5 Things To Avoid While Writing Headlines On Your Stories
An Advice For New Writers, And Anyone Who Are Experiencing Problems With Getting Their Content Published
Writing a snappy headline, that just pitches your reader right in, is perhaps every body’s dream who is aspiring to engage an audience towards their content. But there are at times, on medium when you have written something really good, but somehow you see a message “not distributed in topics” below it. It does hurt, but wait a minute you read the curation guidelines, and still, your content was not selected.
Medium’s guidelines are pretty abstract when it comes to what type of content is reader-friendly and platform-friendly. As they are only guidelines but not enough examples to go on to how they would work in favor of the writers. Thus, I have been fairly taking my chances to take all sorts of risks, to write headlines that perhaps would help me in defining the “Don’ts” when writing them through really hard failures.
Perhaps, writing with your all and then failing at it, by killing your content by writing something that had a fair chance of curation, can hurt. But this is why, I’m taking the chance to address the issue of what not to write as your headline, as I believe if you even remotely write anything related to such things, you have “zero” chances of getting your content curated.
If you’re like me who has ADHD, then I would say that we don’t learn unless we don’t fail. Thus it is necessary that we do, to grab a better understanding of how things work. Because, certainly we won’t be getting it the first time, and that’s all right, dear buddy!
Don’t feel too bad, we have to abide by the platform’s policies. Medium will curate your content if it is concise, clear, and succinct. If it has a headline that doesn’t violate the guidelines and is well written, to convey your point effectively.
For that, you have to carefully experiment with reading the guidelines by writing the headlines, so that they meet the guidelines and give you a fair chance at curation.
Overall, I believe medium’s curation works just like any Application Tracking System would work but in curation’s regard it uses “tags” instead of “keywords”, Perhaps it throws away any content that violates the guidelines using “keywords”, “phrases”, and even entire “titles” that exhibit such behaviors.
Although this is just my theory after understanding somewhat how it would work, I don’t believe the mechanic of curators and given their terminal from which they read and curate the topics are far from what I believe, is similar to an ATS terminal. I mean, if we are talking about Software systems then I believe an ATS can be supplemented here as an argument.
Just as you would add your resume and apply it through a site like “workday”, the ATS would store it, and then track for certain keywords or moreover scan the entire CV for relevant matches, and if it meets the criteria set by the administrators, or recruiters in that regard, the CV would be selected and the person would be called for an interview.
Just like this, I believe medium curation system would work like this too, it doesn’t seem like a simple process, but for argument’s sake, we can suppose it is. When you apply for curation, the curator might select as it would be recommended for a specific “tag” and then read the entire content that you post or some of it which the curation system would select. If you write a headline perhaps that is against the metrics set, it would completely remove it from curation having no chances for it to be curated ever again, and then its junk.
Thus, here are 5 things to avoid when writing your headlines.
- When writing headlines, about topics concerning death, loss, try to avoid sentences and words such as “death”, “die”, or “dying” just don’t use it at all in your topic, instead use words like “demise” if you want it to reflect an effect. An example would be, A Tragedy Happened: Death of a Loved One and My Cat died more than a decade ago, and I still can’t forget Mrs. Truffles to name a few come under this guideline “Stories that glorify, celebrate, downplay, or trivialize violence, suffering, abuse, or deaths.”
- When writing about topics that are about sensitive issues, such as assault be careful it gets tricky here because you have to write a headline, that doesn’t violate the guideline section explicitly stating “Stories that exist mainly to target, shame, intimidate, or harass identified, identifiable, or anonymous people.”
- Even while writing headlines, avoid improper formatting like adding “ — “ in the headline, or other types of ways, the headline should be simple and concise if you’re aiming to impress, and convey what you’re writing about clearly.
- For Poetry Enthusiasts, I would advise you not to write something clearly about death in the headline section. Even if you do, it should be an abstract representation of the subject, here yet again the guidelines work will work against you. I have written a fair amount of poems, and I believe that gives me a great deal of experience of why your title needs to be “explicitly strict” about what you want to “convey”. Don’t use longer titles, if you want it to be curated in my honest opinion. It should define, a purpose and a point towards the entire piece you have written.
- Lastly, topics such as this is a big no-no, if you’re writing for fun and sharing a few laughs, then I would suggest doing it, but don’t write it if you aim for curation because it won’t be curated. Let me give you an example, 5 Non-Productive Tips for Pro-Procrastinators.
The Takeaway
- Avoid titles, and headlines with the word “death”, “dying”, “dies”, “dead”, “die”, “died” and listicles.
- Avoid using typos, — , or any special characters unless what you are writing about demands it.
- Avoid longer titles for poems, they should be swept under the rug, unless its something you require
- Avoid writing titles of poems about death, abuse, assault, or even issues that trivialize them.
- Avoid points 1, 2, 3, and 5 at all costs otherwise, it would just be filtered out by the curation system. 😉
Thanks so much for taking the time to read this, I hope you can avoid such pitfalls and keep learning and writing. Remember, medium is friendly — it’s just that the guidelines are too abstract to completely apply them to your writing. But that’s what failure is for, fail until you become adept at writing good content, that sells the point and the purpose.
Stay Blessed and Stay Safe!