Five Underrated Ways to Increase Views on your Content

The content creation laws that will make you go viral.

Nobody knows how to go viral. Let’s start with that.

Each content creator has an audience and ways to boost a post and get the most out of it. And it takes ages to build a community that will accept any content you decide to publish. But first, you need to make that community. And this is the hardest part.

Every creator makes content for two purposes:

• maximize the reach and gather a new audience (often with experiments that don’t deliver)
• build a community, and create content for those who already follow you for specific content.

But if you start from nothing, you have nothing. It’s just simple like that. And your content can only have one purpose: to reach as many people as possible. So here are five underrated ways to increase the views on your content.

1 – Volume is the key to virality.

Let’s take quality out of the equation and think about two content creators. The first one creates one post a month, and the second four.

Who do you think will grow faster?

The answer is obvious. If you write more, your chances to engage with different people grow. And you also have more possibilities to work with brands and partners that could support your work.

If you reintroduce quality in the equation, you could still reach the same people with the finest content because people would share it more. Still, hit the target with your piece. If it isn’t interesting, nobody will share it, and you have lost one month of your life. So even in this case, quantity beats quality.

2 – Clarity is better than specificity.

As a novice creator, I thought clarity and specificity were the same. If you explain an idea deeply enough, it becomes clear, right?

But it doesn’t work like that.

The more you insist on an idea, the more you confuse your audience. And you will probably repeat the same concepts, so you will bore people to death.

Famous writers like Stephen King and William Zinsser all agree on one thing.

• The first draft is only for you. So write it to clear your mind and get to the point. 
• Then, make a second draft for the audience where you remove the unnecessary.

So give up specificity and praise clarity. Simple concepts are more understandable and easy to follow. And if you learn to explain complex things in a simple form, you will increase your reach and views.

3 – Nobody cares about you, but you need to care about others.

Nobody cares about you when you are a nobody. After the first exciting month, even your mom will stop consuming your content. And you have to deal with it.

But you should care about others. As a content creator, you will always put others first. Otherwise, you won’t catch their attention. They will ignore your content. You will keep posting without an audience. And sooner or later, you will give up.

When you care about your audience, you can target their interests easier. Then, you can transform that interest in attention to your brand. And attention is the most common currency for online businesses.

Once you have their attention, you can trade it with brands who want to advertise their product. Or you can promote a product you built and monetize your business. So by targeting specific interests, you will gather attention, and then you can trade it however you wish.

4 – Publishing something is better than making it perfect.

Publishing something imperfect is the most underrated way to increase views on your content. And public something is always better than making it perfect.

If you lose too much time on perfectionism, you will end up in the first case of the example above. You will publish one piece of content each month and reach only a few people.

Also, the more perfect you try to make it, the more your risk complicating it. So the problems double.

On the contrary, if you force yourself to publish an article within a limited time frame, you will sometimes post content that doesn’t make you proud. But people may even appreciate it more. It happened to me more than once.

Beware that imperfect doesn’t mean trash. So always edit your post and try to make it consumable. Otherwise, your audience might build negative opinions and abandon your content even if they loved it once. 

5 – Spreading is four times more useful than writing.

If there is one thing I learned after two years of online writing is that distribution channels are four times better than writing.

You can write as much as you wish and publish lots of content. But if you don’t distribute it and present it to the people, nobody will know about it.

However, distributing content is complicated. You must create unique content for each platform.

Facebook has its content, while Twitter prefers shorter pieces. So you have to adapt to each of them to build a successful strategy.

Other platforms like Pinterest or Instagram only accept photos. So if you are a writer, you must become a photographer or designer.

When you put all those platforms together, you gain more traction. You put your content in front of more people that could share it and redirect all the traffic to your primary source of income.

Most content creators don’t care about it. And for this reason, distributing content is one of the most underrated ways to increase views on your content.

Final Thoughts

Going viral is a hidden treasure, and nobody has the map to reach it. But you can increase the possibility it happens in many ways.

Your content could reach a wider audience if you beat your competitors with quantity. But your pieces have to be simple and concise. Otherwise, nobody would understand them.

Also, you need to care about people and write for an audience you understand. They are the fuel that empowers your business. So help them out with your experience or research.

Abandon any perfectionism because it doesn’t help your mission. And if you stop spending time on useless editing, you could produce many more pieces.

Lastly, spread your content on multiple platforms to increase your range. Sharing is the key to virality. And people will share your pieces, but you need to find them first.

These were five underrated ways to increase your views on your content and reach more people. They can’t guarantee you will go viral, but they will help.

Cover photo by Miguel Henriques on Unsplash for Five Underrated Ways to Increase Views on your Content.