How your story becomes viral?

Insights about the Medium core functionality, example from one of my stories, and final tips

Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash

For the algorithm core functionality, I use insights shared by Zulie Rane in one of her recent Youtube videos (the particular section starts at 11:38, but I highly recommend viewing the whole video for further insights): What Does “Boosted on Medium” Mean? — Interview with Medium Head of Product and Content — YouTube. Below is my interpretation of Zulie’s words:

• Initially, your story is shared with a small pool of readers, who might be interested in your writing. For example, this can be a subset of your most active followers, mixed with a subset of followers of the tags you have added to your publication, and with a subset of followers of the publication (if the story is published elsewhere);
• If the initial pool of readers reacts well (in terms of e.g., click-through rate, read-to-view ratio, numbers of claps, comments, highlights, etc.), the pool of readers gets gradually expanded;
• If the expanded pool of readers still reacts well — it keeps expanding, and, as a result, your story goes viral.

Let me illustrate the algorithm’s behaviour in one of my stories,