To Be Read
Image via Rakuten
ForbesLife did a roundup of their most popular posts for 2018, which included my coverage of France’s first sex doll brothel. As of this writing, that post has 97,096 views. Here are a few thoughts on making content clickable.
People tend to write for themselves. In the click economy, that’s not so smart. You must consider your content as seen through the eyes of the readers. Readers suffer from the paradox of choice. Why should they click on your content instead of others’ content? If you think about topic and titles from their perspective, rather than your own, they’ll choose you.
Content doesn’t sit in a series of discreet buckets. It’s not binary. It’s fluid. Feature writing, copy writing, and long-form journalism pull from the same well to fill various vessels. Borrow and merge. Remix and redeliver. Stop being a snob about your words and care to be read.
The external real audience is just a projection of the audience inside your head. The critic, the fan, the artist, the voyeur, the flaneur. They’re in the world, but they’re in you, too. The path to finding your true self winds through them like trees, their boughs brushing as you pass.
Enjoy my work? Buy "The Tumor." It’s been called "a masterpiece of short fiction."