The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention

by Nicolas Cole

I have a rule I live by, and it goes like this: “The number of hours I spend consuming should never equal or exceed the number of hours I spend creating.”

When you start writing on a social platform, your goal is to “beat the game.” In order to beat the game, you need to actually play the game, get feedback from the game, and internalize that feedback to change your strategies over time and make your way up the ladder—in whatever form that means to you. The more you write, the more data you will accumulate, the better your skills will get, the faster you will learn. Conversely, the less you write, the less data you will accumulate, the longer it will take for your skills to improve, the slower you will learn.

The writers who become successful are the most consistent writers.

Nothing else matters unless you are writing on a regular basis. Growth hacks, social media strategies, “viral tactics,” none of it can be applied to your writing unless you’re actively writing in the first place.

In order to be taken seriously on the internet as an authority in your category and a leader in your industry, niche, or genre, you need to be writing and publishing new material 2x per month.

Going back to what we talked about earlier in this book, the reason people choose to “follow” writers online in the first place is because they are looking for a credible source of information within a particular category.

Seeing that someone publishes new information once per month, or once every few months, doesn’t typically satisfy our wants as audience members. But if you come across someone publishing new material a few times a month, or better yet, every week, you’ll be much more likely to follow them and have a reason to pay attention. And if you really want to beat the game of capturing and keeping attention, if you truly want the most guaranteed path to s...

Once you start gathering data about what’s working and what isn’t, you now have a decision to make. If you start writing about marketing strategies, but data tells you it’s your stories about being an angel investor people love reading most, you should pay attention to that. If you start writing sci-fi, but you discover it’s actually your historical fiction people are flocking to, data is trying to tell you something. If you start writing poetry, but you find your morning meditations are what get dozens of people to comment and engage with your writing, what are you going to do? Keep writing poetry? Once data enters the equation, this is where the “Who Do I Want To Be?” conversation gets interesting. Do you want to keep writing what you had originally wanted to write about? Or do you want to write what people clearly want more of? My answer is: you should always do both. Data doesn’t lie. But data is also a reflection of the external crowd, and not necessarily your internal compass.

If you want to surpass even the most popular, highest-performing writers within an existing category, all you have to do is everything they’re doing, more consistently. If they publish new material 7 days per week, you need to publish new material 7 days per week. If they write 3,000+ word stories, you should write 3,000+ word stories. If they interview industry titans and summarize their takeaways, you should interview industry titans and summarize their takeaways. If they encourage readers to Tweet them with questions and ideas, you should encourage readers to Tweet you with questions and ideas. And if they respond to every single Tweet that comes their way, you should respond to every single Tweet that comes your way. Etc. Your job is to study the competition and understand exactly why they are succeeding in the first place. If they title their articles in all caps, why are they doing that? Was there a point in time when they weren’t doing that? What happened to their engagement once they started doing that? Have their Likes, Comments, Views, etc., increased since then?

If they make each sentence of their post its own paragraph, why are they doing that? What’s the effect it has on you, the reader? Was there a point in time when they weren’t doing that? What happened to their engagement once they started doing that? If they post a high-quality photo at the top of every article, why are they doing that? What do you think they’re trying to achieve? Was there a point in time when they weren’t doing that? What happened to their engagement once they started doing that? Question everything.

Consistent output is the secret to every growth metric on the internet: Views, Comments, Likes, Shares, etc.

When a New York Times best-selling book has a testimonial on the cover from another NYT best-selling author, that’s Audience Hacking. When one podcaster interviews another well-known podcaster, that’s Audience Hacking. When a popular fashion YouTuber makes a video with a popular cosmetics YouTuber, that’s Audience Hacking. When Justin Bieber makes a song with Ariana Grande, that’s Audience Hacking. It’s an incredibly effective way to market yourself to new audiences while at the same time creating content that is different and maybe even better than what you could otherwise create on your own.

