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2 Reasons Why the ‘7 Habits of Something’ Headline is Killing Originality on Medium
Scrolling through Medium today, the similarity of the titles of the articles featured on the home page jumped at me. I noticed that most of them followed this format — [a number] [things/habits/ways] [to/of/any pronoun] [an ending phrase]. Here are a few examples:
5 things you can do to eat more cookies in 2020
71 habits of perennial laggards worth learning from
2 million ways to fry chicken like a boss
Seeing these titles show up repeatedly struck me as odd. The uniformity contradicted the diversity of both the content and its creators. And the cause of that uniformity is one that has not eluded me in my online research into ways to increase online visibility for my writing. The experts tell us that the almighty formula for being noticed among the cyber static we have all become, is starting our title with a number that stands out (preferably an odd number, not more than 10, with the odds favouring 3 and 7.) We then follow it with a word that describes a process (often throwing in the word ‘secret’ to tell the reader they are on to something truly special.) Then slather on top of that, a short phrase that speaks to the reader’s need or…
