How to Write So That People Will Read You

#1 Tell the truth.

I have been writing on Medium seriously for a bit more than a year and reached 1k followers some days ago.

This article isn’t about the number of subscribers though. That’s not the goal — it’s a consequence, at most.

So, what’s the goal?

The goal is to resonate with readers.

Only when you do will they give you a follow (half the time, the other half is people trying to get you to follow them back) and maybe even, their precious email address.

Here is a bunch of other stuff I learned about writing articles people read on Medium.

1. Tell the Truth

We’re living in an ugly period where the truth is censored, silenced, distorted, fought upon, weaponized, or used as a pretext for hate and violence.

In the public discourse, it often shines by its absence as each party tries to shill their propaganda to advance their personal agenda.

While the truth is rarely part of the explicit mainstream narrative, it can often be found deep inside the arguments made.

The thing about truth is that it’s very, very difficult to hide.

Almost everyone is aware of it.

Even if people won’t say it, even if they won’t behave according to the truth, even if they deny they know the truth, they will still think about it. It doesn’t matter how deep inside they try to bury it — the truth always survives.

Eg: everyone in North Korea knows it’s a circus. But everyone is pretending it’s not, so the show continues.

So, why should you tell the truth? Because the truth is the first ingredient you need to resonate with readers.

Broadly, readers seek two things in an article: one is a solution to a problem, and another one is a connection with you (the writer) over feelings, experiences, or opinions that you share.

When you speak the truth, you increase the chances for a connection to happen since the main thing about truth is that everyone shares it.

To quote Jordan Peterson, tell the truth, or at least, don’t lie.

Good advice!

2. bE yOuRseLf

Yes, I know, “be yourself” doesn’t mean anything and there are the two most overused words in the self-help industry.

So let me specify.

The meaning of “be yourself” in this case has more in common with the point above than with the cringe Instagram pics that have it as caption.

What I mean by “be yourself” is “express what you feel and think”.

What does that mean?

The problem with people is that we’re drawn to be like everyone else. Social pressure exists to make you conform so that it increases your chances to be accepted by the group and hence, surviving (in situations where survival is threatened, no one likes what’s different).

And while our environment isn’t the one we had 15 000 years ago anymore, these biological realities remain indubitably part of the human experience.

In practice, it means you end up with thousands of writers writing the same cringe headlines and articles (that no one cares about) because the original ones worked well when they came out.

It’s a phenomenon more commonly called “the NPC”: the Non-Player Character.

“Be yourself” is the equivalent of “don’t be an NPC”.

If you read a book everyone loved and you didn’t (like the 4-Hour Workweek), say it.

If you love someone everybody hates (or the opposite), scream it.

You’ll be surprised to find people that agree with you.

Things are rarely skewed towards one end in our society. We’re all under the impression that “everyone is thinking/doing/hating/loving” the same things at the same time because BuzzFeed literally wrote “Everyone is talking about this!!”.

Euhm…sorry BuzzFeed, but no.

Never in the history of the world have everyone felt the same way about the same thing simultaneously.

By being truthful (and regardless of whether you’re going against the mainstream narrative or not), the way you perceive truth will always echo with a bunch of people that will thank you for expressing your views.

It will make them feel less lonely. And you’ll gain an audience.

3. Learn What People Want to Read

When I wrote the article about the five books the WEF doesn’t want you to read, I was 80% certain it’d go viral because it had all of the ingredients of things that spread.

A cup of politics, three spoons of anti-elitism, a pinch of conspiracy theory, all wrapped in genuine knowledge with a cherry of entertainment on top.

Of course, I can’t predict what will go viral and what won’t, nobody can.

Furthermore, most of my knowledge of what people like to read is locked into my subconscious.

It stems more from a feeling, an intuition acquired after spending hundreds of hours reading Tim Denning, Sean Kernan, Ayodeji Awosika, Neeramitra Reddy, and Sinem Günel than from any “theory” or dumb books like “Contagious”.

You can’t hack experience with a six-point bullet list.

Putting in the hours is a must.

4. Enjoy the Process

I never write an article because I have to — NEVER.

