avatarAnna Klawitter

Summary

The article outlines five strategies for achieving Top Writer status on Medium, emphasizing understanding the platform's tag system, creating compelling headlines, writing consistently, submitting to publications, and reading other writers' work.

Abstract

The journey to becoming a Top Writer on Medium, as detailed in the article, involves a combination of strategic and creative efforts. The author shares personal experience, noting that it took over a year to reach milestones like 1K followers and top writer status. Key to this success is selecting the right tags from a list of 73 that Medium recognizes for Top Writer consideration, and consistently producing high-quality content within those categories. Crafting attention-grabbing headlines, maintaining a regular writing schedule, and leveraging Medium publications are also highlighted as effective strategies. Additionally, the author emphasizes the importance of engaging with the Medium community and learning from other writers to enhance one's own writing.

Opinions

  • The author believes that achieving Top Writer status is motivating and worth the effort to maintain.
  • They suggest that quality content, paired with strategic tagging, significantly increases the chances of becoming a Top Writer.
  • The author downplays the importance of the number of followers, focusing instead on the journey and personal growth.
  • They advise against comparing oneself to other writers, as it can be detrimental to one's confidence and motivation.
  • The author stresses the importance of building an audience by sharing and promoting stories across various platforms.
  • They provide a list of effective headline styles, including list posts, finality words, top lists, explanatory headlines, questions, shorter titles, controversial titles, statement headlines, and problem-solving titles.
  • The author advocates for daily writing practice, even if it doesn't result in a published piece every day.
  • They highlight the value of submitting work to Medium publications to increase visibility and following.
  • The author encourages reading and learning from others' work as a means to improve one's writing and find inspiration.

5 Strategies To Becoming A Top Writer On Medium

It’s taken me over a year to get here

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

I’m going to be straight up with you. My road on Medium hasn’t been a quick and easy one. It’s taken me a full year of writing on Medium to reach milestones such a 1K followers and achieving top writer status.

I recently got an email announcing this exciting news!

It’s not a BIG deal — I haven’t amassed a million views. But this tag does mean something. It motivates me to keep going. In fact, it motivates me to increase my effort. Maintaining what you earn is harder than earning it.

“To retain your status, just keep publishing great stories tagged Creativity.”

What exactly does that mean? And how exactly did do writers obtain this tag on their profile?

Below are the stories that helped me reach this milestone. As you can see, there’s only one post that basically got me here. And it’s a post that I didn’t think was all that great.

Viewing the writers that also have obtained top writer in Creativity my confidence takes a small dive downward. My 1 thousand followers seem very small to 97,000.

This is my journey. Not anyone else’s. Comparison never does much good anyways.

1. Understand How it Works

There are only a limited number of tags you can become a top writer in. From research others have done there are only 73 tags, that you can flaunt on your profile. Here they are broken up into categories.

Business

  • Economics
  • Business
  • Bitcoin
  • Finance
  • Investing
  • Women In Tech
  • Venture Capital
  • Startup
  • Sustainability

Self-Growth

  • Advice
  • Life
  • Life Lessons
  • Inspiration
  • Mental Health
  • Productivity
  • Ideas
  • Leadership
  • Self Improvement

Equality/Diversity

  • BlackLivesMatter
  • Feminism
  • Diversity
  • LGBTQ
  • This Happened To Me
  • Racism

Travel

  • Transportation
  • Travel
  • Space

Education

  • Education
  • Books
  • Reading
  • History
  • Poetry
  • Science
  • Psychology

Entertainment

  • Fiction
  • Satire
  • Movies
  • Gaming
  • Music
  • Television
  • Social Media

Creativity

  • Architecture
  • Art
  • Creativity
  • Design
  • Innovation

Politics

  • 2016 Election
  • Government
  • Health
  • Climate Change
  • Culture
  • Politics

Relationships

  • Love
  • Relationships
  • Parenting
  • Privacy

Work/Hobbies

  • Cooking
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Fashion
  • Writing
  • Sports
  • Short Story
  • Photography
  • Journalism

Technology

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Virtual Reality
  • Internet of Things
  • Self Driving Cars
  • Technology

Other

  • Energy
  • Food
  • Future
  • Humor

There are literally thousands of other tags to pick from, some with tons of high-quality articles, which will never play a role in achieving Top Writer status.

So you need to pick 5 tags, which correspond to 5 potential topics you want to be considered for as a Top Writer.

Combine high-quality content with strategic tagging and you will have a very good shot at becoming a Medium Top Writer.

