide, rip-roarin’, “mama, call the CDC”, Delta Variant viral!

Unforgettable Answers to 5 Stupid Job Interview Questions has racked up over 24,000 views to date and put a cool $1019.22 in my pocket. And it’s still going strong!

You never know when lightning is going to strike, but with careful analysis, you can get a sense of where. So, I re-visited my article with an eye toward unearthing the secrets to its viral success. Here’s what I found.

1. What’s in a Name? EVERYTHING!

I came within two strands of corn silk of pressing publish with a title of Memorable Answers to 5 Common Job Interview Questions. Had I done so, my article would almost certainly have withered and died in the algorithm like a daylily in the desert. It’s a perfectly utilitarian title: clear, concise, and descriptive. It’s also utterly non-impactful.

At the last second, the provocateur in me rose from its slumber, demanding stronger language; language with a point of view.

“Unforgettable” is a grander proclamation than “memorable”. “Stupid” conveys the attitude of the article far more evocatively. It’s that feeling of exasperation every beleaguered cubicle jockey who has ever had to sit through an utterly inane job interview but felt too insecure to call the interviewer on their idiocy, can relate to.

A great title shouldn’t just convey the content of the article, but the personality. That’s what starts the clicks rolling.

2. Point-of-View Points to Views

I’m convinced that academia does a huge disservice to generations of would-be writers, teaching us to bury our personality beneath sterile language packed with empirical facts and rigorous citations. That type of writing has very little application in the real world, let alone the digital world because simply put: nobody wants to read that s**t.

In the digital content space formerly known as the blogosphere, personality wins. That’s your differentiator.

I’m not a hiring specialist, and I certainly haven’t conducted scholarly research on the precise buzzwords that give the prototypical HR practitioner a tingle in their chinos. Forbes and Business Week are rife with writers who could pen that article in their sleep and probably have. What they don’t have is my experience as an interviewee and slightly deranged synapses with which to process and vent on it.

Unless you’re Bob Woodard breaking the next Watergate scandal, it’s not the substance of your article that’s going to keep your readers scrolling, it’s the style. Crank every quirk, idiosyncrasy, and oddball affectation that has ever driven your significant other into a Tupperware-hurling rage up to 11, and watch the Member Reading Time roll in.

3. Numbers Do Numbers

“10 Budget-Friendly Travel Destinations”. “Top 25 NFL Draft Prospects”. “7 Things You Can Do With Your Toes to Drive Him CRAZY”.

There’s a reason the magazine rack at your local convenience store is littered with numbered headlines. Numbers inherently pique our interest. What will top the list? Where does my favorite rank? Are all 7 of those things legal in my state???

They also provide inherent momentum. Our brains are hardwired to count up or down accordingly when we see a series of numbers. That means we’re far more likely to keep scrolling to find out what comes next on a numbered list than we are to simply trudge through yet another paragraph of dense text.

Not every article is conducive to a numbered format. In the words of the old blues ditty, if it doesn’t fit, don’t force it. But, before you start writing, it’s certainly worthwhile to consider whether your topic can be explored in a numeric structure. It might well work miracles for your numbers.

4. Fun is Contagious

I didn’t write Unforgettable Answers with an eye toward viral success, or even appealing to any targeted audience in particular. I was just riffing, channeling frustrations of job interviews past as a means of catharsis through gallows humor.

In re-reading the article, I think that devil-may-care attitude shows through, and it’s probably what helped the piece connect with readers.

Our writing conveys more of our souls than we probably care to know. If we’re laboring through an article, readers can feel the strain. Conversely, if we’re having a shore-splashing whale of a time, that cuts through as well, like the bassline to “Blinding Lights” rumbling through your neighbor’s wall at 2 AM. Despite your initial consternation, you’re soon dancing in spite of yourself.

Likewise, before your readers know it, they’re laughing aloud in their cubicle, dirty looks from Gertrude in accounting be damned!

5. Second Winds Lead to Open Waters

We’ve witnessed the typical lifecycle of a Medium story. It normally unfolds over the course of roughly a week. Publication. Distribution. Spike in views. Plateau. Steady decline. Fall off the proverbial cliff and into the wastebasket of moderately successful articles past.

But a few of my best-performing stories, including my 24K magic article, followed a slightly different path. At the point where the steady decline in views typically accelerates to a steep fall into oblivion, they caught a second wind. Views started increasing again. The second or third day of the resurgence often yielded a higher view total than the article’s initial peak. In the case 24K-er, from there it was off to the races. It’s been clocking hundreds of views per day ever since.

I can’t tell you what sparks the second wind, as I’ve got no clue myself. But I can encourage you to cast your kite when you see it beginning to blow. Pin the article to the top of your profile. Link to it in any new pieces you publish on a similar topic. Comment on popular articles in similar tags, so that the readers or author may click on your profile and find your related article. Blast it across your social media! Yes, external views do tend to goose the algorithm, increasing your internal exposure.

Do anything you can to add to the gust and keep it going, because a long enough second wind can breed “recurrency”.

6. Medium Has a “Recurrent” Rotation

In the world of contemporary hits radio, a “recurrent” is a song that’s no longer topping the charts but still tests well with listeners. Thus, recurrent can linger on the playlist, generally in light to medium rotation, for months, or even years after their chart run ends.

Medium also seems to have “recurrent” articles that “played well” on the platform for long enough at their apex that the algorithm continues to cycle them through users’ feeds intermittently for months after publication. While Unforgettable Answers rarely matched its second wind peak of 1.2K views in a day, it has grooved along in medium rotation for 8 weeks, garnering a consistent 80–600 views per day.

Stay recurrent long enough, and you may just return to the top of the charts. Coincidentally enough, as I sat down to draft this, Unforgettable Answers was showing a single-day high of 1.6K views on a random Sunday, 46 days after publication.

While you certainly can’t will yourself into recurrency, you can write yourself out of it. My Top 5 Office-Inappropriate Halloween Costumes had a solid run in October, but on November 1st, its relevancy was instantly rendered nonexistent. As were its views. Timely content is great for a brief viral burst, but if you want your articles to become recurrent, focus on evergreen topics. You’ll come out ahead in the long run.

7. The Formula is Fluid

Like every writer basking in the afterglow of their first viral story, I immediately went back to the well to draw another drink of Stripe-Account-Inflating goodness.

5 Signs It’s Time to Fire Your Job follows the Unforgettable Answers template nearly to a T: a numbered list humorously tapping into very real feelings of workplace frustration. I even used three of the five tags from the first article and published it in the same publication.

To date, it has 352 views. Respectable to be sure, but hardly the follow-up juggernaut I was envisioning.

The moral of the story: the same lottery number probably isn’t going to hit two weeks in a row. Trying to simply replicate a previous story is likely to yield diminishing returns. A copy is never as sharp as the original, and readers will likely pick up on the craven calculation of the sequel that has subtly replaced the inspired whimsy of the original.

Apply the principles of viral success to a fresh topic with a fresh perspective, and you just might return to the promised land. Even if you don’t, it will probably yield a story that will be thoroughly enjoyed by its audience, whatever the size.

Isn’t that why we came here in the first place?