27 Quick Medium Writing Tips for New Writers
From someone with 200,000+ views and 150 articles
My early articles were terrible.
Many were flops and I cringe at others.
I’ve published 150 articles on the platform since September 2020. They’ve clocked 200,000 views, making me around $10,000 through the Partner Programme.
Here are 27 quick tips I wish I’d known when I started on Medium.
- Why should someone read your article? If you haven’t got an answer, save it for your diary.
- Headlines are 80% of the game. Write different ones. Play with the structure. Take a step back and think would I click this?
- Odd numbers make headlines more appealing. Throw them in.
- Put your work through the Hemingway App. It’ll simplify your writing.
- Study the platform’s most successful writers. What are they doing that other writers aren’t?
- Write and rewrite your introductions.
- Claps and top-writer tags are overrated.
- Store content ideas online. Notion, Evernote, Obsidian — the platform doesn’t matter. “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” — David Allen
- Only keep the necessary words.
- Use power words in your headlines (where appropriate).
- Add links to external sources.
- Write for publications. It’s the best way to grow your audience. My favourites are Start It Up, Inspired Writer, Better Marketing, The Happy Human, Entrepreneur’s Handbook, a Few Words, and Hello Love.
- Use Text Analyser to remove repeated words.
- Use simple words. You can’t mask bad content with fancy ones.
- Study great articles using Medium’s archive feature. Simply add /archive to the URL of any publication.
- Only sign up for a writing course when you’ve published 50 articles. You’ll waste your time and money until you commit to writing.
- Use this capitalisation tool to format your headlines.
- Establish credibility but don’t ram it down people’s throats. You’ve sold a few businesses. We get it.
- Comment on the articles you like. The conversations can lead to incredible places.
- Followers are a vanity metric. Once you’ve got 100, don’t worry about them, and don’t ask others to follow you. If they like your writing, they will.
- My writing gets rejected by publications all the time. Don’t take it personally. Sometimes, your writing is a better fit somewhere else.
- Lean into flow states.
- Edit later.
- Use colourful images from Unsplash and Pexels.
- Act like you don’t need the money. “One of the secrets to getting what you want in life is creating the perception that you don’t need a thing.” — Curtis Jackson
- Put in the reps. “Trust is consistency over time.” — Jeff Weiner
- Just because your writing hasn’t got many claps or views, it doesn’t mean it’s sh*t.
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