I think one of the main problems we have is that we can't A/B test. Big YouTubers, OTOH, do it all the time. They publish a video and then YouTube provides them with detailed stats on impressions, click through rates, etc. They'll watch those stats closely and depending on what they see, they change the title after a few hours or days. They keep doing this until they see the videos stats improve.

Even big YouTubers who get frequent viral hits usually don't get their titles right at first. They keep changing them and testing what performs best before they finally have a winner.

Unfortunately, here on Medium we don't know the number of impressions or click through rate our stories have. Also, it seems as if here on Medium stories just die too fast. It seems to me that if a title flops and you change it the next day, it's too late.

I also wonder what our Medium overlords would think of us repeatedly changing titles just after publication. Would they be ok with that? Publication editors would certainly frown upon that.