Trend Jacking is probably the easiest, most common growth hack on the internet. Whenever something big happens in the news, it becomes a “trend” for a month, a week, a day, or sometimes even a couple of hours. When a celebrity makes headlines, when a public company makes a big mistake, when an everyday person goes viral, these “trends” spark a crazy amount of engagement on social media—which you can use to your advantage. Trend Jacking is where you hop on someone else’s train in order to bring some of that heightened attention back to yourself.

This growth tactic can be very tedious, but it works extremely well. Engagement Hacking is where you engage with the audiences of other writers, introducing them to your own writing. The first step is to make a list of other writers within your chosen category. If you write about life lessons, go look for other popular writers who also write about life lessons. If you write mystery stories, go find other writers who write mystery stories. Once you have a list of ten or fifteen writers (ideally with audiences similar and slightly larger than your own), go to each of their profiles and start commenting on recent content they’ve published—or, even better, respond to someone else’s comment on their content. For example, if one writer’s most recent post was on life lessons you should learn before you turn 30 years old, and someone commented, “I would add a few more to this list,” respond back to them and piggy-back on their list to add a few more suggestions of your own. The whole idea here is to get your name in front of the same people who are actively looking for the type of content you write. When that audience member sees you responded to their comment, they’re going to read it. When they read it, and if it’s something more thoughtful than just, “Nice one!” they’re going to go to your profile. And when they go to your profile and see that you actively write about similar material as the writer they already love and follow, there’s a good chance they’ll start following you ...

Most people don’t know how hashtags actually work. A hashtag is nothing more than a folder. It’s a way of organizing content that is “tagged” the same thing. When you place a hashtag on a social media post, all you’re doing is saying, “This piece of content should be organized in this folder.” The biggest mistake people make when using hashtags is treating them as words and phrases within their actual message. For example, they might post on Facebook: “I just wrote this piece. I hope you enjoy it! #myfirstposteveromg #2020 The hashtag #2020 works, because that’s a hashtag a lot of other people use to organize their content. But the hashtag #myfirstposteveromg isn’t a folder people are using—and

If you are writing or sharing links to your writing on platforms that use hashtags, the correct way to do hashtag stacking is to do a little research before you post—so you can tag your content with popular, relevant folders. First, go back to your list of popular writers within your chosen category. What hashtags are they using? Why are they using them? For example, one writer might tag all of their posts #writingadvice, because if you’re searching for writing advice on a social platform, this is a good folder to start scrolling through. By tagging your posts with that same hashtag, all you’re doing is telling the platform to organize this specific post within that folder. This is step one. The second step is to then create different tiers of folders for your posts to be organized within. When you click on a hashtag on any social platform, you can see how many people are currently using that hashtag. What you want to do is tag your posts with a blend of both large, popular hashtags and smaller, niche hashtags. For example, #writing is typically a very large folder because it’s so broad. A lot of different types of content could be tagged #writing—which means even though you’ll be tapping into a wider net of people, you’ll also be reaching a more generalized audience. But #businesswriting or #fictionwriting are more specific. They’re smaller, in the sense that they’re niches and not broad, all-encompassing categories, which means the audiences you’ll be tapping into are sl...

Publishing is the first time you are putting a specific piece of content on one specific platform.

you’ll only want to publish a piece of content once per platform—including on your own website.

Sharing, on the other hand, is the act of taking the link to the original post and recirculating it across various social platforms.

My personal advice is to avoid publishing and deleting content as often as possible. Instead, I’m a big believer in just re-writing a new and improved version and publishing a second piece instead. This way, your library continues to expand (opposed to you constantly playing this game of create/delete/create/delete). If you are going to delete a piece, do it within the first 24-48 hours to minimize the number of people who may be sharing it or linking to it.

“Syndication” is when major publications build partnerships with each other to share popular content.

The beginner version of this strategy is to post every single article you write on every single social platform you can. Every time I write an answer on Quora, for example, I will copy/paste that answer, give it a headline, and also publish it on Medium. Then I’ll take that Medium article, copy/paste it, and publish it on LinkedIn. And I’ll keep doing this with as many social platforms as I can, where publishing articles of that quality is acceptable. (You can also take this a step further, group articles together, and publish them as eBooks on Wattpad and Amazon, so long as the content is yours.)

