This is how I guarantee my articles will go viral

After researching 30+ articles, I understood that going viral may not be luck but a voluntary action.

Image by the author

As a writer on Medium I always try to post blogs every single day and keep my audience educated. But it has been 3 days since I have not posted any article.

As in these 3 days I was planning for something big !

A real game changer !

Well, let’s open it up now !

So, I was planning for “A viral article”

Yes, you heard it right !

“A viral article”

So, from 3 days I have researched around 25–30 viral articles and I found some really common things in those articles and noticed that these are the things that are the cause of these articles going viral. I found some things that can take my article’s chance of going viral from 10% to 90%.

Let’s break em’ down in this article, stay tuned !

Beware : I am not holding back anything in this blog, so I’ll be going on a full disclosure mode ! Be ready to fuel yourself with more and more knowledge !

So, after researching reading numerous viral articles, I found that the only things you need to go viral are :

1. A cover image aligning with the title
2. An emotional title
3. Original content
4. A large reach

And in this article I am going to teach you how to achieve all that.

Let’s Start !

How to write the title of a viral article ?

Note : I am not criticizing any writer in this article, I am just giving the results of my research and I am not meant to harm the feelings of anyone or any other fellow writer.

As I explained that you need an emotionally connecting title for your article if you want it to go viral. Every other viral article that I read had a triggering emotion in their title.

Well, the most common were hope, motivation or answering curiosities.

So, to make this clear, I’ll explain this by giving some examples.

Here’s an article by The writer’s path who writes about writers success on Medium.

How Much to Write to Succeed ?

This article gained a lot of traction with 34 comments and 1000+ claps on it. After including this in my list of viral articles, I found something that was common in the title of this article and also other viral articles. That was the usage of emotions.

Medium has a large audience of writers that is finding answers on how to succeed on the platform. Many of them are lazy. They are frustrated and want to earn some real dollars quickly. They want to get answers to their questions like “how much time will it take me to succeed on Medium?” or “how much effort it takes to succeed here ?” And perhaps this is one of the most common questions that every new writer asks “How much do I need to write in order to make some really good money on Medium?”

New writers are frustrated, they are curious to find answers. Even after being consistent for so long, they see no money in their bank account. This frustration triggers the same question in their mind as of the title of this article. As they are frustrated, they want some real quick answers to their question and that is why when this article will show up in front of them, they will just naturally click on it. Thus giving it a view.

Here is one more article by ASAD EDUCATE who is also a writer who writes about writer success on Medium.

Here’s How Much Money I’ve Made For 42 Articles With 35.5k Views

This article gained 3.5k+ claps and 91 comments. This article also answers the same question pinpointed by many new writers i.e “How much money will I make when I become a big writer ?” This title of this article seems to answer to the curiosity of the writers (again an emotion.)

This article also answers a question by new writers i.e “Is writing on Medium worth it or not and will they make good money when they grow as a writer here?” So instead of giving it a title — “Is writing on Medium worth it?”, ASAD EDUCATE crafted the title by telling his own story and giving the proof of it by featuring 42 articles and 35.5k views. And most of all to prove that it is real, he got the cover image as his own selfie.

So, in order to write a title of a viral article you need to pinpoint the feelings of your audience or just understand which audience is vast on Medium and just identify their feelings and write a title that clearly gives answer to those or just provide hope, motivation or any other thing that they need an answer for.

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

How to select the cover image of a viral article ?

So now you know how to write a title of a viral article and now it’s time to explore in some images and select a cover image for your article. Below are some types of images that you can select for your article :

1. Your own selfie : So, if you are writing about something that needs proof, then you can have your own selfie as a cover image. As people on Medium want to know you, they need proof that it is a real person who is writing this article with their own experience and not some chatgpt and most importantly they want to know it even before opening it, and that can happen only if you give that proof to them in the cover image.
2. A cover image aligning with the feelings that are included in the title : So here is an article written by Drashti Shroff :

10 Lessons I Learned From Writing On Medium For 1 Year

The cover image of this article gives the readers a proof that the content including in the article is relaxing for the writers and will also answer some of the questions of the them(newbie writers) and will give them success as a writer (again pinpointing the feelings of the writer to succeed on the platform).

