These Stories All Received Over 300 Comments. Here’s What You Can Learn From Them
There are only two good reasons to write anything publicly: educate or entertain the reader. That’s it. If you fail to do any of these two things, you won’t find much success in writing.
One of my most treasured habits is that I record small wins that happen to me every day. As a writer, these wins usually are in the form of people commenting positively about something I wrote. I try to be helpful and write things from experience, which usually both educate and entertain.
The more readers are moved (positively or negatively) by what you write, the more they’ll leave comments. And I believe comments matter more than people give them credit for.
A very good piece will get one comment for every 100 readers. That one comment speaks for many others. Opinions are shared. If one person thinks one way about your article, chances are, 100 more people think the same; they just haven’t told you.
Positive comments are also a great source of motivation for a writer. I would lie if I said that it’s not what has kept me going for the past 3 years. Views might be low at times, but all I really crave is that one comment that says that a piece I wrote was valuable for a reader.
“So, if comments are that important, maybe there are lessons to learn from articles who have an incredible number?” I wondered.
So I scoured the articles that had the most comments. Here they are:
These articles were found by following top writers in top tags. Before we get started on the lessons, let’s do some observations:
- Many headlines focus on shattering a belief
- All the headlines are assertive
- Four have a number in the headline
- All headlines have a clear message
- Most of them trigger emotion for most people
- Some are controversial
- Some are about time or money
- Most are about self-help
