Want More Readers? Change Those Tags & Titles

Summary

An author's strategic changes to article titles and tags, along with pinning the story to their profile, significantly increased external views, though internal views lagged, revealing the importance of experimentation in attracting readers on Medium.

Abstract

The author published an article comparing the romances of Mark Antony and Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, initially receiving fewer views than expected despite changing tags and titles. A title change to focus on Taylor and Burton's romance led to a substantial increase in views, primarily from external sources like Google, though internal views, which Medium uses to compensate writers, remained low. The author suggests that frequent alterations to titles and tags, along with pinning stories to one's profile, are key tactics in attracting a broader audience, emphasizing that gaining viewership is an iterative process without a precise formula.

Opinions

The author believes in the power of title changes and tag optimization to attract more readers.
Pinning a story to a profile is seen as an effective method to increase visibility.
There is a recognition that external views do not necessarily translate to income on Medium, which only compensates for internal views.
The author expresses a hope to achieve more internal views and thus higher earnings in the future.
The importance of persistence and trial and error in gaining readership is highlighted.
Encouragement is given to other writers to continue writing, thinking,

I Did and I got Them

Keep Changing Those Titles, Source: Wikicommons

I published my article around April 10th or 11th, 2022, about the similarities of the Romance between Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of the movie Cleopatra nearly 2,000 years later. The title of that article was An Ancient Egyptian Romance That Influenced a Modern Hollywood Romance. Please click on the title to read it if interested.

However, that article, did not get many views as I’d hoped for. Therefore, I kept changing the tags and the title. By trial and error, I played around and it got some views, but not a lot. I even pinned it to my profile, so that people could see it and read the article when they came across my profile.

Graph of Internal Vs External Viewers

However, when I changed the title to Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton’s Romance — Cleopatra, the next day, I noticed a very big jump in the views. As you can see from the picture above, on May 25, 2022, the graph had jumped by a lot. Unfortunately, the blue curve indicates External Views and the green curve indicates Internal Views. As we all know, Medium only considers Internal Views to pay us for that day. Needless to say, I did not get paid much, but I did get a lot of viewers for my article. I did achieve part of what I set out to do. Surprisingly, most of the viewers came from google.

Maybe one day, I will write a title and will get a lot of Internal Viewers to my article, and make a lot more money with this article.

Moral of the story or lesson to be learned here? Always change the title or the tags frequently and pin the story to your profile. It is all by trial and error that you will get readers to read or view your story. Getting viewers isn’t an exact science.

Therefore, keep writing, keep thinking, and keep changing those titles and tags — frequently.

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To see my articles, novels and short stories, please visit my website www.trevordsilva.com