Yes, the headlines can be the exact same. No, you don’t need to do anything special like change any of the content for SEO purposes—since you aren’t playing the SEO game to begin with. All you’re doing is sharing your article in different environments, each of which have different ecosystems and audiences.

The advanced version of this strategy is to reach out to websites and publications and let them know you are writing content that aligns with their target audience, and that you’d be willing to let them syndicate your content for free. The reason so many writers don’t do this is because, for one, they don’t know they can, and two, they have this egoic belief they should be paid by publications for their writing. I have always found this mentality to be incredibly short-sighted. As an up-and-coming writer, I didn’t want $100 in exchange for an article. What I wanted was for the publication to open the floodgates and syndicate dozens and dozens of my articles, giving me free marketing, exposure, and Perceived Credibility. The most effective way to do this is find someone on LinkedIn or Twitter who works for the website or publication, and ideally has “partnerships” somewhere in their job description. Send them a message and say something like: Hey there, My name is Nicolas Cole, and I actively write about personal development habits on Quora and Medium. Since your publication specializes in personal development content, I would love to find a way to collaborate. I’m very passionat...

You can publish anything you write in infinite social environments (Quora, Medium, LinkedIn, Wattpad, excerpts on Twitter and Facebook, etc.).

You can publish articles in infinite social environments and forge partnerships with publications to syndicate your content directly (content originally published on Quora can be syndicated into major publications like Inc, Forbes, TIME, etc., IF you facilitate it yourself by reaching out to someone on their syndication/partnerships team).

You can publish articles in infinite social environments, and publish them on a website/publication you own, and syndicate them to infinite publications you have partnerships with. If you author an article on a major publication first, that article can be republished on your own social profiles (so long as you include a link at the bottom to the original). If you author an article on a major publication first, that article can be republished on your own publication (so long as you include a link at the bottom to the ori...

There are five types of writing on the internet. Form #1: Actionable Guide Form #2: Opinion Form #3: Curated List Form #4: Story Form #5: Credible Talking Head

The usual mistake writers make here is they try to fit too many ideas into one single piece of content. Instead of writing the single best article on “How To Land Your First Client As A Freelance Photographer,” they write an article that touches a bit on clients, and a bit on lenses, and a bit on accounting, and a bit on photo editing. Even though the title is telling the reader, “I’m about to give you an Actionable Guide,” they’ve unconsciously written a Curated List instead—leaving their reader confused and unfulfilled. Anytime you fail to deliver on your promise to a reader, you’ve lost them. Instead, you should write one article exclusively about “How To Land Your First Client As A Freelance Photographer.” If any thought, insight, opinion, statistic, story, or random anecdote doesn’t have to do with that one specific topic, it shouldn’t be in the piece. Period. “How To Choose Your First Lens As A Freelance Photographer” should be a second, separate article. “How To Handle Your Own Accounting As A Freelance Photographer” should be a third, separate article. And so on, ensuring the promise you make to your reader is delivered on to the very best of your ability.

Again, the goal of writing an Actionable Guide of any kind is to get someone to bookmark it.

There are a handful of ways you can make your Actionable Guide “better” than the competition: “Better” Quality: If everyone else writes short guides that don’t go into very much detail, you can be the one to write long, insightful, walkthrough-style guides. Conversely, if everyone else writes long, boring, walkthrough-style guides, you can be the one to condense them into shorter, more digestible bites. “Better” Voice: If everyone else’s How To guides are dense and overwhelming, you can show up to the party and be fast, full of personality, and overly casual. Conversely, if everyone else’s How To guides are so casual you feel as though you aren’t being given professional insight, you can be the one to write in a more formal way. “Better” Organization: If everyone else writes really great material, but it’s organized poorly and full of huge paragraphs and no subheads or page breaks for the reader, you can win simply by organizing your writing more visually and “appearing” easier to read and understand. “Better” Positioned: If everyone else is writing about the same problem, you can flip the problem on its head to be seen as something radically different. For example, if there are a million guides all titled “How To Get Your First Client As A Freelance Photographer,” you can position yourself differently by reframing the problem: “Freelance Photographers, Here’s Why You Don’t Want To Charge Your First Client Any Money At All.” “Better” For The Audience: If everyone else is w...

