Dove Chocolate Wrapper or Medium Title?
Can you tell the difference?
Like any one-hit wonder on Medium, I’ve thought a lot about how to replicate my isolated incident of success. I won’t pretend my reasons are entirely pure — vanity metrics are fun! — but I write to make people feel less lonely and weighed down by the world. The more people I can make smile, the more motivated I am to write.
Fortunately for me, there’s never been a better time to be a mediocre writer with delusions of grandeur. Medium is full of advice, written at the 4th grade level, on how to become a literary celebrity. Here’s what it boils down to:
…Plus maybe something about living a life worth writing about, but spending 5 minutes tweaking a title will get you quadruple the page views so don’t bother.
Here’s what strikes me:
Since we all have the same goal — become a PROLIFIC writer — we all follow the same advice. Which means we all write the same titles. Which, coincidentally, sound just like Dove chocolate wrappers.
Disagree? Grab a pen and paper. Browse the Medium mock-ups below and write down which titles I lifted from Dove wrappers and which I sourced from PROLIFIC Medium writers. Bonus points if you can guess the writer.
1. “You should charge for your great advice”
2. “It’s time to stand out from the crowd”
3. “Don’t settle for a spark. Light a fire.”
4. “Shout your dreams to the world”
5. “Escape for a moment”
6. “Were you happy today?”
7. “Satisfy your sense of surprise”
8. “Fall in love”
9. “What does a wink mean to you?”
I’ll tell you the answers, but first you have to promise me something. Promise me you’ll write a title in your own voice. Just one. One title that comes from your own head and heart. One title that ends with a preposition and is too short or too long. Maybe that title will make you famous; more likely it won’t. It’s important that you write it anyway.
The Medium community is colorful and enriching because we bring to it our varied plumage. It’s incumbent on all of us to preserve that heterogeneity through creativity.
To the Medium writers whom I picked on above — know that I tease because I love. You’ve set the standard for great titles. Now do it again. 😉
Answers:
