What I Learned From Paying Attention to My Reader Statistics

Changing your Medium story views to reads can be tough, but trying these three things helped

Like so many other writers here on Medium, I am here to grow my following, meet other writers, and it wouldn’t hurt to make some money in the mix.

However, for a long time, I was having trouble changing post views into reads, which is when your articles start to generate money.

That was when I made a major decision. I needed to start changing my tactics or I was going to continue writing content that readers weren’t resonating with. So, it was time to sit down and figure out what portions of my content readers were grabbing onto.

When I took the time to truly think about it, I determined it came down to these three things.

Statistics:

You can learn so much by simply paying attention to the statistics of your stories.

Opening my story stats, I went through and took notes on which stories were doing well. Because determining which stories did well was the key to writing more stories that would do well. These were the topics readers wanted more of.

And truthfully, many writers believe that once they write one post about a topic, they have written all they could about it.

However, a great way to grab the attention of the audience you have already gained is to dive in deeper. What else can you explore on the topic? What other information could this reader benefit from?

Highlights:

When readers find something beneficial, they highlight it.

Paying attention to the portions of information readers highlight can provide you with more topics for posts. Maybe they hone in on specific techniques you introduced. Take these highlights as opportunities to give readers what they want.

Comments:

The more articles I write, the more comments I have been receiving from readers.

Now when my posts get comments, I try to see if they could benefit from more targeting information. Can I take anything away from what they had to say to create new posts? Pay attention to what they have to say.

Using these three statistic tools will help you create more targeted and useful content for your audience.

Pay attention to what readers want and you can increase your chances of changing post views to reads.