Things I Did NOT Come Here to Do
But I did them anyway and I’m a little repulsed
Just last week I published a post on my external blog encouraging outside writers to give Medium a try because it’s been such a positive experience for me. Then I realized that if they looked at my profile the first thing they’d notice is me slamming the platform every fifth post.
Pretty dodgy, right?
It made me take a good, hard look at what I came to Medium to accomplish. But then I got sucked into a whole other vortex that was pretty easy to get sucked into. I’ve highlighted the vortex items here:
Probably most of you know that a couple of months ago, Barack Obama began writing on Medium. If you didn’t know, now you know. He’s got some great things to say.
Now there’s a little celebrity bandwagon forming. Last week Helen Hunt also started publishing on our platform. Her debut piece is very rant-ish and it was interesting if you like rants.
Sometimes celebrity words are fascinating and make a lot of sense in the grand scheme. They’ve certainly got clout if they’re able to rack up the sort of applause they do. The average Joe-writer also makes a lot of sense, yet they’re not nearly as heard as the celebrity.
Is a Message More Important When a Celebrity Delivers It?
Now, for a writing tip of the week. You know how every writer and their dog tells you the secret sauce is in your headline, right? What if you could have a headline analyzer working for you on the fly, telling you exactly what your score out of 100 is, each time you type a headline?
If you’re a blogger outside of Medium this tool exists for you. I use the free version of it on my blog and it is pure gold. It turns the act of constructing a headline into a game because once you type out a title you THINK you’d like to use, a score pops up and you see exactly how effective it is.
If you’re a Wordpress blogger you should definitely consider downloading and using the Jetpack plugin. Yes, they have a paid version that offers a bunch of shit I’d never use, and yes, they have an affiliate program. But I’m not here to be an affiliate, I’m here to help writers.
I have the free version installed on my blog and it includes this headline analyzer. That’s all you need.
If you want a testimonial, ask Nanci Arvizu. She writes for my blog and loves this tool too! Every once in awhile she’ll email me and say something like, “OMG I just made an 87 score headline!”
It can be fun to become a better writer.
Just last week, I made a whopping 93 score headline! In case you’re wondering what it was, ironically, it was the post I wrote singing the praises of writing on Medium.
“How to Make Money From Blog Posts You've Already Published”
Anyway, that’s it for this week! As usual, thank you for tagging along and we’ll see each other on the flip side! Happy weekend!
Kristi
Great post, Kristi! Thanks for that tip. Can’t wait to try!!