Content Marketing Strategy
How to Write Content Guaranteed to Get Views and Reads
As a bonus, I explain how to increase the chance of writing viral articles based on experience.
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Purpose of the Article
Writers pour their heart and soul into getting their content to be viewed, read, enjoyed, and shared. Unless we write a personal diary, we all want our articles, blogs, and books to be read by others.
I am inspired to write this article after receiving numerous questions from new writers whom I mentor about increasing views and reading times of their articles, stories, and blog posts.
Giving a guarantee on anything is a risky approach. However, based on my experience, every article and blog post I wrote on various platforms received at least some views and reading times. So, the concept of guarantee in this context is realistic.
Even the most boring articles (highly technical for the public) received some views and a few minutes of reading time. Thus, I am confident that every article or blog post can get some views and reads on established writing platforms.
This article aims to provide practical tips to increase views and reading times of content in various formats on writing and blogging platforms. Therefore, this article is not about giving writing tips, even though some points I mention might contribute to improving the quality of content.
As a bonus, I provide practical tips to increase the chance of viral content on these platforms. I have over three decades of online writing experience and am the author of multiple books, so I have confidence in the tips I provide.
Even though viral content has a huge luck factor, by following some rules, I increased my chance over the last few years. I learned the rules by analyzing the patterns in the viral stories. Interestingly, the patterns were quite obvious.
I haven’t used all the patterns as some of them were unethical to me. However, some patterns I modeled worked for me. I reveal them in section three of this article.
Viral articles are not only for the ego of writers. They also might generate substantial income for writers and sponsored blogs. Furthermore, viral stories can bring new customers if affiliate marketing links are used.
I provided guidance on affiliate marketing in a book (available on this platform) and the use of affiliate links in articles.
This article is for non-fiction writers. My experience in fiction is limited. Thus, my confidence in the visibility of fiction or poetry pieces is low. However, some aspects of this article might apply to fiction or poetry writers.
1 — How to Get More Views
Getting views is much easier than getting reads.
The easiest and most unethical way is clickbait. Obviously, this is not a viable solution as it does a boomerang effect. Furthermore, for the sake of views, writers lose valuable readers.
Besides, most content platforms only pay writers for reading times, not for the number of views.
Here are the three tips to increase the chance of views.
1 — Write attractive titles.
The better option than clickbait is to write attractive titles delivered in the article’s body. As a writer, we need to keep our promises.
If our title is about a how-to article, we must provide steps to explain a process, product, or service.
For example, the title of this article is how to write articles guaranteed to get views and reads. Thus, I explain my method in various steps.
2 — Add attractive photos.
Stories and blog posts with photos get better views than those that do not contain them.
Many readers love photos. An attractive and relevant image immediately grabs the reader's attention and can generate instant emotions.
As most of us make our decisions based on feelings, photos conveying specific emotions related to the title of a story or blog post can significantly increase the chance of opening the content by interested readers.
Like titles, clickbait photos can create adverse effects.
One final note is ensuring photos are copyright free as there are heavy penalties for offenders. In addition, captioning photos in articles and blog posts is necessary.
Why Image Copyrights Matter for Writers, Bloggers, and Editors
3 — Provide an eye-pleasing format.
Many writers miss this critical step or undermine its value. The human brain loves order. The first impression is critical for decision-making. The format of our content serves this purpose.
Before starting to read, most readers take a quick look at the text. If it is not eye-appealing, most likely, they will skip it unless they are desperate about the content. They might make this decision in less than a second.
Cluttered articles and blog posts with long paragraphs, inconsistent headings, confusing fonts, and irrelevant bolding or italics can distract and confuse the reader.
Now that the reader has opened the story or blog post, we need to grab the readers’ attention to encourage them to read the content.
Section Summary
The most critical item to increase the views is the title and subtitle of an article. Then, the photo of the article is essential to generate emotions. Once the reader clicks on the piece, the next essential item is the layout of the content for their first impression. Therefore, the formatting of the content is critical for the next step.
2 — How to Get More Reading Times
Reading times are more beneficial than views. Therefore, we need to make more efforts to improve these items in our articles, stories, or blog posts.
1 — Answer Important Questions
Many readers read because they want to find answers to their burning questions. First, they check search engines. Then, when they see the links, they check the articles or blog posts.
If our article answers a question, search engines most likely index them and offer them to the searchers.
From my experience, the most effective way to get reads is to answer frequently asked questions in my expertise area. I developed this skill by practicing in Quora. Receiving thousands of views and upvotes inspired me.
In the type of articles answering common questions, we need to ensure the title reflects the question. Here are some examples:
How can we reduce writer’s block in five steps?
Why do we need to read more to write better?
What are the major distractions to the productivity of writers?
Who can benefit from affiliate marketing?
