How I Went Viral

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7 months ago on a cold evening, I was sitting idly on my desk and thinking of doing something productive.

Suddenly the brilliant idea of writing an article hit my mind. Although I didn’t write anything in my life up to that point.

The medium was the obvious choice for writing because I read a lot of articles on Medium because of my job as a Software Engineer.

So I started writing.

How it Happened

My initial intention was to document the journey of myself as a software engineer. Also having a blogging portfolio can prove to my employers that I know what I am doing.

On average the articles were viewed around 6–12 times per day and I thought to myself

WOW! People are spending their time reading my stuff!

It felt so good. But after some days suddenly my view count went from 20 to 500!

It gathered a huge amount of views afterward and to this day it accumulates over 30000 views. That’s viral for me!

It was a story about our mistake as startup founders. How some poor technical choice almost ruined us.

[Costly Mistakes: Why We Had to Abandoned Firebase]( javascript.plainenglish.io](https://javascript.plainenglish.io/costly-mistakes-why-we-had-to-abandoned-firebase-b89930c10d92 )

Whatever the case it felt so good. And I became much more serious after that about writing.

Why Though?

Honestly, at that time, I had absolutely no idea why this particular article went viral.

But now, after 6 months I think I’m now in a better place to explain why that article went viral. And these are factors that I used my other viral stories too. So maybe there is something.

1. This is a Story of Failure

This story is about failure. People love to hear about other people’s failures. One of my most favorite quotes is.

It is not enough to succeed; others must fail — Gore Vidal

Yes, it’s true. No matter how much you want to avoid the truth it’s actually true.

This is explained in this article very nicely. And I think this is a factor why people engaged with that particular article.

2. Powerful Word in The Title

According to this website

A power word (also sometimes confused as a trigger word) is a word that evokes an emotion and a response. It instills in people the desire or need to respond to whatever you’re presenting them with.

I used the word “Abandon” in the title which is a power word. It was a spontaneous choice back then but later I found out it’s an important factor in writing a great title for your article.

I think this word in the title triggered many people to click on the article.

3. Against Popular Opinion

In my article, I talked about the technology Firebase. Which is loved by many people and for good reasons. There are tons of articles about why it’s great and all.

But unfortunately in our case, we failed to make the most out of it. That’s why people got curious about how we failed.

Many people in the comments also expressed their anger and pointed out why it was our fault that we failed to utilize it. (But forgot that I wrote the article to explain just that :p )

4. Luck

Well….. most probably you saw it coming.

I am not trying to pretend to be a wizard who just figured out the algorithm.

After all the things that you can do there is still a crucial factor that is LUCK. Maybe some of my other articles had similar juices as that first article but didn’t take off.

And that’s life for you. Write more consistently and write the best version that you possibly can.

Because it’s the only thing that is in your control

Best of luck with your writing journey. I hope you enjoyed it reading as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Resources

1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-the-name-love/200901/why-are-we-pleased-others-misfortune

2. https://kajabi.com/blog/power-words

Have a Great Day! :D

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