Content Marketing
How to Write Viral Articles and Blogs
A video presentation of an inspiring and informative article of Dr. Mehmet Yildiz on YouTube presented by Illumination YouTube Coordinator
Introduction
In this post, we introduce a beautifully narrated video by ILLUMINATION-Curated summarising the key points in the recent article of Dr. Mehmet Yildiz titled What I Learned by Reviewing 100+ Viral Articles in 2021 I introduce distinctive patterns of viral content gaining mass attraction, increasing your chance in 2022. We hope you enjoy and learn valuable tips from this article and video.
Last year, Dr. Yildiz also penned this story that inspired thousands of readers and writers. The Beginner’s Guide to Write Viral Articles & Blogs Learn 17 proven techniques and unique metrics. Find the key points that may work universally for every platform on the web.
He is qualified to write these types of articles because, as a prolific writer, he published 1531 articles on Medium, over 5,000 blog posts, and 10,000 comments on articles of other writers to inspire them.
In addition, his seven major publications published over 300,000 articles on Medium, contributed by over 13,000 writers. Dr. Yildiz reviewed over 100,000 of these published stories as chief editor of these significant publications.
He also has a personal publication called Euphoria and posts his stories related to health, fitness, mental health, lifestyle, spirituality, and more. Here is a collection of his personal stories reflecting his valuable life lessons.
You can learn more about the background of Dr. Mehmet Yildiz in this story posted by ILLUMINATION featuring the profiles of editors recently.
How to Write Viral Articles and Blogs on Medium
Video Transcript
Dear Writers and Bloggers,
Who doesn’t want to have viral articles? I guess all of us do.
Viral content gives significant pleasure to creators. We know that gaining content visibility for freelance writers, bloggers, authors, podcasters, and YouTubers is a huge desire. When your content goes viral, you can gain more readers and significantly increase your income.
In this informative video, I summarize an inspiring article posted by Dr Mehmet Yildiz on Medium recently. The title of the article is “What I Learned by Reviewing 100+ Viral Articles in 2021”. His purpose was to guide writers contributing to these publications and inspire them to write viral articles. He gets great pleasure when writers gain visibility, find readers, and earn money on Medium.
Dr Yildiz, in this article, offered tips under eight headings. I briefly touch on each heading summarising the article. I provide a link to the article in the description section so you can read it. If you are not a Medium member, you can request a friendlink to the article so that you can read it. He will be delighted to provide friendlink to his external readers for a free reading of his articles.
Let me introduce you to the eight tips offered by Dr Yildiz.
1 — Controversial and Emotional Content and Style
Emotions play the most critical role for a piece of content to go viral. If your content has no feelings, the likelihood of its mass visibility is very poor. Not necessarily good emotions. Negative emotions also trigger people to read. For example, anger, hatred, frustration, sadness, and grief might attract the attention of many readers. Storytelling style evoking emotions is a well-recognized pattern.
2 — Unique Titles and Subtitles
This sounds very simple, but he has seen many beautifully narrated pieces written rigorously. However, their titles and subtitles do not entice the reader. Instead, they look bland and even meaningless. He observed titles almost as long as a paragraph. From his experience, any content more than 200 characters in title and subtitle do not perform well from visibility and findability perspectives. He also observed this situation in the range he analyzed. Don’t use clickbait as it is not sustainable and might have a boomerang effect.
3 — Designed Content for Search Engine Optimization
SEO does not mean cheating search engine algorithms. Those who attempt them can experience adverse side effects overtly. However, recent search algorithms are much cleverer than humans and can easily detect these types of contrived behavior. The fundamental purpose of SEO is writing our content so that computers can understand and recommend to valued readers. SEO is both art and science. There are some misleading suggestions, such as frequently using some keywords. If keywords are not relevant to the context, I don’t think this recommendation would work.
4 — References to Popular People and Places
He noticed that some viral stories include famous people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jack Ma, and many other celebrities. It is the same for prominent locations. This tactic plays a better role, especially when these names are mentioned in the title or subtitle. This approach does not guarantee as he has seen some stories with names of famous people that performed poorly. If all other points he mentioned match, using references to famous people can significantly increase the chance of virality, especially on social media.
5 — Unusual and Appealing Images
Content developers underestimate the power of images on blog posts, articles, videos, books, and even podcasts. Images create emotions for the consumer. Some images can create an instant connection with readers. If the title of the content relates to the photos or pictures, it can attract the reader’s attention using both sides of the brain for instant decision making.
6 — Breathtaking Opening and Conclusion
Most of the readers usually read the first and the last paragraph of an article, a blog, or a book. If it is written to attract the reader’s attention, the content can be a winner. If the first paragraph is dull and cannot connect with the target audience, even if the rest of the content is well designed and have important messages, readers usually give up, and sometimes they never get back to this blogger or writer. This also applies to podcasts and videos. The first one minute is enough for the audience to listen to or watch a media piece.
7 — Appearance of Content
We may underestimate the formatting, but it plays a role in attracting readers and viewers as much as the quality of content. Unfortunately, some creators neglect this aspect believing that quality content can always win. It is partially true from my experience. Therefore, reputable publishers pay particular focus to format. Readers don’t like the cumbersome and cluttered format in any type of content. The style needs to appeal eyes of the readers to choose a piece of content. Eye-catching formatting can have a subconscious effect on decision-making.
8 — Social Media Boost
Sharing with an emotional stimulus can have massive potential for content to go viral on social media. He does not mean sharing in media by the content developer but by the content consumer. Even though initial sharing by the owner of the content is essential for creating visibility, what truly matters is sharing by the readers for credibility and trust of potential readers. Some social media tools are more powerful than others. Some of these tools and platforms gain millions of views.Search engine and platform algorithms distribute content getting signals from many readers in a specific period. For example, YouTube is a remarkable tool to create visibility.
Concluding Remarks
Dr Yildiz observed many bloggers use vlogs successfully to get their content found and visible to consumers. He even noticed very reputable content developers record their voices while driving a car or walking in a park.
That is it.
Honestly, it is not too late if you didn’t get any viral content in 2021. However, keeping optimism, investing time and energy with a systematic approach can bring the joy of tasting viral content.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz has many more tips in other articles, which I plan to cover in future videos.
Thank you for watching this video. I hope you find it valuable.
I will share the valuable links in the description of this video. Please join our channel to find informative videos like this. I also introduce writers and editors to my videos. You can leave a comment or contact me at Illumination’s Slack workspace. I will help you amplify your great messages via YouTube.
Have a good one.
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If you want to be featured on ILLUMINATION YouTube channel, you can contact Illumination YouTube Coordinator on the Slack workspace to enter the long waiting list. Aidan prepares one video every second or third day as he has a full time job and schooling. This is his giveback activity to writing community as a token of Dr Yildiz’s mentorship to him. If you don’t have access to Illumination Slack you can request access via this weblink.
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