The 10 habits of highly successful digital writers (and how you can cultivate them to win the online writing game)
Learn how Tim Denning, Dan Koe and Sean Kernan became top writers on the internet.
Success leaves clues, and if you want to become a successful digital writer, follow the clues from the lives of these successful writers.
After over 33 hours of studying successful writers on several digital platforms, I have noticed 10 habits that are common to every one of them.
And while this article focuses on Tim Denning, Dan Koe, and Sean Kernan, you will notice these habits with almost every successful digital writer you know.
Read daily
This is quite obvious, but most people need a reminder.
Reading daily is the fuel for writing high-quality pieces. Reading helps you to find interesting ideas others are writing about and can kickstart the ideation process for your own articles.
And no, this daily reading is not limited to blog posts and Twitter threads. Aim to finish a book in a week or two. Great books are a better source of information.
Have a downtime
Successful digital writers plan downtime into their day. The downtime is spent mostly outdoors, in the gym, on a hike, or running.
During this period, your brain synthesises all the input from the reading and your life experiences and starts to give your ideas to write on.
Master the platform
There are several platforms to build an audience. Medium, Quora, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc.
And these platforms have different languages.
Twitter threads are different from Medium posts, which are different from LinkedIn/Facebook updates and different from Quora answers.
The mistake most writers make is to write the same way across different platforms.
You can write about the same thing but you must write with the platform in mind.
Also, the audiences on these platforms are different, so what will work on one won’t necessarily work on the others.
Successful digital writers are masters of repurposing. Taking the message from one platform and writing it in the language of the next platform.
Speak to one person
This is the common persuasion principle every digital writer should know, and the best always have it in mind whenever they write.
Write as though you are speaking to one person.
If you try to speak to everyone, you will most likely get no one to read your stuff. If possible, try to alienate those you don’t want to speak to in your headlines.
Be vulnerable
Vulnerability is not posting a crying selfie when you lay off your employees. Nope.
It is when you invite others into your life to share in almost your day-to-day activities. Vulnerability leads to reliability.
So it is easier to take their advice, enjoy the wins, and cry at their losses, if you feel you know them.
Being vulnerable is hard, you don’t want people to know everything you do, but you must show your humanness. People will only relate to you if they feel you are human, mess and all.
Experiment
The best writers don’t guess the format of the article that will go viral. They test and keep experimenting until they can produce a viral article of their own making.
This is not to say they don’t still have articles that bomb. But by running experiments, they have a good hit ratio.
They experiment with the headline, the cover image, the hook, the closing, the writing format, and almost every factor that can improve the article.
Dominate one platform and go to the next
Most writers try to be everywhere at once. This is possible if you have a team of writers at your disposal that take your thoughts and turn them into words and post them on the different platforms in their native language. But if you don’t then just focus on one platform.
Tim Denning dominated Medium and went on to Twitter and LinkedIn.
Sean Kernan is the son of Quora but is now dominating Medium, and Twitter.
Dan Koe started on Twitter and now also dominates LinkedIn. Don’t try to be everywhere at once, dominate one and go to the next.
Say one thing in different ways
There is nothing special you want to say that hasn’t been said before. But digital writers are the masters of repetition.
Don’t try to come up with novel ideas, try to come up with novel ways to communicate old ideas.
This is not easy tho, and the only way to learn how to do it is by binge-reading all your digital authors and testing out their different ways of communication. And be patient, this is a skill you learn over time.
Master the art of storytelling
People will remember your stories over cold hard data every time. And the best digital writers are masters of storytelling. Always try to incorporate stories into your posts on whichever platform you are writing for. And every story consists of 4 parts
i. The beginning
Ii. The challenge
Iii. The tipping point
Iv. The happy or not-so-happy ending.
You don’t have to turn every post into a story, but you can present your information with the storytelling framework in mind. The person’s current situation. The challenge that leads to a tipping point, and then the not-so-happy ending.
They don’t follow the rules
The best digital writers know every rule that worked in the past is just a best practice.
For instance. Apart from some general rules of persuasion, the best digital writers break grammar rules, headline rules and even sometimes get away with storytelling rules.
However, they don’t break rules to please themselves or just for the sake of it. Every rule they break is to make the article better. This is also the last habit because you need to be careful, and break rules only when absolutely necessary.
Conclusion
Writing is one of the highest leverage activities you can do. But winning at online writing is hard, but if you follow the clues from the success of these writers, you can shorten the learning curve and achieve success too.
