Summary

The article suggests that writers can significantly enhance the impact of their content by employing a specific copywriting technique, which involves identifying the root cause of a problem, explaining why past solutions have failed, and then presenting a new solution.

Abstract

The author of the article shares insights gained from analyzing successful articles on Medium, including those by notable writers like Tim Denning and Sean Kernan, and even those plagiarized by a Japanese publication. The key to success, as highlighted by a copywriting guru named Jason Capital, lies in a marketing strategy exemplified by the fitness program P90X. This strategy diverges from traditional advertising that simply praises the product. Instead, it focuses on educating the audience about the underlying issues behind their problems, why previous attempts at resolution were ineffective, and then offering a viable solution. The author encourages writers to adopt this approach in their articles, particularly in the self-improvement genre, by clearly stating the unresolved past issues and presenting a solution, rather than just sharing findings. The author's own experience with this technique led to significant engagement, with one article receiving nearly 1.4K claps in the first month of writing.

Opinions

The author believes that Medium's algorithm changes have disrupted the visibility and success of writers' content.
Medium's financial constraints may have influenced the changes in content distribution and monetization.
The most successful articles, including those stolen by ichi.pro, share a common approach in their writing style.
Jason Capital's copywriting formula, which emphasizes problem identification and solution presentation, is more effective than conventional marketing tactics.
The author suggests that most people are 'cognitive misers' who are skeptical of traditional advertising claims due to past disappointments.
The P90X marketing campaign is highlighted as a prime example of successful advertising that breaks away from the norm.
The author advocates for a writing style that addresses the reader's past failures and offers clear solutions, as demonstrated in their own successful articles.
The effectiveness of this approach is evidenced by the author's personal success and the engagement received on their articles.

Convert Your Writing Into The Extraordinary With One Trick

Illumination Is My Favorite Platform To Do It On

Recently, I have been reading articles such as No, You Are Not The Only One! which have been saying that our Medium Overlords have tinkered with the algorithm, confusing people and disgruntling writers.

Your would-be viral material is no longer going viral. What’s wrong?

Well, apparently Medium couldn’t afford to share so much of the pie anymore. So what can we do about it?

This is one thing that I have discovered while poring over hundreds of articles, including ones that have been stolen by our Japanese copy-cat publication ichi.pro.

I noticed that there was something different about the articles that got stolen, the articles that I wrote that did BEST, and most articles written by people such as Tim Denning and Sean Kernan.

All of this came together for me when, after compiling all of my notes one night, I happened to be watching a copywriting tutorial video.

HERE’S What Happened:

The REAL Formula For Copywriting That Converts IMMEDIATELY, is the video I was watching by a copywriting guru named Jason Capital.

In it, he explained a Case-Study about a company known as P90X that ran one of the most successful infomercials of ALL time. I was bored, so I watched it.

P90X

None of this is an ad or an affiliate link by the way. Here’s what this company did that was special and how you can apply it to your writing.

P90X has sold, according to this article, $500 million+ in a few years while advertising on television. Television ads, as some of you are probably aware, are one of the most expensive forms of advertising short of having an airplane write something in the sky like at Olympic events. So you have to have a really good marketing campaign in order to pull it off.

Here’s what P90X did:

They went away from conventional marketing campaigns that went something along the lines of, “Our product is really GREAT! Here’s proof. Please buy. It’s even better than all of the other things you’ve bought.”

Jason Capital states that most people are what is known as ‘cognitive misers’. This means that when we see something, we want to think, “I already know what that’s about and I know it doesn’t work.”

We’ve already been promised things many times by advertisements and then been let down so we become deaf to this.

What P90X, Tim Denning, Sean Kernan, and myself (only very rarely) did that worked better is to explain to the customer/ reader what the real cause behind a problem is, why it hasn’t been solved by all the past solutions they’ve tried, and then explain the solution.

I’m Not Saying You Haven’t Done This BEFORE.

But as opposed to writing articles such as, “What you can do to make your writing better,” phrasing the same thing as “Choosing clickbait images was the reason your writing wasn’t read. Here’s the solution,” works a lot better.

You have a whole subtitle and title to work with for that, as well as the main body of the text.

So NEXT Time:

Next time you want to write a Self-Improvement piece, try phrasing it in the simple and obvious way of: “Here’s what wasn’t working for you in the past, and here’s how to solve it,” rather than “Here’s my finding.”

In my article, My SUSPICIONS: How Dr Mehmet Yildiz Actually Grew This Platform I wrote that the problem other Publications have is that they have stopped growing and clogged up their editorial processes and what ILLUMINATION did differently. Phrasing it like that made all the difference. I even gave away the ACTUAL secret in the subtitle: The SECRET Is In The Editorial Team.

In my first month of writing EVER, I wrote an article that got me almost 1.4K claps and I was able to replicate this with several other articles such as, My Best TRICK I Stole From Another Writer, where again I simply outlined a problem I had, why it wasn’t solved, and the solution.

You can turn your writing into the extraordinary by simply changing the way it is phrased so that it appeals to the human psyche.