Here is one more article by Kristina God :

I Write One Article Every Month And Get $2,000 Easily

This article’s cover image points towards the feeling of writers to succeed and enjoy their riches after succeeding on Medium just like the girl in the image. It gives the readers the clarity of their dream of succeeding on the platform and readers think that this will too answer all their questions.

As of conclusion I would say that you can either put your own selfie in the cover image to give proof or just give the readers a dream, make them feel like this article will answer all their questions or pinpoint their feelings in the cover image too.

Some other common things that all viral articles have

• They are the common problems of people with the answers wrapped in the article with a good title.
• Many of them are about writers or writing success(but not all of them) because their is a big audience of beginner writers on Medium. In order to go viral, you need people to read your work and to achieve that you need to create stuff that has readers on the platform. Just like Medium has the audience of writers, it also has a large audience for self improvement. You can search that by going to the Medium topics and see how many people follow different topics.
• Some of them are personal experiences(giving proof) that are giving answers to the common problems or questions put up by a large no. of people on Medium but the writers of these viral articles just gives it a title combined with a feeling, that’s why people read their work instead of the other writers. Just like this one article by Lucid Reality points out to the people to stay patient. And instead of writing it’s title like how to be patient, he is triggering the feeling of the readers and giving them hope and motivation by writing the title as “Trust the process”, while also telling how to stay patient in life. This is how you need to craft the titles of your articles by pointing on the feeling of the readers.

Trust The Process

How to avoid writing articles that don’t pay well ?

Note : I will not be able to feature any article in this section as to not harm the feelings of the writers as every writer get flop stories.

So, I also made a list of non viral articles too and here are somethings that I found that one should avoid if he wants to avoid flop articles. Here are they :

1. Their title just says something about a certain thing. Many of those don’t point on the feelings of readers and just say what they wanna say in their title. It doesn’t matter they focus on the feeling in the content or not but the title and image is what the reader sees first.
2. Their image is not something giving a dream, selfie or grabbing the feelings of readers. That is just some image aligning with the article.
3. Sometimes the title of non-viral articles just talk about developing a skill that is important and not point out the feelings of the readers. I mean there are hundreds of articles teaching the same thing, how will you stand out with your writing ?

~ My answer to this is just put a feeling in the title and they will click on your articles instead of the others.

For instance if you want to write an article on discipline, and you name it as Embracing discipline blah blah…

But instead of naming it like that, if you just identify a feeling of your readers, it has the chance to go viral. So for instance, the common question that lazy people have is “Does discipline really pay off ?”

So let’s take advantage of that and craft a 90% sure viral title. So this is a title I have come up with “My life on and off discipline” This title ensures the readers that it will give all the answers to all their curiosities and also tell them that does discipline pay off or not. Lastly by putting up a selfie on it as a cover image, I think it will blow up (I will experiment it.)

4. Their title seems like the writer is just spreading their knowledge and not giving it properly. They just scream out that I am talking about this certain thing and if you have interest in it, come up and read my article. Well, think about the reader, they want answers to their question, think about their main question, a common problem that people face and then combine it with a certain feeling that you can trigger in that.

Creating original content

For this you just need to research properly and provide great insights to your readers. And here’s a tip for you to increase the reading time of your article :

Just keep the readers engaged by constantly formatting things in your article. Write in small paragraphs and not big paragraphs because people hate those big paragraphs.

I also read an educative story written by Dr Mehmet Yildiz, owner of ILLUMINATION publications who researched 100+ viral articles and gave us valuable tips. Here is the link to his story.

Here’s What I Learned by Reviewing 100+ Viral Articles in 2021

For reach

Lastly, you need to distribute your article to a larger audience and if you are a famous writer with lots of following and often gets curated by Medium, then you don’t need to worry about that.

But if you are a small writer, then to increase your reach you can submit your article to any of the publications with a large following on Medium. This will make your article reach a larger audience.

Thank you for reading this article !

Have a nice day !

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