The Open Secret to Gaining A Massive Online Following
No one talks about it, and you’re all missing out.
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Most of the rules of internet writing are total bullshit. Not the basics: grammar, spelling, syntax. You need those to convey ideas clearly and not sound like a moron, an eight-year-old, or Marjorie Taylor Greene.
No, I’m talking about the rules the content creators want you to abide by. The rules for building a massive online audience. If you want those rules, there are about 79,000 other columns on Medium that’ll give you the rundown.
Here’s a smattering of what they’ll say:
- Write shorter paragraphs
- Write headlines or intros that create a curiosity gap
- Use the caption or body copy to fill in the curiosity gap
- Write with your intended audience in mind
- Eliminate adverbs
- Capitalize on trending topics and audio
- Solve problems
Sure thing, Brad. Way to give the world a blueprint for how to sound like an earnest, terse, and mildly helpful chatbot.
I need y’all to strike the word “content” from your vocabulary. Write it on a post-it note, douse it in kerosene, and set that bitch ablaze. Your data trail is not your legacy.
If you’re here because you dream of creating pretty things that serve a purpose, listen up.
Those broflakes are teaching you how to speak; I’m going to teach you how to fucking sing.
Do you really want to kill it online? I’ve got a counterintuitive secret for you. Ready? Lemme take you on a goddamned trip.
Don’t Be A Middle Manager
There’s this old Monster.com Super Bowl ad where this cute kid says, “When I grow up, I want to claw my way to middle management.”
I think about it and cry a little bit inside. Not just because that’s where so many of us — hey, including me for a while! — ended up in real life, but because we killed the lights within our souls to get there.
Study after study published via Harvard Business Review or MIT Management Index shows one of the best…
