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If you asked me 5 years ago what I thought I would be doing right now, I would have said anything other than writing (playing video games probably haha) yet here we are.
I am super grateful that I found medium since I always had ideas in my head but never put them anywhere other than on Evernote.
Fast forward half a year and here we are, with 100ish articles under my belt and not looking to stop anywhere soon! There were things I learned while writing here that I doubt that I would have found out anywhere else thanks to every single one of you!
So to give back to the community for all that they have done, I will share things that have proven useful to me in here.
People secretly like listicles
Even though that people say that they hate listicles (articles that have a list, kind of this one) stats from all over the web say the contrary.
As you can see in the image, the biggest engagements on articles came from the ones that were actually listicles. (yes, I know that the pic is related more towards headlines, but generally, when someone puts numbers on headlines they are making list.)
I have seen a lot of people here regarding listicles as an insult to articles since they are easier to do and generally have useless information, but I feel that this has been since some of those big names across the web have made them seem shit (BuzzFeed comes to mind.)
But yet when I am on medium I read really good listicles from just about anyone!
Let’s try to make listicles become a pillar in our writing community and not an anomaly that we refuse to use because others use it “wrong”.
People don’t care how much you edit.
It really took me some time to truly understand this since I thought that editing a lot would make my article look better.
I was wrong, (to some extent) since the more I edited the more generic and normal the article became which should never be your goal when writing.
So I began editing much less, leaving my articles in a “raw” format and my posts began to get more attention, people were engaging with the article and it was being clapped more!
So what I am saying here is this
People like to read articles made by other humans not something modified by a program to make it seem that way.
I am not saying that you shouldn’t edit any of your articles because that would leave all the grammatical errors on the table (I would know haha) but try to keep it to a bare minimum. So what if the article isn’t “perfect”? (which by the way doesn’t exist) It will let other people know that you are being as honest and as raw as possible to them which is good nowadays.
People don’t like articles that look like the million others that are on the web. People like creativity, innovation, and things that can help them with what they are doing!
They honestly don’t give a fuck how much you edit meanwhile the article provides value to them.
You have to engage a lot!
I don’t understand why you would come to medium to only write articles and see if your stats got better.
There are so many good writers here that you can learn from yet some people don’t even read anything, they simply publish their work and leave.
Don’t be like that, even if you don’t like talking to people that much you can still give some claps to other writers, leave a comment on what you thought about the article and more!
Medium is a platform for people who love to share their knowledge through written word but in its core it is still a social media platform and the only way to grow on social media is to engage with others!
There is no other way around it.
Give medium 30 minutes of your time every day to engage with other people, if someone comments on your article then see if you can write back or at least give them some claps to show that you did see their response and that you appreciate them.
Being kind every single day ins’t hard, being a jerk and then trying to fix it is.
Don’t be an asshole here or on anywhere, even if the person deserves it.
Kindness always wins in the long run!
Thanks for taking the time to read this article! It means a lot to me!
Much love to every single one of you!
Originally Published on Medium
Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash