3 Steps to Promote Your Medium Stories
If you want more reads and claps — and who doesn’t — this is how I promote my stories.
You poured your heart and soul into a Medium story, and now you want an audience to read it. We all do.
Writers want to be read.
After writing on Medium for a year, I’ve gotten better sharing my work.
In the beginning, I was timid about sharing, unsure of my skills as a writer, plus, I had no idea how to get my writing out there — where to promote. That may have been a plus for me. I didn’t start sharing until The Startup asked if I would post content in their publication. That prompted me to take myself seriously as a writer. If I didn’t, no one would. I better get used to sharing my work.
Thank you, The Startup.
Ignorance is bliss, sometimes.
Back when I was a newbie on Medium, my ignorance gave me an advantage.
During that time I had no idea what I was doing, I wrote. That is all I did, for hours a day, I worked on writing. I didn’t promote; I only spent time writing.
My writing improved. I honed in on what works on Medium before I started promoting my stories.
By the time I did, my writing was dramatically better.
We are all different. Your starting point is different from mine. You may be a better writer than me when you first start publishing on Medium, or you may have a built-in audience outside of Medium. You may have thousands of fans on Quora ready to bounce over to Medium as soon as you publish. Or maybe you’ve written a book, and able to transfer fans of your published book over to Medium.
If you don’t have an established built-in audience, you need to find one.
Below is what worked for me.
ONE: Publications, both little and big.
No matter what anyone says, the best way to make it on Medium is to get into Medium in-house publications.
Some are not easy to get into, like Human Parts.
Human Parts, as of now, is not accepting submissions. But if you’re a big name on Medium or have an outside audience to bring to Medium, you can get in with the right submission.
If not, keep trying.
Trick: look at the stories in Human Parts and write one in the same vein of the same quality. Tag it with Human Parts, and other common tags used on the articles found in Human Parts.
You never know. If you write a killer story appropriate for Human Parts, and one of the editors comes across it, you might get into the publication through the back door.
I know you’ll never get into a publication if you don’t try, so don’t give up.
Tip: While waiting to be accepted to a publication, large or small, keep writing and working on other stories and posting them to your publication. It takes time to grow an audience from scratch, start now, while you are waiting for editors to read your work.
Listed below are the larger Medium in-house publications.
- Momentum
- Coronavirus
- OneZero
- Elemental
- GEN
- Zora
- Forge
- Human Parts
- Marker
- Level
- Heated
They are listed at the top of Medium’s homepage.
If you are starting on Medium with zero followers, publishing an article outside of a publication may be a waste of time.
Unless you wrote something so spectacular that no one can ignore, posting in a publication that already has an audience is your best bet.
Why? Because even the smaller publications like The Startup and P.S. I love You have a built-in audience, with thousands of followers. People who will see your writing that would not have otherwise.
Note: I have a high curation rate. I have noticed that my stories published in larger and smaller publications are curated faster than when I post to my own publication (they are still curated but at a slower rate). Although this is anecdotal, I haven’t done a scientific study, it is something I’ve noticed.
TWO: Curation means your work is promoted through Medium’s algorithm.
Readership is how Medium determines payment, the amount of reading time per member. The more topics your story is curated in, the more eyeballs will see your post, the more likely your story will be read.
Topics drive Medium’s algorithm.
Thus, placing that story in front of more readers who follow the topic in which it’s curated. The more topics a story is curated in, the more opportunity for readers to see your story. The chances of your story getting noticed by readers multiply by how many topics a story is curated in.
Tag your post with appropriate and popular tags — you can use up to five tags. The “Self-awareness” tag is more popular than, say, the tag, “Death.”
Find out what tags are popular and write well for those tags.
Three: Share on Social Media.
Three months into my Medium journey I didn’t share anywhere.
I didn’t actively try to get into publications, I just wrote.
Once I was comfortable with the landscape — about three months in — I started sharing in Medium Facebook Groups, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
I’m not very familiar with LinkedIn, but I share content daily there. I gain followers and readers through LinkedIn every day.
I tweet my Medium article once per day and read other writers on Twitter.
Facebook Groups
There are many Facebook groups dedicated to Medium writers. Join as many as you want. The three I like are Medium Wizardry, Medium Dreamers, and Medium Magic.
The rules are similar from group to group.
Rules:
- There is one daily share thread where writers share one article.
- Typically you cannot share outside the shared thread (in a few of the groups you can, or there is one #selfpromo day per week when you can share outside the thread on the timeline).
- You can gain followers and readers, and people like you to reciprocate.
- I do not recommend the follow/unfollow method. It is disingenuous. You want true fans. True fans read your work, that is what you want. Medium is a small world. There are many writers, but the ones who share often tend to stand out and know each other.
- Don’t just drop a post and skedaddle; it’s frowned upon.
- Ask Medium related questions to the administrators of the groups. They will usually post a comment or question thread for members to ask questions or post comments.
- Don’t post more than one story.
While these groups are excellent for meeting like-minded writers who are writing for Medium, if the writing isn’t there, you won’t get many reads from just sharing on social alone.
Use the groups to meet other writers, see what they are sharing and discussing about Medium. These groups are places to keep up on all things Medium.
Help other writers by offering content to their publications or invite them to post stories to your publication.
The best way to promote your writing is to work all ends at the same time: Build your publication, submit to larger and smaller publications, and share your work on social media.
That is the Medium trifecta. That is what I did, and I’m building an audience that reads.
It takes time, but if you do all three of these things, you will see your readership and follower count grow over the long haul.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
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