To be considered for Top Writer status in these categories you must use at least one of these tags in your article.

When I received Top Writer status in Creativity I had no idea of this list of 73, so perhaps that’s why it took me so long.

Hopefully, with this information under your belt, you’re able to reach Top Writer status a little bit earlier.

Just keep these three things back of mind:

  1. Quality does matter. You want your readers to engage and enjoy your writing.
  2. Don’t forget that you need to write frequently about the topic you’re targeting and don’t forget to tag that post with the relevant tag.
  3. Build an audience. The more readers that find and read your stories, the more likely you will become a top writer. Share and promote your stories on Medium Facebook groups, Twitter, Linkedin, and your other personal networks. Maybe even consider starting a newsletter.

2. Practice creating killer headlines

Here’s a list of different titles you can use in order to catch the reader’s attention. Clickbait is never a good idea, but using a strong headline is the first step to creating an awesome post that gets people excited about your work and hungry to read more

Formula for creating List Posts

  • [#][keyword][ curiosity-capturing phrase]

Try A Finality

  • Another way to generate interest is by using finality style (power) words like ultimate, best, exclusive, only, guaranteed et cetera.
  • Every Internet Entrepreneur Regrets Not Doing This Sooner
  • This Blog Post Will Make You More Money Guaranteed
  • The Ultimate Guide to Making Money Online

Craft A Top List Title

  • 24 Rules I Follow When Creating Successful Websites
  • 5 Ways to Make More Money Online — Even If You’re Just Starting Out
  • Top 10 Facebook Advertising Mistakes To Avoid

Use Headlines That Offer Explanations

  • Explanatory headlines make things instantly clear to readers by doing exactly what the name suggests, explaining something.
  • How I Doubled My Money With Facebook Ads
  • For At-Risk Youths, Learning Digital Media Is A Luxury
  • New Shampoo Leaves Your Hair Smoother — Easier to Manage

Ask Questions

  • Using a question as a title is an excellent opportunity to get people to click through to your post.
  • Are You Too Clever For Success?
  • Want To Immediately Reverse All Your Health Issues?
  • Six Types Of Investors — Which Group Are You In?

Shorter Titles Are Great

  • Try to avoid wordy headlines as they dilute your message and distract from the point of your post
  • Rob Banks Legally
  • Fat Makes You Thin

Controversial titles grab attention

  • It’s a very effective tool for generating attention.
  • Just try not to land on the wrong side of an issue or be disrespectful.

Make A Statement Headline

  • Before you buy an electric car: 21 Things You Should Know
  • Tips That Show Anybody How To Make Money Online — Guaranteed

Use a “How To”

  • How to…
  • 10 steps to…
  • 20 ways to…

Identify and Solve a Problem Titles

  • Use emotional triggers
  • 6 Instant Confidence Boosters
  • Parenting Guru: From Chaos to Access

3. Write Frequently

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” ― Steven Pressfield

I’m not here to tell you what to write or how to write it. It's up to you on how you want to develop your writing style and only you know what topics you’re passionate about writing on.

But, if you want to grow your following, reach top writer, and maybe even make a little money it is important to write frequently.

I like to write every day.

I don’t always hit the “publish” button every day, but I do try to sit down, pull up Medium, and at least write a paragraph or two.

I used to be hard on myself when I wasn’t able to get something out into the world every day, but it’s important to realize your limits and if it’s a bad day, just try to do better tomorrow.

4. Submit your work to Medium publications

This one is huge when it comes to growing your following. I definitely saw a monumental rise in my reads and follows when I started publishing to publications on Medium.

Some of the best ones to get started with are Be Unique, Betterism,The Startup, The Forge, The Writing Cooperative, Better Marketing, The Ascent, Writers Guild, and the Post-Grad Survival Guide.

Click on any of these to view their submission guidelines. You can also use Smedian.com to find new publications to submit to!

5. Read Other’s Work

In order to produce quality content, you have to absorb quality content.

There are thousands of articles on Medium, and other blogs (I like Smart blogger, James Altucher’s blog, and The Post Survival Guide just to name a few) that can offer you insight on how to take your game to the next level.

Of course, just like everything, make sure you are absorbing and learning with a balance.

If I’m ever coming up dry for new ideas on what to write I go to new content.

I’m excited for you to continue your journey to becoming a great writer. Writing isn’t always easy, but it is rewarding.

Creativity
Writing
Writing Tips
Life Lessons
Writing Prompts
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