When can we gain the best weight loss benefits from exercise?
As you might have noticed, this article is answering a question posed to me by my protégés, as mentioned in the introduction section. They will most likely read it and share it with interested readers.
2 — Solve unsolved problems.
Similar to questions, many readers look for solutions to their problems.
This approach can bring substantial readers if you have expertise in a specific field. For example, my health, fitness, lifestyle, and self-improvement articles always get more views than other topics.
These articles are in demand because they attempt to solve problems even if I don’t give advice in my articles intentionally. Instead, I provide information in a unique way that the readers can solve their problems using the helpful information offered.
These types of articles and blog posts require credibility. Therefore, every statement we make needs to be backed up by established disciplines. I usually provide links to credible sources such as scientific or clinical studies.
3 — Mention your experience in a relevant way.
Readers are attracted to writers who have more experience than them in specific areas. Therefore, niche content by experts usually gets more readers.
Writers with expertise gain more followers as the readers also recommend them to other readers in their circles.
When writing stories, we need to point out and explain our experiences. If we are writing about a product or a service while introducing its function and benefits, we also need to mention our experience with them.
Readers can find about any product or service on the Internet, but they are interested in an authentic experience addressing their problems and concerns. By presenting our experience in a credible way, we can significantly increase the reading times of our content.
4 — Tell an authentic story.
The human brain loves stories. Well-written and realistic stories can hook readers. My story writing principle is clarity, brevity, and impact.
Some writers, to sound sophisticated, use difficult language, convoluted sentences, and long paragraphs. They might work in literary books but won’t work for online readers, especially those using mobile devices.
The attention span of readers on the Internet is very low. Most people read content in a waiting queue or have a quick break. They want to learn something quickly at that time. They don’t care about how educated and sophisticated a writer is.
Even the most complex and difficult topics can be delivered to the reader using a storytelling method with clarity, brevity, and impact.
Here is an authentic sample story reflecting my young and older years in that I used intellect and emotions in the right amount. I also add emotions to my travel stories authentically.
I usually convey challenging topics in health and well-being using stories. You may check some of my stories at this link. These stories gained more readers than my essays with no storytelling.
5 — Provide Takeaways.
Many readers choose a piece of content to get value out of it. They want to get a few key points that might answer their questions. They desire to solve their problems or improve the quality of their lives.
Some readers mainly check the conclusion of an essay before reading the body of the text to understand its value. Therefore, if you mention takeaway points in the first paragraph, they may grab their attention and give them confidence in your article.
The common practice is to provide takeaway points at the end of the article. However, alternatively, some experienced writers provide takeaway points after each section. Both methods can be valuable for different audiences.
Section Summary
These are the most impactful items to increase readability. However, there are many more items to improve the quality and make an additional impact. To keep the story short, I link to one of my articles, providing a checklist for essential items.
Improving the Quality of Writing Using an Editorial Checklist
3 — How to Increase the Chance of Going Viral
As I have written multiple stories about it, in this section, I only focus on five critical items. You may check my previous stories in the relevant links.
1 — Fundamentals
The points I mentioned in sections one and two comprise fundamentals to increase views and reading times of articles or blog posts.
However, viral stories require more effort than usual stories.
I cover them in the subsequent sections.
2 — Emotional and Controversial Content
Emotions play a critical role in humans making decisions. Studies indicate that people make decisions more based on their feelings than logic and intellect.
First of all, viral stories have controversial or emotional titles. This is only 1% of the outcome. 99% is delivering the story in an emotional tone and making it sound controversial by looking at the points from multiple angles.
Some writers who aim to stay on the safe side only focus on an issue’s positive or neutral aspects. Negative factors can make the topic more controversial and attract more readers.
Adding humor to some topics can help the writer to deliver negative emotions more effectively and make them palatable to readers.
From my experience, the more emotions (both positive and negative) a story includes, the more readers it can attract. Conversely, if our content has no feelings, the possibility of its mass visibility gets poor. Let alone go viral; those stories do not get a low level of readers.
Not only the content but emotions are necessary for style and delivery mode. So, emotional storytelling can increase the chance of going viral.
A straightforward story emotionally told by a writer on a platform received millions of views. I was able to summarize the entire content of that viral story, including around a thousand-word story, in three short sentences.
I wrote detailed essays on profound topics that received only a handful of readers. In comparison, simple stories with lots of emotions received thousands of views and hundreds of reading times.
3 — Spectacular Opening and Conclusion
From my experience, many readers usually read the first and last paragraph of an article or a blog post.
If these readers find the first and the last paragraph enticing, they feel obliged to read the middle.
When I checked over 100+ viral stories in my publications in 2021, I noticed that the writers of viral articles made a significant effort to make them extra attractive.
When I interviewed some of these writers, they revealed that they spent more time on the first and the last paragraph than the body of the text.
