[gclv]

As a sibling has said, writing to maximise engagement is a different beast from writing “well”. I’m sure some “growth hacker” types would argue for defining “well” in a way that’s quantifiable, hence the confusion.

I personally find that style very annoying. It’s especially popular on LinkedIn. When I notice that I’m reading some vertically-set essay, it’s my cue to stop scrolling and stay off LinkedIn for the next month.

[ghaff]

I've had people try to convince me to use one of those apps that supposedly help you write for better "engagement." Invariably, they just don't get it when I say I'm not interested.

[bonoboTP]

I've been thinking about how useful raw engagement metrics actually are. Likes on your post or view on your video. These metrics count every reader and audience member equally, when they are far from equally relevant to you. By writing according to some common denominator you may trade a smaller high-quality audience off for a larger low-quality audience.

For example if you want to promote your work, who cares if you get lots of views from people with small attention span and no deep interest? The goal is to put your thoughts out there into good hands (or minds). To foster collaboration, to get insightful feedback. (Or to make sales, but there again, consumers can have widely different behavior. Some have noted that pricing higher will get you a nicer user base.)

Just one thoughtful reader may be worth a thousand inattentive bored scroller-clickers on LinkedIn. Because that one may write you an interesting message, which may lead to new opportunities, open up new communities for you. What do a thousand likes get you besides stroking your ego? I just don't see the value in that sort of mechanistic "karma farming".

[ghaff]

There's some value in raw numbers, especially at scale. It's reasonable for a company to care about how many views a product page, how to, or topic page gets. And it's a proxy for a lot of other things that are really hard to suss out. (Though you can measure things like how far people read/watch, time they spend, etc.)

But for me personally, I mostly go by what I want to read and I don't really care if an SEO plug-in is telling me I should be writing at a sixth grade level--which is the level a lot of these tools work at. (And I'm often working with experienced editors who have a pretty good sense of what their audience/desired audience is looking for.) They're also not mostly ad-supported so there isn't a lot of incentive to go for pageviews for the sake of pageviews.

[bonoboTP]

What I had in mind was for example popularizing one's research as a scientist, or spreading your thoughts about your industry. In these cases it can be much more important to reach some people in your small niche, as opposed to a mass of a generic audience. Applying the same growth hacks as generic Youtubers may not be fitting in one's specific use case. Perhaps you could clickbaitify your content, and increase the raw numbers (makes sense in case of an ad-driven Youtuber) but if you're hoping for high quality feedback or getting to know other interesting people, you may better spend your time on catering to your special audience even when it's small. And instead of promoting it left and right, target it specifically through niche channels, like email contacts, etc.

This may seem obvious, but sometimes people can get caught up in cargo-culting the established trendy marketing strategies that are actually designed for another use case than yours.