What Viral Writer At Write A Catalyst Are Doing on Medium
Listicle + sandwich style is the best combination
The numbers don’t lie, and the readers are reading. (24,000 of them and counting) Our publication produce a few of these each month.
Some writers don’t like the sandwich style, and others hate listicle articles.
But that’s you as a writer thinking what a reader wants.
Which is fine if you don’t like reading those.
These number tells us a different story, it shows us what readers really want to read.
This writer has over 10K followers; however, not all of their articles do well. Yes, at this level of following, you can still flop very badly, too.
It shows us that going viral is available for everyone and has little to do with following size, but the active readership is a plus when it comes to getting a good head start for your articles.
Among the many viral articles I have seen, the one that makes it over 20K reads has something in common.
They are either following an image, text, image, text style, or having it within a listicle.
This is a very powerful structure that naturally grabs the reader’s attention.
If you ever want to give it a try, here are some details about this article.
How to open like a pro.
I try to study them psychologically.
Not based on the topic or how well they write.
Here is what we get.
Example
Title: 10 Ways to Become A Better Writer. (According to something)
Subtitle: asking a question or stating major facts
Image: a person’s face, from the internet, Wikipedia.
Opening: 141 words
Listicle style: count-down model, a list of 10.
Meat between the Sandwich: 90–100 words
Length: 6-minute read, start with a lower word count.
Formatting style: Bold 3 points followed by 2–4 line paragraphs with italics.
If you keep looking at a viral article, you might miss some of these points.
Why does an article like this work so well?
The is a whole new level of virality.
The psychology behind a well-structured and formatted article.
It gives you a sense of trust, even if you don’t know the author.
The reader knows it will have many lists of things, one after another.
They are very similar to videos like the top 10 richest men in the world.
Once you start reading, you will start to get this mixture of feelings: should I read it or scroll it first?
The information doesn’t have to be that stunning; you can always fill it with good storytelling when it doesn’t click for some readers.
The readability of each section is so easy to the point of reading it when you are not paying too much attention.
The image screen length is about the same as the text length, and it creates a reading habit once you get through a few of them.
A short final thought to finish it off.
I’m not so good at closing, so I’ll leave it at that.
But the most interesting part was the comment section, at the very top was a negative feedback.
A listicle itself is a time burner.
9,000 readers decide within 5–29 seconds that they would not read that article. (That’s self-awareness of knowing what they want from an article)
If someone complains about it, that means they probably spent about of time on the article figuring out why they are still there reading.
I guess that alone says a lot about how the article that draws attention does not need to be that great. Not everyone has to agree on or appreciate your work.
Sometimes we read things that challenge our thoughts.
Agree or not, they still read it.
As we all see things differently.
Thanks for Reading
This story was originally published on [Medium] and is cross-posted here for a wider audience.
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