In order for your list to not be clickbait, but actually be meaningful and valuable to a reader, you need two things: Specificity and Speed. Specificity is how relevant the examples you’re choosing in your list are to the target reader. For example, if I’m writing a list of productivity hacks (whether it’s an article, or a series of Tweets, or a chapter within an eBook) and half the items on that list aren’t really productivity hacks, but time management techniques, well then the reader is going to feel sort of lied to. They were promised “productivity hacks,” and I gave them “time management techniques” instead. Or, if I’m writing a list of vampire books you absolutely have to read, but three of the books on the list aren’t vampire books but werewolf books, the reader is going to be pissed—and will most likely voice their frustration in the comments. Speed is then how quickly you are revealing new, important information to the reader. What makes a list “work” is the fact that it has the potential to pack a ton of valuable information into a very short period of time. Again, if I love young adult fiction and I want to know which vampire books I should read this summer, the information I’m interested in (as a reader) is 1) which books, and 2) a quick summary of what each book is about so I can determine which one I want to read first. Anything beyond that is unnecessary, and not why a reader is reading this list in the first place. Writers go wrong by trying to have one wit...

Why people read certain things on the internet and not others is often a reflection of its headline. That string of five to fifteen words at the very top of the page tells the reader whether the piece of writing in front of them is going to be worth their time—and what they can expect in exchange for reading it.

What makes a great headline is getting someone to understand three things at the exact same time: What this piece of writing is about Who this piece of writing is for The PROMISE: the problem that will be solved, and/or the solution being offered This is what’s known as The Curiosity Gap.

The Curiosity Gap is what tells the reader what this piece of writing is about, who it’s for, and what it’s promising—all without revealing the answer.

When it comes to headlines, writers will often aim to write something “creative” or “clever,” failing to realize that true creativity is actually the art of clarity. If you’re vague, people won’t know what it is you’re writing about. If you’re unspecific, they won’t know it’s for them. And if your PROMISE isn’t compelling enough, they won’t give it any attention.

(People think “clickbait” refers to the headline style that uses numbers: 7 Things, 6 Ways, 3 Mistakes, etc. It’s not. These headline styles are extremely effective as long as you keep your PROMISE to the reader. It’s when you don’t keep your PROMISE that the reader feels tricked—which leaves them disappointed, angry, and “click-baited.”)

To be honest, I used to write my headlines last. A younger me believed what mattered more was the content of what I was saying, and that the headline was basically just the bow I placed on top. Seven years later, I realized this was not only incorrect, but incredibly unproductive. Your headline isn’t just a headline. Your headline is, quite literally, a micro-version of your entire Actionable Guide, Opinion, Curated List, Story, or Credible Talking Head monologue. If you can’t clearly communicate what it is you want to say in a twelve-word headline, chances are, you won’t clearly communicate what it is you want to say in an 800-word post (or a 60,000-word book).

The size of your audience is a direct reflection of the size of the question you’re answering.

These broader, more universal questions have much larger Audiences—which means, by choosing Happiness, Relationships, or Money as your Subject Matter, you will inherently reach a wider Audience.

Before you begin writing anything, you need to decide who you are writing for. And that decision needs to be clearly reflected in both the headline and the content of your piece.

Are you writing for the masses? Do you want to try to reach as many people as possible? Then you need to answer a universal question—something that will resonate with anyone, no matter who they are or where they’re from. Are you writing for a specific niche? Are you less concerned with reaching “everyone,” and more concerned with reaching a specific type of person? Then you need to answer a question highly relevant to that niche—something that will resonate meaningfully with your exact target reader (for example: someone deep in the field of biotechnology). This is true for both fiction and nonfiction. A story titled, “The Day Humans Went Extinct” answers a much broader question (“What happens if every human goes extinct?”) than a story titled, “The Day Vampires Went Extinct.” Why? Because the number of people who want to know about the future of humans is much larger than the number of people who want to know about th...

