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If You Want More Engaged Readers Write Shorter Articles
My advice as a frequent reader on Medium.
Have you been looking at your stats and thought: Ugh, what the heck is this reading time?
Seriously, I have been there.
You wrote the perfect story, full of love and support for the readers, yet they paid you dust. You wrote them a detailed 6–10 minute article, however, they only read less than half.
You are left thinking: Well, shit. What happened?
Now, that is where I come in.
When I started writing on Medium, I was told that the most successful articles are those written between 5 and 7 minutes.
That is what you should strive for, they said.
There is a lot of advice out there; but how much of that should we take?
As a reader in Medium, I got to the bottom of the problem. Trust me, I had to wear my Scooby costume and sniff to the evidence.
Content and engagement
Once, I saw this beautiful story. It had an amazing title — a suck me like a melting ice cream headline, but it was 10 minutes long. Yes, 10 minutes.