I noticed that the more fun I have writing an article, the better it works with the readers.

I am gonna be a bit braggy here, but I think it’s for the best.

Sometimes, I adventure myself on cringe places like LinkedIn because I am inherently masochistic. And sometimes, I see people getting into “writing challenges.”

It goes like this.

“I am not so much into writing so for the next 30 days, I am going to challenge myself to write one blog post per day to develop an audience”.

Do you really think it’s going to work?

Listen, there are people (such as myself) who avoid going to the bathroom for five hours straight because they don’t have enough time to write (and they’re in flow).

I have been writing every single day since February 2020 which was the primary reason why I hung around on Medium in the first place. I didn’t optimize for money nor for followers — I just wanted to put my writing out there.

In the long term, who is going to win?

People that can’t drag themselves to their bed to write “just one last sentence”, or the guy who is “ChAlLEnGinG hImSelF tO wRiTe”?

The purpose of a side hustle is to do something you enjoy.

If you don’t, give it up.

5. Quality over Quantity

I stole this directly from Sean Kernan because it’s both good and true.

A lot of popular Medium writers bait you into their funnels with their free “five-day email writing course” and if you’ve done a few of them, you realized that they’re all copycats of each other.

One of the most common pieces of advice is “write a lot, like, publish five times a week. It doesn’t have to be good, JUST WRITE”.

It’s terrible advice.

Here’s an analogy.

Jack has five phones. One has a good screen but no wifi. Another has amazing sound quality but no screen. One has both a screen and sound but cannot make phone calls. One has a good battery but no camera, and the last one has an amazing camera but no battery.

Amy has one phone. The phone has a good battery, camera, screen, sound, can make phone calls, and has wifi.

Who is the aptest to do anything with their phone?

Amy, obviously.

Your articles work the same way.

1000 articles X 0 quality = 0.

Anything X 0 = 0. It’s the tough reality of math.

Consider that out of the 110 or so articles I have written, four made me more than 2/3 of all of the money I have earned.

And the reason why was that these articles had been in the making for a very, very long time and took a lot of effort to write.

6. Have Your Readers in Your Mind Constantly

This habit is something I have developed automatically without really being aware of it.

I started my blog to help others not make the mistakes I had made. It quickly became an obsession and I found myself writing article ideas, googling how to fix problems to write about them, saving links for my newsletter, and even attempted a few experiences for the mere thrill to write about them.

The result is that I frequently get deep into rabbit holes and have a very rich library of ideas to write about, which I am unlikely to exhaust anytime soon.

In a way, my main mission during the day is finding stuff to write about.

Every time I stumble across something interesting, amusing, entertaining, weird, revolting, or simply false, it’s an idea for an article.

I am obsessed, there are no other words. And I am not even that successful, so imagine what it’s like to be Tim Denning.

7. One Book You Should Read

The best book about online writing is, in my humble opinion, Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

The art of positioning is in fact the art of resonating with readers.

If you develop a keen eye for public discourse (Twitter is great for that), you’ll be able to see through the lies of the mainstream and get to the truth.

Take it, and write about it.

This is the type of genuine content readers want to read.

How do I know?

Because this is what I want to read.

Anything false, exaggerated, or written only for clicks (these articles have keywords like “Bitcoin”, “Elon Musk”, “Donald Trump”, or anything about sex in the title) may do well in the short term, but won’t in the long term.

To give another analogy, they are the written equivalent of McDonald’s.

And there are so many of them on this platform that I ruthlessly block at least 3 writers per day because they write these types of stuff.

Don’t optimize for clicks.

Optimize for (another cliche) value.

Conclusion

Do you want to hear something funny?

I am not an English native speaker.

My native language is French. I learned English when I was 19 years old — and at 27, I still make a bunch of mistakes.

In fact, I cringe when I read the articles I have written as recently as last month as I find them awful.

But, I optimize for truth and value, so they seem to find an audience out there — at least for now, nothing is permanent.

These are in a nutshell, the things I have learned writing on Medium.

Hope they can help!

For more articles, head to auresnotes.com.