I recently read one of Steve Campbell’s posts over at The Ascent.

It’s quite a long post, with a lot of good things in it. Among everything else he talks about, Steve listed a few things he’s noticed that tend to make for more successful Medium posts.

Since I, like everyone else without 10,000+ followers, am always asking “how can I write better articles?”, I gobbled up the advice.

Which I am now sharing here, just in case you don’t feel like wading through the original post for these little nuggets.

But I’ll be honest; this is more a reminder for myself, and a way to commit these tips to memory.

So, what were Steve’s tips?

Well, he’s noticed that a post here on Medium tends to do better if it can satisfy one or more of the following criteria:

• Article is 7–8 minutes long
• Writing is at a 6th grade reading level
• Average of 12–15 words per sentence
• Easy to read sentences
• Title uses power words like Great/Top/Best
• Sentence-case titles
• Direct calls to action
• Article published on Tuesday or Saturday

All pretty simple stuff right? Any one of us can do that with our articles.

But there’s also quite a lot to pick through as to why articles that hit these points tend to do better. And I thought I’d go through that here.

Article is 7–8 minutes long

This one thing here might explain why my own articles aren’t getting quite the hits that I might like; I tend to write articles that are around 4 minutes long.

It does mean that, right off the bat, there’s something I know I can do to improve my posts’ performance.

The popularity of 7–8 minute articles makes total sense to me.

Something that’s a 7–8 minute read is gonna clock in around the 1800 word mark, which is a pretty substantial amount of words.

It’s enough words for a college level essay, which means it’s more than enough to really get into a subject in a satisfying way.

A 7–8 minute article is gonna be able to cover more ground and deal much better with nuance than a shorter article. And it’s gonna feel much better value for the reader as a result.

7–8 minutes is also a pretty quick read. You can fit it in around other commitments, in breaks or lulls in your day.

But the same is also true of the 4–5 minute articles. So why do the slightly longer posts tend to do better?

I feel that 7–8 minutes manages to perfectly balance a quick read with length and depth of article. Quick enough to fit in around your day, but satisfying enough to feel that it was a really worthwhile use of you time.

And while you can definitely hit all those points with a shorter piece, I’ll be experimenting with writing some longer articles.

Writing is at a 6th grade reading level with easy to read sentences

I’ve put these two points together because they feel like they’re one and the same thing. If you’re writing at a roughly sixth grade reading level (that’s 11–12 years old for those of us not on the grade system) then by extension your sentences will be pretty easy to read.

While I definitely feel that there is room on Medium for more dense, technical pieces of writing, it’s not really surprising that it’s the easier to read articles that tend to do better.

And no, it has nothing to do with the intelligence level of your readers.

So much of the advice I’ve seen around the style of writing used in blogging emphasises making it as easy as possible to read.

And at the end of the day, Medium is a blogging platform, albeit one where people can and do get into some pretty weighty subjects.

There is a time and a place for dense, difficult to read writing, but (most of the time) a blog isn’t really it.

People are likely to be reading your blog in their spare time, for fun. Which means you need to make it as little effort as possible for them to get through your work.

A piece of writing that requires a lot of effort to get through is one that is likely to be abandoned three sentences in.

I can tell you that from my own reading experience.

Sixth grade reading level seems like it’s about the right level to be easy to read without talking down to the reader.

If you want to make sure you’re writing easy to read sentences around that level, try the Hemingway app. It’ll help you weed out your difficult sentences and tell you what grade your piece reads at.

Average of 12–15 words per sentence

This is another way of making sure your post is easy to read, I think.

Run on sentences bog a post down, making it difficult to read. It also makes your paragraphs super dense, even if there’s only a single sentence in them. Both these things will put readers off.

But if you only write super short sentences that’s gonna put readers off too.

Short, sharp sentences are good for emphasis, but a whole article of them will feel staccato. Like you’re either talking down to your reader or shouting at them.

