The Writer Who 'Boosted' Herself On Medium And Doubled Her Views

Random strangers are a hard crowd to please.

Apr 28, 2023

Happy Friday,

I read a piece on Medium that stuck with me so I wanted to share. See what you think.

A writer said when she first read about Medium’s new boost program, she was kind of excited. Hopeful, you know? Like maybe the boost program would finally help her get some traction again after months of her views dropping.

But days passed, and then weeks and nothing. No boost.

Fyi, if you know who I’m talking about, no names please. I’d never want to find a random stranger discussing me in their newsletter so I don’t use names and appreciate if you don’t, either.

Anyway. One day she had an awful thought. She said she realized she’s not going to get boosted. Not ever. It’s not going to happen. Somehow, her writing isn’t what “they” want. That thought made her feel pretty dejected.

Right on the heels of feeling sad, she got mad. Woke up one random morning and said you know what, screw the damn boost. I’m going to boost myself. So she sat back and took a hard look at her writing.

She said the first thing that came to mind was the concept of WIIFM.

If you’re not familiar, it’s an acronym for “what’s in it for me?” Her stories were mostly personal. Trying to look at her writing objectively, she asked herself a question. Why the hell would a total stranger on the internet want to read this?

And she said she really couldn’t answer that.

So she started asking herself how she could weave her personal stories into a greater story that other people could relate to. A story that has a takeaway for the reader even if the reader is a total stranger who’s never heard of her.

Maybe her story wasn’t “the” story, but just part of a greater story.

In tag terminology, she switched from “this happened to me” to “life lessons.”

Next thing she attacked was her openings. Because if the first couple of paragraphs are boring and slow, who’s going to keep reading? And that’s a valid point. If we meander into a story, readers get bored and leave.

Random strangers are a hard crowd to please.

Her final step was to admit that her titles sucked. So she decided to work harder on titles. Learn to write a good title. She looked at her headlines really hard and asked if a total stranger would click. She started using headline analyzers to help.

Basically, she learned to look at her writing like an print publication editor.

Many years ago, I wrote for magazines. And that’s how editors look at submissions. Would this title sell magazines if we put it on the cover? Would 5000 random strangers want to read this piece?

Voila. All her hard work and self examination worked.

Her views started going up. Didn’t take long before she was getting double the views she used to. Her pay went up, too. She did, indeed, manage to boost herself.

That’s where the story came crashing down, at least for me.

Once she got some traction, she veered off into meta posts.

And that’s — whatever. No judging. If it works for her, good for her. But that’s why I didn’t link to the post. Meta posts are not my jam.

But here’s the irony of the story.

All that stuff she did to “boost” herself?

That’s pretty much what the boost program was looking for in the first place.