A couple of weeks ago I started posting articles on Medium. But I have even no one reader opened my article. Does anyone else have the same problem, and how do you solving this problem?
I'm no expert here but maybe I can share my experience. Out of ~30 posts I wrote, one got featured. That one blew up to 1000s of reads, despite the story not belonging to a big publication. I wrote another story that got featured by a big publication which also generated 1000s of reads. But that story hasn't caught up with the post above. My understanding is: write often, write things of value to your readership and one of them might take off. I sadly don't know the internals of how editors pick featured stories... 😅
You paywall your content, and Medium promotes it to their members. a. If you go this route, you need to find a relevant publication to post your content to. The bar is fairly low at this point, don't worry too much about getting rejected, as long as it's relevant to the publication, and the publication is large. b. You can't repost duplicate content to get more exposure, Medium will penalize you (and take down your articles).
You don't paywall your content. Assume Medium will never promote it to anyone on the Medium platform. They just use your content to suck in traffic from Google and social, to promote the Medium platform. a. Medium has 100/100 pagerank in Google. So if you go this route, you do some SEO research, and you're basically going to get a huge headstart in ranking for any keywords you want that aren't super competitive. Google loves Medium articles. b. Your Article title is important. Get it right before you publish, because it's also in your URL.
Either way, You should build a funnel and promote something in your article, or just hope to gain Medium followers. Also, your other posts will be promoted at the end of your Medium article. Articles should be 1,000 words or more. Include some images and styling.
You should work hard on making quality content that is incredibly relevant to the topic you're writing about, or the question you're answering (think of every Google search as a question). This is where a lot of people mess up. Their content is quick and spammy and engagement is bad, so Medium & Google stop promoting it.
Also, Keywords are important. Pick 3-5 that are relevant to your article but also have a ton of followers (you'll see this stat when picking keywords). I'm not 100% on whether this has changed since the big update a couple years ago, but it's part of how they recommend articles to people who browse the app / website, and generate bottom of page recommendations.
If you have another blog somewhere, publish it there first, and then Import it into Medium. This will give you a bit of both worlds (SEO + Exposure on Medium in the footer). A lot of people recommend this, but I've basically only gotten it to work with long-tail keywords where there wasn't a lot of other relevant content.
I've gotten in the high xxx,xxx views using method 1, and > 1,000,000 views with method 2. They both work, you just have to experiment with both of them, and figure out which is a better fit for the type of content you're publishing.
A general rule of thumb, if the audience you're targeting is already on Medium (browsing a specific publication, browsing the app, or browsing the Medium homepage) -- you can go with #1, provided you find a large publication. If your audience is searching for something on Google with lots of search volume, go with #2.
Wow! James, thank you very much very detailed explanation. Your answer helped me a lot to clear my understanding of how Medium works.
Also thanks for sharing the links.
You need to focus on writing great content first. Try to share it on IH, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, any relevant places that you have access to, but don't overdo it, you don't need it that much, the quality of your content is more important, as long as you have someone to look at your article and give you some claps, it's good enough. Editors from different publications will always be looking for articles to distribute to their readers, then your work will get exposed to even more relevant readers. After you have a couple of articles being published on some creditable publications, Medium curators will start looking at you, if your post is high quality enough, they will feature your post to some categories, that is when your work will get the most exposure thanks to Medium! But again, 90% is the quality of your content.
Like anywhere else, you need to build followers first. Once you start publishing valuable content regularly, you’ll get followers as well. You just need to give it a little push first 🙃
I'm no expert here but maybe I can share my experience. Out of ~30 posts I wrote, one got featured. That one blew up to 1000s of reads, despite the story not belonging to a big publication. I wrote another story that got featured by a big publication which also generated 1000s of reads. But that story hasn't caught up with the post above. My understanding is: write often, write things of value to your readership and one of them might take off. I sadly don't know the internals of how editors pick featured stories... 😅
Thanks Mario!
