Writing a Viral Article Turned Me Into a Stats Junkie
What remains?
I published Three Life Lessons From a Dying Man on Christmas Eve. Three weeks later, it went supernova. Over the last 2 days, it’s been viewed more than 25,000 times, read by 18,000 people, and shared on websites that I’ve never even heard of (bloglovin.com, anyone?).
I wish I could give you some sort of breakdown of what made it so successful, but I’d be lying if I said that I knew for sure. It’s not broken up into sections. There are no subheaders or text breaks, and it’s written as one long block of text with the listicle part right at the end.
All I can tell you is that it’s honest. I knew Hank’s story meant something, and I wrote about it. That’s all. I didn’t spend hours formatting, fussing over details. It’s probably one of the articles that I edited the least. I wrote it way back in May, so I don’t know what writing process I was using.
What I do know is that Hank would be ecstatic that this many people have heard his name, and that he meant so much to me after all these years. He would also make fun of me for it.
Watching this article go viral has been a treat, and I feel tremendously lucky. However, the last 48 hours turned me into some sort of stats-gobbling gremlin. I’ve been checking them first thing in the morning…
