A Viral Article Should Take You 20 Minutes to Write
Don’t overthink it. Just write.
I accidentally wrote a viral article in 2020.
I say “accidentally” because I didn’t set out with the intention of writing a popular article. Up to that point, my articles each received tens of views. Hundreds, maybe, but only if I was lucky.
But in January of 2020, as I scrolled through LinkedIn, I stumbled across an interesting post.
It wasn’t anything flashy, just a link to a different article—“Amazon sends out email template.”
Amazon accidentally sent their email template to customers? It was an interesting snafu from a company that rarely makes mistakes. But it didn’t seem particularly newsworthy.
Still, it could be worth writing about. I spent 15 minutes drafting a quick article, then spent 5 minutes editing it, and then submitted it to a publication.
The article was published the next day, and the reception was…well, initially mediocre.
Only a few people read the article. And a day went by. And another day. Then another day.
And then, a few days after publication, I was scrolling through my Medium statistics and noticed a strange blip. Then the notifications began to pop up on my phone. One person…