Bigger Questions attract Bigger Audiences Niche Questions attract Niche Audiences Wider Audiences benefit from simple, universal language Niche Audiences benefit from ultra-specific, niche language Titles that only answer 1 of the 3 questions are weak. Titles that answer 2 of the 3 questions are good. Titles that answer all 3 of the questions are exceptional

Here are some of the most proven headline formats in online writing: Big Numbers: For example, “3,000 People Just Filed For Unemployment In This Small Town In Arkansas. Here’s Why.” This is a great headline because “3,000 People” is concrete, definitive, easy to imagine, and yet an unexpectedly large number—and what’s unexpected is exciting. Dollar Signs: Money is about as universal as a topic can get. “$400 Million Is How Much You Need To Make In Order To Afford This Insane Mansion In Malibu” is eye-catching because very few people have $400 million. Dollar signs make the Curiosity Gap wider and more interesting for readers. Credible Names: Celebrities, CEOs, pop culture icons, anyone the world can easily recognize by name is a great way to hook readers’ attention. “Will Smith’s Advice On How To Live A Fulfilling Life Will Change The Way You See The World Forever” is a headline built on credibility. Yes, there’s a great PROMISE here, but the real “hook” comes from the fact that it’s advice from Will Smith. “Amazon, Apple, Tesla, And 4 Other Stocks That Have Made Early Investors Mega-Millionaires” is another example of how to leverage name credibility. “This Just Happened”: Timeliness is a terrific mechanism for getting readers’ attention right now. Words like “Just, Recently, Today, Now,” etc., are what tell a reader that of all the things on the internet to read, “this thing” is high priority. For example, “Michael Jordan Just Gave A Press Conference And NBA Executives A...

Viral articles, Twitter threads, and any other effective piece of written content online follows this basic structure: Section 1: Introduction Section 2: X Main Points Section 3: Conclusion

Right away in the introduction, your job is to answer all three of the reader’s preliminary questions: What is this about? Is this for me? What are you PROMISING and how confident am I that you’re going to deliver on that PROMISE?

1/3/1 The 1/3/1 structure is the best place to start. In 1/3/1, you have one strong opening sentence, three description sentences, and then one conclusion sentence. Visually, this is a powerful way to tell the reader you aren’t going to make them suffer through big blocks of text, and that you have their best interests in mind.

1/5/1 The 1/5/1 structure is the same as the 1/3/1 structure, just with more room for description and clarification in the middle.

The types of introduction structures that work well are: 1/3/1 1/5/1 1/3/2/1 1/5/2/1 1/4/1/1 1/3/1 + 1/3/1 1/3/Subhead/3/1 1/3/1 + Bulleted List 1 + Subhead Notice again how every single structure relies on a single opening sentence, and always ends with a single conclusion sentence. Pieces that open with two consecutive sentences in the first paragraph are weaker. And pieces that open with three or more sentences in the first paragraph are tiring for the reader. As much as possible, you want to crescendo and decrescendo your rhythms, starting with one sentence, then moving up to three, four, or five sentences, then back down to two sentences, then back down to one—and repeat. This is what makes the reader feel like they’re riding a wave. And waves feel good.

First, you never want to have three or more long paragraphs one after another. That style of writing has been dead for years, and anyone writing that way on the internet is clinging to a way things were but no longer are. Second, if you are going to have long paragraphs one after another, you want to find ways to change up their internal rhythm so they don’t feel or sound exactly the same. One way of doing this is by using punctuation. Have one paragraph with a lot of short, strong sentences. Have the next paragraph be one long, winding sentence. This is what makes them seem “different.” Lastly, notice how before and after both long paragraphs in the above excerpt there are single, declarative sentences. This is very intentional. Again, you want to subtly tell the reader, “I’m going to tell you a quick story—this will only take a second,” before giving them their next mile marker. There’s something about reading a single sentence after a long paragraph that gives a reader the same feeling a listener gets hearing a chord resolve on the piano. Let your chords resolve.