5 Tips to Boost Your Chances of Getting ‘Chosen For Further Distribution’

You are the chosen one.

For Medium writers, curation–or distribution–is the gold standard. If you want your writing to live for more than 24 hours on this platform, then you pray for that little note on your stats page: chosen for further distribution.

So you write to the best of your ability, pouring hours into your latest piece. You’re sure this one is worthy of a wider audience so you choose a good publication and hit “Submit.” And you get nothing. Crickets.

Frustrated, you vent your anger in a Facebook group. The platform is broken. It only works for popular writers. It’s not fair because your writing isn’t cookie-cutter self-help and you never get curated. Maybe Medium isn’t for you. After all, shouldn’t readers decide what deserves further distribution and what doesn’t?

Hold your horses just a second.

It’s true, curators sometimes pass on articles that should make it through. Nobody knows the exact process involved in choosing which stories get distributed. But it involves human judgment and humans make errors. The best way to get chosen for further distribution is to follow Medium’s guidelines. But I’ve uncovered a few things that have helped me increase my rate of distribution.

I’m not a Medium expert, and I don’t have a gigantic following. But as writers, we can learn a lot from each other, and following these tips has helped me become a better writer. And becoming a better writer has helped me get distributed more.

In my experience, the best way to increase your chances at distribution is to continually level up your writing skills. Here are 5 tips that have helped me do that.

Master the (re)search bar

You have a wealth of information at your fingertips, so there’s no reason to only write your opinion.

Op-eds are everywhere on the internet. On a platform like Medium, you have to make your writing stand out. Backing up your claims with external sources is a simple way to set your writing apart. You aren’t writing a research paper, not every sentence needs a citation. I find two to four is enough when your goal is to add some authority to your writing.

Your sources matter, they need to come from legitimate websites not your best friend’s blog or Wikipedia. You can find published journals by Googling “studies about [your subject].” These types of sources usually state their main findings in an overview at the beginning. Those findings are what you will want to include in your story.

Another great way to cite research is by using reputable online publications. Most you want to write about has already been covered by someone out there. You can use their writing to help shape your and sometimes even find more sources. Here are a few publications I like to use that pertain to my topics.

• Psychology Today
• Forbes
• The Huffington Post
• The New York Times
• MayoClinic

You’re not required to use online publications. But I’ve found that when I do it helps my chances of getting picked for further distribution by curators.

Make your writing unexpected

How do you stand out writing online when there are so many writers repeating the same stuff?

It’s true that to be a good writer you need a strong voice, but you also need to be unique. I like to use a strategy I call “topic matching.” That means connecting two unrelated ideas.

Taking two seemingly unrelated ideas and finding how they connect is a great way to pique your reader’s interest and possibly get the attention of curators. For example, my first story to ever get curated was How an Ancient King Made Me a Better Writer. What does an ancient king have to do with writing? You have to read to find out. That’s the point.

But this isn’t only a headline game. In my story, my primary source was a book about–you guessed it–an ancient king and leadership. I found parallels between the advice in the book and writing and ran with it.

You may not be able to write anything original, but you can write your unique take. Making surprise connections is a great way to hold your reader’s attention. It’s also a great way to catch the attention of Medium’s curators.

This probably counts for 80% of your chances

I know you’ve heard it before, but your headline matters as much as if not more than the body of your story. I don’t have an official statistic, but I’d say nailing your headline counts for about 80% of your chances at getting chosen for further distribution.

Several months ago, Medium decided to crack down on clickbait headlines. Ever since then writers have been stressing over what counts as clickbait. This is nothing more than a waste of time because clickbait means different things to different people.

I try to be straightforward with my titles, sometimes making a bold statement, other times creating a compelling listicle. Writers far wiser than me have said your title is your promise to your reader. If this is true, then the body of what you write is the way you fulfill that promise. The better you fulfill it, the more likely it is to get distributed.

And yes, you now have to avoid titles that use “this one thing,” or “one weird trick,” or “this simple hack.” Medium doesn’t seem to like when you make sweeping absolute claims.

Keep it clean

Nobody wants to read a wall of text on a screen. Your writing needs to be visually appealing to get chosen for further distribution. Use subheadings, short, clean sentences, and three to five sentence paragraphs. Remember, most of your readers are probably reading on a smartphone.

When I first started writing on Medium, I took the advice of other writers to incorporate lots of white space into my writing. Breaking up your text makes it easier to read and since most online readers are skimmers, it makes your writing easier to skim.

I know, people should read every word of your writing — but they don’t. In truth, most readers only read your intro and maybe your conclusion before deciding if they want to go back and read everything else you’ve written.

Give your writing a clean, well-spaced aesthetic and it will be more appealing to curators.

Use this tool to sharpen your skills

As an online writer, your most valuable tool is an online editor.

I use both Grammarly and Hemingway to help me see my mistakes and fix the flow of my writing. Of course, some mistakes slip through but for the most part, both of these tools help me see my shortcomings.

In my experience, online editors don’t do recognize your style and voice. I use them mostly to correct grammatical errors. Here’s the thing. Medium curators respect an author’s voice, they do not respect grammatical errors. Edit everything you write, and edit it more than once.

No matter how hard you try, some mistakes will slip by you.

If you want to gain a wider audience through distribution, your writing needs to have a professional tone and quality. It’s easier than ever to achieve these things because most online editors have a free basic version. So there’s no real excuse for you now.

One last word of caution

It’s always exciting to see when one of your stories gets chosen for further distribution. But be aware that curation isn’t a silver bullet. It doesn’t mean your views or your reads will shoot up overnight.

Many of my curated stories do not get more views than my non-curated articles, at least at first. But over time, they continue to get reads and claps because distribution gives your stories a longer shelf life. My stories that don’t get distributed might last a few days before getting swallowed by the algorithm.

Even though you may want to write articles you know won’t get curated — like this one — it’s always good to try to write to the standard. Though I can’t guarantee your stories will get chosen, following these tips will get you a better shot.

Keep writing!