The thing you are competing with is not another post. It is a thumb already moving, in a person half-watching something else.
What survives that
- Short first sentence. Not a short post — a short opening
- One idea per paragraph, and paragraphs of two or three lines
- Line breaks where a breath would go, not where a grammar rule says
- Concrete nouns. “Sixteen takes” lands; “a lot of effort” does not
What does not
Long preambles, throat-clearing, and the sentence that explains what you are about to say instead of saying it. Cut the first line of most drafts and they improve.
If the second sentence could be the first, it should be.
Read it on a phone
Not in the editor. A paragraph that looks fine at desk width becomes a wall at 375 pixels, and that is where it will actually be read. Every writing habit worth having comes from seeing your own text where the reader sees it.
This is not an argument for shallow writing. Long posts do well. But they earn the length in the first two lines, and lose it in a slow start.