Even if our content is very well written, if the first paragraph is boring and does not convey the key messages, the chance of the reader reading the rest is very low.
4 — Platform-Based Promotional Aspects
Viral stories are usually supported by platforms in the form of featuring or special distribution. This is, of course, a privilege and does not happen to every writer or blogger.
However, we can still increase the featuring, curation, or special distribution chance by meeting fundamental requirements. I provided five key questions to increase the likelihood of curation on different platforms.
In addition, writing high-quality content, selecting relevant tags, and clear SEO (search engine optimization) descriptions can increase the chance of featuring and special distribution.
5 — Social Media Friendliness to Boost Reachout
Many readers love to share exciting and meaningful content on their networks. I noticed that reader-supported social media articles and blog posts went viral.
If writers keep posting their stories on various social media platforms, the chance of virality is too low as they can only reach out to a limited audience. Besides, these platforms distribute the content to less than 1% of followers, from my experience.
However, if hundreds of readers can share the same post, it can reach out to thousands and even millions of readers, depending on their network.
For example, a story of mine shared by around 300 readers on a writing platform received close to a million views in two days.
So my point is the post needs to be social media friendly so that more readers can share them proudly on their networks.
However, if you have many followers on your social media platforms, you may collaborate with other social media members who might amplify your posts. I provided guidance on the practical use of social media.
Section Summary
After fundamentals, the most critical item for writers is to ensure their content is lively with emotions. By meeting fundamentals, writers can increase the chance of being featured and curated by platforms. In addition, making stories social media friendly and encouraging readers to share them can increase the chance of going viral.
Conclusions and Takeaways
Writing is an art and science requiring substantial energy from the creators. Many writers make writing a lifestyle, pouring their heart and soul into their craft but only receiving tiny views and reading times. It is an undesirable situation.
I have strong empathy and compassion for those writers as I experienced the pain in the past. Therefore, I pass along my hard-learned lessons to new writers and bloggers so that they gain experience faster.
This article is not about writing lessons. It is about delivery and marketing to gain views and reading times. I believe the readers of this story are perhaps much better writers than me. My contribution is improving delivery.
I observed remarkable writers with years of experience in particular topics, but their content gained minimal visibility since they did not have delivery and marketing skills.
After mentoring some of those writers for a short time, they significantly increased exposure to their content. As a result, some gained substantial followers, and some built a loyal audience. This is a critical success factor.
I guided increasing followers and building a loyal audience in several articles. Here are some guiding samples reflecting my experience.
Subscribers Can Produce 50 Times Better Results Than Followers for Freelance Writers
What I Learned After Publishing 1,010 And Reading 100,000 Stories
Followers are important in the beginning but not critical for success. However, gaining a loyal audience is vital for the success of writers in the long term.
I hope these tips can help you increase your views and reading times. If you know better tips, please share them in the comments section of this story so that other writers can benefit from them.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
Medium now has a new distribution approach called BOOSTING. If you want to learn more about it, I documented my initial findings, perspectives, and personal experiences in an article, presenting it in a checklist format for new writers.
New Writers: Enhance the Chance of Boosting via This Quality Checklist
I answered a frequently asked question by new writers.
Generating passive income from writing might look simple, but it is not easy. Yet, it is possible with the right mindset. If you are willing to work hard and smartly with an open mind and optimistic approach, you can create a successful passive income stream from your content.
How to Write Content to Generate Steady Income
Here is a case study to show the reality for aspiring writers.
I compiled all my writing-related stories in a list. I hope you find some helpful ones in this collection.
If you enjoyed this story, you might also check my experience on other topics.
Ten Hobbies Enhanced the Quality of My Life over the Past Five Decades
Healthy, Wealthy, and Happy People Taught Me 10 Valuable Lessons
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As a new reader, you might check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting on my reviews, observations, and decades of sensible experiments. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
I enjoy informing my readers about hormonal intelligence by writing about neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, GABA, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, glutamate, and histamine.
One of my goals as a writer is to raise awareness about the causes and risk factors of prevalent diseases that can lead to suffering and death for a large portion of the population.
To raise awareness about health issues, I have written several articles that present my holistic health findings from research, personal observations, and unique experiences. Below are links to these articles for easy access.
Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, and Major Diseases.
I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:
Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients to improve metabolism and mental health.
Disclaimer: Please note that my posts do not include professional or health advice. I document my reviews, observations, experiences, and perspectives only to provide information and create awareness.
I publish my lifestyle, health, and well-being stories on EUPHORIA. My focus is on metabolic, cellular, mitochondrial, and mental health. Here is my collection of Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.
If you enjoy writing and storytelling, you can join Medium, NewsBreak, and Vocal as a creator to find your voice, reach out to a broad audience, and monetize your content.
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