Metadata is the information that describes your story to readers, in turn increasing the story's discoverability. This is an effective and easy way to promote stories. It's how readers find you and your stories on Wattpad and beyond, and it has a huge impact on their reading decisions.

Metadata tells readers the title and the author name. It is more or less the information about your story and any other relevant information that readers use to find your story. Having complete and accurate metadata, has been proven to have a positive impact on readership growth.

For Wattpad India Awards it does not matter how many reads your story has. This chapter's purpose is to help you grow your audience, and help make you more discoverable to Wattpad HQ, but it guarantee that your audience will grow.

This is to better your understanding about how people find your stories. We do not penalize you for having the wrong information. However, having the wrong markers makes it hard for readers to find your story, so it's a penalty you're imposing on yourself.

Tags are part of a story's metadata. While the genres influence the way Wattpad will categorize a story, keywords will power the results of any organic search done by readers, especially on Wattpad.

E.g. a search using the search bar for "fakeromance" will return search results that prioritize stories with those words in the title, but also include stories with that phrase in the tags.

Tags' job is to:

- Describe a story's content

- Help people find stories

- Convert a browsing user to your reader.

It helps readers understand:

- What the story is about

-If it matches what they're trying to find or if it is relevant

-If they can trust that the information is accurate.

It's important that the information accurately represents your story. Anything that doesn't match the above criteria will lead to low click-through rates and conversions, and thus a lower ranking in search results. Relevant terms should align with a reader's needs. So don't use anything so specific as people won't search for, and don't use terms that aren't accurate for your story.

Try to keep tags short, because readers aren't likely to use long phrases in a search. Search queries will match full phrases. For example if you put #darkhumor it will only match for people who searched for exactly that. Breaking it out into #dark and #humor is more likely to return a match. In some cases it makes sense to keep things together like #vigilantejustice or #sciencefiction where the exact phrase is meaningful.

It's always better if you have a mix of both : tags and tags

If you had to describe your story in a handful of words, which ones would you choose? Ideally you should be picking at least 10 descriptive words. Try to pick 1-2 words that fall under each of these buckets:

- Setting (e.g. India)

- Time-period (e.g. 1920s, contemporary)

- Story theme (e.g. coming-of-age, magical)

- Character theme/occupation (e.g. bad boy, chosen one)

- Character appearance/ethnicity/orientation (e.g. Hispanic, bisexual)

- Mood (e.g. slow burn, angst)

These are words that both market your story and are the most likely to fit what people are actually searching for. Ideally you should be picking at least 10 marketing words. Try to pick 1-2 words that fall under each of these buckets:

- Genre (e.g Scifi, Mystery)

- Subgenre (e.g. Space Opera, dystopian)

- Miscellaneous - tags that are much more specific to your story (e.g. dragon-rider, fairies)

Generally, the best practice is to avoid using punctuation and diacritical marks within tags.

Some punctuation may be unavoidable in phrasing. For example, users might include some hyphenated words ("self-aware", "mother-in-law", "award-winner").

But some special characters, such as "&" and "%", may cause issues when inputted into search tools. This type of punctuation is often ignored by search engines which can change the meaning of keywords. Furthermore, users are unlikely to use accented characters in search.

The same goes for emojis and special font - many of our systems do not recognize them and will return unintelligible characters.

There are some exceptions to this, for example if you are writing in a language other than English then use of special characters is necessary.

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That's it for tags! This is often where writers feel stressed. Even if you know what your story is about, it can be daunting to select a few words to put in the tags and worrying if they actually even matter. So we hope this helped!

This should be:

- As specific as possible

- Try to include relevant search terms where appropriate

The goal is to set-up the reader's expectations. If your story isn't fantasy but the title is something like The Dragon's Peril, you are misleading readers and setting them up for disappointment.

Also, don't use a special font to write your title in - no matter how aesthetic it looks - our systems and search engines can't read them at times. Keep this in mind for EVERYTHING, like story description, tags etc.

If your story is part of a series, be sure to indicate that in the story's title or description. If you don't indicate that there will be or there are more stories in your series, readers are unlikely to find and read the next story, nor will they know where to start. This also helps build reader anticipation.

Be sure to keep your formatting consistent across all your stories in the series:

- Try to keep the titles in consistent (i.e. The Widow's Grave, The Widow's Lament)

- If the story is a sequel, or story 3, mention that in brackets. If you want to reduce clutter in the title, you can just put the series name/chronological number of the story in the description

- When picking a series name try to keep it short, easy to remember, indicative of the genre, and simple

- Try not to do a one-word series name as it might get confused with the title.

Most people will tell you not to judge a book by its cover, but who are we kidding? When readers are browsing stories, first impressions matter.

Stories with covers get 23x more reads than those without. Your best shot at getting a reader's attention is a striking, eye-catching, click-worthy cover.

The next step? Ensure your cover is a clear reflection of the story you've written. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all. A great cover can help tease what's inside, speak about one of the major themes of the work.

. Over 85% of readers on Wattpad are using mobile devices. Despite the optimal cover dimension (512 x 800 pixels), in some mobile situations, your cover may appear as small as a fingernail. Make sure your title is clear and obvious on the cover so readers understand it immediately.

If your story is part of a series, consider matching covers for consistency. This doesn't mean using the same cover and adding 'Story 2' to the title. Instead, try switching up the base colors, adding a different illustration/image than from the first story, and keeping the font of title the same size and color.

The cover and font you use will set the tone for what kind of story the readers should expect. Angsty drama? Try something moody and dark. Fantasy? Try using green and golden/yellow colors with cursive font.

Take inspiration from cover designs you love. Look at your bookshelf or take a scroll through Wattpad. What drew you to certain covers? Don't copy them, but do take inspiration.

Be sure to update your date of birth- Wattpad HQ often relies on this to determine an author's eligibility for opportunities, for example if we have a partner looking for authors between the age of 16-18 writing fanfiction about BTS, you won't surface if your age is incorrect or missing.

If your story is finished, mark it as !

Not only does it mean it's more likely to be considered for opportunities like Paid Stories, Studios and Books, but it's also 100x more likely to be read. You also need a completed story to be eligible for Wattpad India Awards, so double-check this!

Don't know how to mark your story complete? You can find help for it

Post new chapters regularly and don't be afraid to kindly ask your readers to vote, comment, share your story. Most of the algorithms on Wattpad take into account reader engagement and how much time they spend reading. Make sure your story is captivating from the get-go so that readers keep coming back!

Make sure your story is marked mature if it is. Again it's setting up a reading expectation, and if it's incorrect it can lead to the loss of readers and even people reporting your story. Don't mark your story mature just because your characters swear.

Marking your story Mature mean that it can contain prohibited content. Stories that contain prohibited content will be removed regardless of their rating. Read to understand what makes a story mature.

One thing we didn't discuss is Chapter Title.

It's because these aren't strictly necessary and usually depend on the writer and their preferences. Usually, they are just chapter numbers, they can be a character's name whose POV the chapter is written in or a phrase that summarizes or foreshadows what's going to happen in that chapter.

So let us end this session with a simple question - are you someone who writes chapter titles? If yes, then why? If no, then why not?