Keeping sentences around 12–15 words means you’ve got a good balance between the two.

And remember, it’s an average of 12–15 words per sentence. So you can still use super short sentences or long, run on ones when you feel they add something to your article.

As long as it averages out, you’re fine.

Title uses power words like Great/Top/Best

Again, this point makes total sense.

(And did you notice how I put it into practice with this article?)

If an article is claiming to give you the best or top or a great anything, there’s a sense of value being conveyed to your reader.

And blogging, like art, is all about value.

Promise your reader some real value in exchange for their time, and deliver on it, and your article is gonna do better than one that doesn’t.

Sentence-case titles

My gut feeling with this one is that it conveys a sense of informality when the article title is in sentence case.

I’ve always used them for my posts because using capitals for each word feels more like a newspaper. Or like you’re being shouted at.

And sentence case is that little bet easier to read, which ties into a bunch of the other points.

Make things easy to read, and don’t shout at your readers.

Direct calls to action

It’s not clear from Steve’s article whether he means direct calls to action in the post title, or down at the end of them.

It could be either. It could be both.

It makes sense that having a direct call to action in the title would result in more views though. If it’s a good call to action, then people are gonna answer by clicking on your article.

Simple enough.

It’s perhaps less clear how a direct call to action at the end of a post could improve its performance.

I guess it entirely depends on the nature of that call to action.

If it’s a call to sign up to a mailing list or download a free ebook then it’s gonna be hard to judge how that would affect a particular post’s metrics and performance.

If the call to action is one to comment or clap, then that’s easier to see how it would affect an article’s performance.

Any or all of these things might be responsible for an article’s success, but my gut tells me it’s either a call to action in the title or a call to clap and comment. Or both of them.

Views, claps and comments are the measures of success my Mediums metrics, and the most easily measured. Try out direct calls to action, both in your title if you can and at the end of a post. See what happens.

Article published on Tuesday or Saturday

Saturday makes total sense to me. It’s the weekend, a lot of people are off work and have more time to check Medium. Which means more eyeballs on your writing if it pops up on a Saturday.

The fact that Tuesday is a good day for posting didn’t make sense at first.

Most people are at work that day, why would it be a good day to publish?

I suspect the answer is because Tuesday is where the work week really starts to weigh on most people.

On a Monday there’s a sense of fresh start, perhaps a nagging feeling that you have to show up and do your best because everyone is watched. But Tuesday lacks those qualities. And Tuesday is perhaps the day it really starts to sinks in just how far away Friday is.

Tuesday then, seems to be a pretty good day for procrastination. Which apparently means scrolling through Medium.

Alternatively, people might have noticed their fresh Monday feeling slopping away, and are trying to recapture it. I wonder if the self-improvement and productivity posts tend to do better on Tuesdays? I wouldn’t be surprised.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter why Tuesdays and Saturdays are better for posting, just that they are. If you can time your posts for when there are gonna be more eyeballs on them then they’ll naturally get more views.

Which means more of the other kinds of engagement.

These are just guidelines

As Hector Barbossa would say, these things are more guidelines than actual rules.

There are always gonna be wildly successful posts that have none of these things, and there’s no hard and fast way to get a ton of views and engagements.

If there were we wouldn’t still be reading “how to get more views on Medium” posts.

But what Steve did was provide several traits that popular Medium articles shared, and backed it up with data.

And that gives us all a framework, concrete things we can do that might improve the performance of our articles. Things that have evidence to back them up.

It might not work for every article you write, in fact, it’s pretty much guaranteed to not work for every one. But if you aim to hit say three or more of these guidelines with most of your articles, then you should see some traction.

But always keep mind that a well written, heart-felt piece of writing that provides real value to a reader will always go down well, regardless of any other characteristics.

Shoot for the things listed above, but trust your instincts when it comes to your own writing.

Not everything can be made to fit a framework, and that’s a good thing.

That’s what makes writing worth doing.

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