Forget Everything You Know About Going Viral on Medium

Write quality content and cross your fingers

In the blogosphere, there is one milestone that each of us dreams about: going viral. Because, seriously, who doesn’t want that kind of feedback? Who doesn’t want an awful lot of eyes on their work? Who doesn’t get some deep satisfaction from knowing that a 1,000, 100,000, or 20 million people read what they wrote?

Viral article recipes have been around forever on Medium. A lot of writers, once they get to the point that their article’s stats blow out the roof, feel compelled to share their success and give pointers about how to do it. You can find instructions, listicles of superb tricks and tips for brilliantly useful topics, and amazing headlines that are supposed to get you the viral success you crave.

I can’t blame anyone for sharing their journey, be it out of helpfulness or humble-bragging, but let’s be clear here: There is no recipe for going viral. There are a few ingredients that will help you, but there is no surefire way to assure that this or that article will make it.

Whether you like it or not, the key ingredient is luck. This luck is similar to the luck in poker. Those who play poker claim that in the long run, it’s not a game of luck, but of expertise, skill, and timing. But it is understood that there is an element that is unpredictable.

I have been writing on Medium for a little over a year now, and I had one article that went viral and it defies every viral article rule.

Let me break it down for you, to prove that you can forget everything about viral articles. Let’s see the myths debunked.

1. You Have to Write in a Trending Category to Go Viral

There are and there will always be topics that work better for viral potential. You can see how the pandemic-related articles go crazy and you can see how relationship advice or self-improvement is filling up the Popular on Medium list. Of course, going viral is about writing about some topic that can be of interest to a lot of people, because the topic needs to be intriguing and then the content needs to be good enough to keep their attention.

I wrote an article in November about how my husband had settled for me. It’s a personal essay, telling my story — nothing else. It’s not related to any trending topic, it doesn’t have tangible advice or a success story in it. It’s not contributing to your self-improvement either. It is a relationship essay, but this is as far as it goes.

You simply cannot know what will go viral. And it should give you hope because this means you just need to keep writing your own truth, in the best possible way.

2. Viral Articles Are for a Select Few Big Names

I don’t think I am one of the select few. I am not a big earner, I am not a name here. I have had mild success during the past 12 months, but I don’t have any privilege. I don’t write for huge Medium in-house pubs and I didn’t have a massive following before Medium either. I’m just like you. I’m just writing, that’s all.

In fact, my viral article after one year is already kind of late, if you think back on some stories when total newcomers get a viral story in their first month. Some come, go viral, and leave because they can never replicate their first fluke. Some stay and strive to get to their first month’s earning back. Some succeed and others don’t. Because it’s not really about the author.

Don’t believe someone who says they can teach you how to do it. Especially if they had one successful minute and nothing before or after. They can tell you the exact same writing advice that you read everywhere else. Quality, quantity, persistence.

Look at it this way: This means that every one of us has the potential, regardless of being a small fish or a big fish.

3. If Your Article Doesn’t Go Anywhere After Publishing, Forget About It

I wrote this article in November. It had some views and reads but despite being curated, it died a quick death. Until it started to get views one day, six months after its publishing date. You can see on the chart how it started and how it went on for months.

You can see that most of my views were internal, so it wasn’t about SEO settings or Google picking it up. It was almost exclusively within Medium, and that’s what contributed to the earnings.

The good thing about Medium curation is that its algorithm dusts off previous articles and randomly expands their shelf-life.

4. You Have to Give an Answer to a Human Need

If you look at a lot of articles with a lot of claps, you can see that it’s usually the helpful articles that have a bigger potential to make it. One aspect of it is that you have to answer some question that your reader desperately wants to know.

Nik Goeke recently had one article on The Worst Rebrand in the History of Orange Juice. It’s a great article! It made the Popular on Medium list, too. But it doesn’t fit the criteria. It doesn’t answer a burning question. It doesn’t make you a better person. It won’t change your life.

And neither will my viral article. The most it could do is to give you a few minutes of sneak-peeking into my life and into my mind, as I am musing about relationships and the mistakes I made. I don’t give advice. I don’t have a conclusion. You can read my story, but the best-case scenario is that you will somewhat relate to my thoughts. It won’t give you answers or change your mind about anything. It is storytelling. And it is vulnerability.

And this means that storytelling, vulnerability, and personal essays also have a shot!

5. You Have to Promote It to Make It Viral

Promoting your article is a great way to get more eyes on your work, and you should totally do it. Especially because Medium appreciates if you help the platform to get views and reads and new readers.

But it is no guarantee to make it go viral — especially not internally. You can get a lot of external views — from a tweet picked up, from a Quora follower base, from having a huge external email list. These can help, but not in going viral.

I am a moderator of a Medium-related Facebook group, but the views I can get from there is limited — as it always is like this in Facebook groups.

My article was shared on Quora after it was starting to go up. But the rest was completely out of my control.

I can’t tell you why my article went crazy. It didn’t fit any categories that are supposed to go viral. It wasn’t massively helpful or life-changing. It wasn’t informative. It wasn’t short and snappy with clear takeaways. It is a personal story, a ten-minute long confessional essay. It’s not even a typical story that everyone can relate to.

There were no bold font parts, there is no white space for an easier read and there are no chapters either. And there is one single sentence of takeaway: never settle.

There must be something about it, though. The average reading time is over four minutes, which means that people actually read it, not just skimmed it or scrolled through it.

It has 47K views and earned me over $2,300 as of today.

So, Where Am I Going With This?

I am not going to say that you need to keep writing good quality articles, because you already know this. I am not saying that it’s the catchy headline that matters the most or the perfect image — they matter, but not that much. I don’t even say that you need to adjust your SEO settings — it can help, but it’s no guarantee. I’m not saying that you need to write a lot and preferably every day for years — you could do that and still not getting a viral article or you can get lucky and go viral with your second article.

All I’m saying is that you don’t need to fit in a specific category, specific format, or a specific topic for going viral. It can be that any one of your past articles just picks up one day and goes crazy. It can be that a seemingly useless topic makes people belong. It can be something funny. Or something very dark. Or useful. It can be almost anything.

It is a matter of luck. You can help luck by writing quality articles. You can help luck by finding the perfect headline. You can help luck by promoting your articles and setting the right keywords so that Google can help you distribute them. But at the end of the day, it’s still about luck.

As my friend aptly put it, imagine every curated article as buying a lottery ticket. The more you have, the better the chances of your numbers coming up in the lights.

The Key Takeaway

And while I am really happy about the article going viral and I think it’s a great article, but I don’t think it’s my best article ever. Assuming that half of my articles are good and the rest is mediocre, I don’t think this one deserved more to go viral than any of the 200 other good ones.

So, forget what they tell you about going viral.

Don’t buy into all of the success stories.

Don’t copy others to replicate their success. Their journey is theirs, your journey is yours.

My only advice is to keep writing quality content, do whatever you can to help luck, and cross your fingers.

And don’t follow every piece of advice you get (including this one).