Medium Experiment: This Will Make You Gain More Views

Making use of statistics to bump up my views

“Jerzy Neyman conceived the role of statistics as providing direct guidance about an optimal decision.” — Herbert I. Weisberg, Willful Ignorance: The Mismeasure of Uncertainty

S o far, I have been writing for fun. I didn’t try my hardest to craft the best headlines so people will click on them. I simply did what I thought would look good and representative of the content of my articles.

This month, however, I am planning of making more use of what statistics say to get more views and hopefully also a higher read ratio.

So first of all, what does statistics say?

Most Engaging Headline Phrases: The Data

Although their research mostly revolves around Facebook and also a little bit on Twitter and LinkedIn, I am still curious whether they would apply on Medium.

According to their data, the most engaging headline phrases in terms of Facebook likes, shares, and comments contains words such as: “…will make you…”

Or:

“…This is why…”

Their reasoning is that these phrases connects the “content” with “the potential impact on the reader”.

So what am I going to try in my little experiment? Create as many headlines as possible containing these words.

The headlines still have to reflect the articles however, so I am not afraid to make exceptions.

I am absolutely not trying to clickbait people, I simply want to make more use of statistics:

THIS IS WHY the media writes headlines like that. It’s not because they’re trying to be click-baity or trying to exaggerate — it’s because that’s literally what people like to click on. You have no one to blame but yourself. Source: We Analyzed 100 Million Headlines. Here’s What We Learned (New Research) on Reddit

Headline Analyzer Tool

I am also planning to use this headline analyzer tool for those interested:

Views and Read Ratio

So the other obvious thing I will have to keep track on, are the views and read ratio of each article. Whether making use of better headlines results in more views or not doesn’t matter if my read ratio drops. If that happens to be the case, however, I might have to make better content and write my articles more elegantly.

Currently, I am averaging 50 views per article. The “bad” ones have approximately 30 views with a ~25% read ratio while the good ones are more like 70 views with ~50% read ratio (Yes, without getting curated).

I do indeed have some articles with a couple of hundred views, which would give me an average of 266 views per article, but I am cutting them out because I mostly got those views by promoting these articles elsewhere outside Medium. These promotions don’t always tend to be that successful, so we are “cutting the edges” so to speak.

What Makes an Article Popular on Medium?

I will also try to make use of the data from this article. Simply said, these are the key points I will follow:

Write for “middle schoolers” Sentences averaging 12–15 words seem to be the most effective Not using too complicated words and sentences Creating headlines containing power words such as “Top” or “Best” Using sentence case for articles related to “life lessons” and title case for more “serious” and scientific articles Call-to-action via MailChimp

My Own Personal Take on These Key Points

I definitely agree with most of them, although point number 1 can sound somewhat denigrating. I think a combination of both “expert talk” and “ELI5 talk” is the most effective. Here’s an example of mine:

A simple example of an “item” is learning a foreign word. A more complex example would be memorizing the definition of concepts such as mitochondria (yes I know that’s a meme). Jigsaw analogy*: each “item” represents an individual puzzle piece. Some which may or may not look more complex than others. Source: Blocked Periodization: A New Method To Enhance Learning

You can see how I start with something complex and abstract, while simplifying things through an analogy or metaphor.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” — Albert Einstein

In fact, my role model John von Neumann has perfectly mastered that technique:

“Von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us.” — Edward Teller

And of course you have to other extreme end of the spectrum (not to be taken seriously):

“The work’s central thesis is that reality is a self-processing, self-referential language, embodying a dual aspect monism and consisting of “infocognition”, or information that resides in “syntactic operators” within reality.” — Christopher Langan

Medium Experiment With The Worst Headlines

To top it of, I am also planning to use “the worst headlines” according to the data by BuzzSumo. Phrases such as:

“…control of your…”

And:

“…the introduction of…”

Seem to perform the worst, at least on Facebook.

Again, if my views go down but my read ratio doesn’t, my content may be of high value but it’s all about making the right headlines, then.

For those interested, these were my stats as of October 2019: