How to Leave Your Readers Wanting More Every Time You Publish

These 6 small implementations are all it takes.

The beginning phase of online writing is hard. It’s quite discouraging to spend hours writing articles just to get 10 views. This is certainly not something you plan for. But the good part is that it’s not ever-lasting. As you make the progress, that discouragement turns into motivation and the process becomes fun.

Online writing is an endless journey and there are countless milestones to hit. You have to stay longer in the game to see the success.

But what exactly defines success as a writer?

How do you know when you should call yourself a successful online writer? Is it when you:

• Start building your tribe,
• Start making good money,
• Or got an email list with thousands of subscribers?

Well, these are all important milestones but far from something you can regard as success. Real success for a writer is defined by their readers’ engagement.

It’s when a majority of people read your articles just because you wrote them. One true reader that’s willing to come back, again and again, is better than the 10 regular followers. The number of such readers you have determines your success status.

But where to get these readers from?

Well, you need not go find them. You need to turn your regular readers into your superfans.

Okay! But how?

Let’s discover this in this post.

Use simple and understandable language

If you ask me what’s the biggest challenge while writing something worth your readers’ time, I would say keeping the language as simple as possible. If you have the ability to deliver your complex thoughts in the simplest way possible, you are already a winner.

In 2022, readers have a lot of options. There are plenty of other content creators competing for your target readers’ attention. An average online reader’s medium feed and email inbox are full of enough content that’s 4x their consuming capacity.

But the reality is that most readers don’t like to read complex articles. Instead, they crave simplicity. Give it to them, and you can easily grab their price-less attention. Think of your target audience as 8th graders or a bunch of stressful 9–5 employees. It will help you craft highly readable pieces. Because that’s a shortcut to get into your reader’s minds.

Don’t talk unnecessarily

When you start out as an online writer, you develop an obsession with surprising the world with your writing skills. That’s okay. But it becomes problematic when this obsession often leads to crafting vague and boring writing pieces. At this point, your articles don’t seem to be focused on teaching something useful but misleading and far from something that can be regarded as reader-centric. It happens to most of us. I have been there, too.

Your real upgrade as a writer is when you accept that your readers’ interest is above your hunger for being recognized. The day you learn to edit out the best-written lines of your articles that you think don’t add much value is the day you have officially made up your mind to reach the heights.

Be ruthless when editing. Only the lines that add value to the write-up deserve to be in the final draft. Filter out the rest.

Use stories and numbers to back your claims

Writing a new piece? For what? Maybe you are trying to help your readers with something or just leave an impact on their minds. But what are the odds that the impact your article is going to leave on the readers’ minds will last more than 2–3 days?

Yes. No one is going to keep your article in their mind after two days unless it has something unique or tells a story in a unique way.

Since it’s not always possible to serve something completely unique, starting your article with a story can get the job done. Precisely, using a story in your articles may not only engages more readers but also create a lasting impression.

Be confident

With confidence, one can move the mountains. If you have confidence, it reflects in your stories, and trust me, readers love that. Make sure you are completely confident about whatever you write. You have to take full responsibility for the information, claims, and opinions you deliver.

The confidence makes you sound like an expert and your readers might come back over and over again only for that reason. But if you lack it, it will be a big turn off for anyone who reads it.

In my opinion, the amount of confidence you have defines how good of a writer you are. Be confident so that you can slowly build your credibility and your readers don’t regret wasting their 5 minutes on your article.

Quality vs Quantity

Which of the following options would you go for?

• High reach to the unique audience but no ‘real fans’
• High engagement and appreciation but very poor reach

I bet you wouldn’t like to go for either of these options. Neither of them is perfect. That’s why it’s critical to maintain a balance between quality and quantity so you can achieve the magic equation:

High reach and high engagement.

However, if you have to choose between the both anyway, choose quality. Train yourself to write better every time you sit with your laptop. Don’t hit publish until you are completely satisfied with the draft. Maybe over time, you will learn the art of publishing frequently without losing quality. But, until you don’t, don’t hesitate to take a little extra time to perfect your posts.

Conclude with a motivational speech

More than the roadmaps and tips, your readers crave motivation to follow them. If you can be their one-stop shop for all these things, believe me, you will be unstoppable. While your post’s main body should strictly be informative and focused on delivering what’s promised in the title, use the conclusion part to feed their hunger for motivation.

Simply, if the readers feel both informed and motivated at the end of an article, they are more likely to remember it for a long time, and perhaps, keep coming back for more. This small trick may also be helpful to get more clicks on your CTA link (of course, if you have inserted any). Just say some nice words in addition to providing a summary of the article. That’s all.

Bottom Line

Building a real fanbase is the ultimate goal for online writers. Every online writer you know is working for it. But, will all of them be successful? I don’t know.

What I know instead is that it is absolutely possible. We all know some real people who were nothing but became a sensation in a matter of a few months. How? Well, the ‘luck’ does not qualify as an honest answer here. They definitely have something that you are missing and that you can work upon. Figure out that one thing.

Now, whether you find that one answer or not, the tips in this article will surely help you inch forward in the right direction.

Best of luck!

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