Yeah, I am posting one article every week. Hoping one will blow up!
Here's how Medium works in 2020:
You paywall your content, and Medium promotes it to their members.
a. If you go this route, you need to find a relevant publication to post your content to. The bar is fairly low at this point, don't worry too much about getting rejected, as long as it's relevant to the publication, and the publication is large.
b. You can't repost duplicate content to get more exposure, Medium will penalize you (and take down your articles).
You don't paywall your content. Assume Medium will never promote it to anyone on the Medium platform. They just use your content to suck in traffic from Google and social, to promote the Medium platform.
a. Medium has 100/100 pagerank in Google. So if you go this route, you do some SEO research, and you're basically going to get a huge headstart in ranking for any keywords you want that aren't super competitive. Google loves Medium articles.
b. Your Article title is important. Get it right before you publish, because it's also in your URL.
Either way, You should build a funnel and promote something in your article, or just hope to gain Medium followers. Also, your other posts will be promoted at the end of your Medium article. Articles should be 1,000 words or more. Include some images and styling.
You should work hard on making quality content that is incredibly relevant to the topic you're writing about, or the question you're answering (think of every Google search as a question). This is where a lot of people mess up. Their content is quick and spammy and engagement is bad, so Medium & Google stop promoting it.
Also, Keywords are important. Pick 3-5 that are relevant to your article but also have a ton of followers (you'll see this stat when picking keywords). I'm not 100% on whether this has changed since the big update a couple years ago, but it's part of how they recommend articles to people who browse the app / website, and generate bottom of page recommendations.
If you have another blog somewhere, publish it there first, and then Import it into Medium. This will give you a bit of both worlds (SEO + Exposure on Medium in the footer). A lot of people recommend this, but I've basically only gotten it to work with long-tail keywords where there wasn't a lot of other relevant content.
I've gotten in the high xxx,xxx views using method 1, and > 1,000,000 views with method 2. They both work, you just have to experiment with both of them, and figure out which is a better fit for the type of content you're publishing.
A general rule of thumb, if the audience you're targeting is already on Medium (browsing a specific publication, browsing the app, or browsing the Medium homepage) -- you can go with #1, provided you find a large publication. If your audience is searching for something on Google with lots of search volume, go with #2.
---
Where to find Medium publications to submit to: https://toppub.xyz/
Import a Post from your own blog: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/214550207-Import-a-post
Wow! James, thank you very much very detailed explanation. Your answer helped me a lot to clear my understanding of how Medium works.
Also thanks for sharing the links.
You need to focus on writing great content first. Try to share it on IH, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, any relevant places that you have access to, but don't overdo it, you don't need it that much, the quality of your content is more important, as long as you have someone to look at your article and give you some claps, it's good enough. Editors from different publications will always be looking for articles to distribute to their readers, then your work will get exposed to even more relevant readers. After you have a couple of articles being published on some creditable publications, Medium curators will start looking at you, if your post is high quality enough, they will feature your post to some categories, that is when your work will get the most exposure thanks to Medium! But again, 90% is the quality of your content.
Thanks!
I posted my blog post on linkedin and it seems linkedin is very good at spreading your posts to 2nd connections. That gave me some moderate boost.
Nice! I'll share my posts on all social media.
You need to distribute it. If there's value for the IH community, you can even post the link here. Try relevant FB group, slack communities, etc.
Also, the get the thing running - ask your close friends and colleagues to give you claps.
Hope that helps.
Thanks, Nevena!
So basically Medium doesn't help bloggers to get readers to their posts?
Like anywhere else, you need to build followers first. Once you start publishing valuable content regularly, you’ll get followers as well. You just need to give it a little push first 🙃
Thanks! Yeah, I am trying to push it as much as I can :)
Use right tags, keyword rich content and don't get to share it on social media platforms. Better to go with relevant groups.
Getting out of Medium....
Why?
because of the paywall,..even if they want to read it, they may not click. People have priorities...