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

by Nicolas Cole

When it comes to online writing, conclusions are optional. The truth is, readers don’t need them. Especially in an 800 to 1,200-word article, a conclusion should happen in the span of a paragraph—or even a single sentence.

The Summary technique works particularly well within Actionable Guide articles, or very long pieces with lots of different sections. Readers appreciate summaries. There’s a reason why every self-help or business book ends each chapter with a “recap” or page of “action steps.” Especially when you’re covering a lot of ground, or a topic requires a lot of additional explanation, summaries are a way for you to make sure you and the reader are on the same page (pun intended) before moving on to the next Main Point.

As a rule of thumb: readers on the internet don’t like complicated.

Here are a few writing rules I encourage you to live by: Write for the everyday person. If you are hell-bent on writing at an academic level, realize you are writing for a considerably smaller audience—which means, by definition, your material will almost never be read by the masses. If what you want is broad exposure, then it’s important for you to use non-complicated language. For example, don’t use semicolons (very few people understand how they work anyway). If there’s a simpler synonym for a word less than 10% of society knows the definition to, use it. (Why? Because most people don’t use words like, “prodigious” or “confounding” when they speak. They just say, “Wow that was amazing.”) Write how you speak. Record yourself talking about a topic and then transcribe the recording. Pay close attention to the rhythm of your natural sentences, versus the rhythms you try to use when writing to “sound” more professional in your writing. As a rule of thumb, anyone who tries to sound professional ends up sounding inauthentic, and those who lean into their authentic voice end up being perceived as the most relatable. Avoid long sentences. Unless you’re using one long sentence stylistically, like to counterbalance a paragraph of many short sentences, you should err on the side of brevity. The more winding your thoughts, the more confusing your writing will be for the reader to follow. Remember, you are writing for someone whose eyes are flying across the page at lightspeed. Alter...

Self-promotion on the internet follows the rule of opposites. The more you promote yourself, the less people listen. The less you promote yourself, the more people listen.

Whenever you are talking about yourself, it should be done in a way that gives necessary context to the reader. If you’re writing about how to learn a skill, you should also tell the reader how you learned that skill. If you’re writing about what it feels like to fall out of love, you should also tell the reader about a time you fell out of love. If you’re writing about the future of technology, you should also tell the reader about the history of technology and what you’ve experienced in the past. If you’re writing about politics, you should also tell the reader how you got involved in politics.

Writers who succeed on the internet are the ones with the largest libraries of content. Sure, there are outliers who happen to find success with just a small batch of material, but 99% of the time, volume is what separates “good” from “great.” The more material you have, the more times you’re “spinning the wheel” of social algorithms, and the more likely new readers are to discover you and your work. In the game of Online Writing, volume wins.

Every time you write something online, your footprint gets bigger. The more material you write within a given category, the more dominant your voice becomes. And the longer you stick with it, new writers in your chosen category will start to compare themselves to you.

Writing becomes a business as soon as you start: Capturing people’s email addresses Making money from advertising revenue Making money from paid subscriptions Selling products and/or services Speaking, coaching,

It’s time to start your own website once you 1) know what it is people want to read about from you, 2) know how you need to position topics to resonate with your target readers, and 3) already have their attention elsewhere and are ready to move them deeper into your library of content.

The best way to continue earning a reader’s loyalty is to direct them from a piece of written content they already find valuable, to a longer, more extensive resource they will want to bookmark forever.

Once you have a Pillar Piece written on a specific topic, you should then direct readers over and over again to this Pillar Piece in your relevant social content. This becomes your “Reader Acquisition Flywheel.” Write content in each of your three Content Buckets. Use data to decide which specific topic deserves its own Pillar Piece. Create a Pillar Piece on your website. Continue to write about that proven topic in social environments, and regularly link to that Pillar Piece in everything you write that is relevant.

All growing up, my dad used to wear this raggy old no-sleeved shirt whenever he would lift weights in the basement. On the back was a silhouette of a basketball player, and over it was a long paragraph. In that paragraph, it said something to the effect of, “Somewhere, someone else is practicing harder than you, faster than you, longer than you. They want it more than you. And when you meet them, they will win”—with the Nike swoosh as the period at the end.