6 Free Tools To Easily Promote Your Medium Stories To More Readers
Not everything comes with a price tag on the internet, yet.
You have written a story and have hit the publish button.
The story instantly got curated and eventually Medium features it. Your email base got a notification. Thousands of readers have started reading your story, clapping it, and commenting on it.
You wake up in the morning to see thousands of reads and hundreds of hours of member read time.
That’s the goal, right?
But before you reach that stage, you may have to do the legwork to bring in more readers.
Luckily, there are some free tools you can use —
Starting with Twitter
Integrating Twitter with Medium is incredibly easy. Maybe because both have the same founder, Ev Williams.
But that doesn’t make using Twitter any easier. There are 500 million tweets being sent every day. Your tweet might be less than a drop in an ocean.
You can and should use some of the following steps to make it more efficient for your promotions —
- Like any other platform, Twitter wants you to be regular. Use Tweetdeck to schedule tweets, check mentions, tweet using trending hashtags, and reply to other tweets.
- Schedule tweets months in advance! Yes, that will make life easier for you. Imagine you have written an article today, you can tweet immediately. Then schedule once for October, November, December, and so on.
- Use the right hashtags! If you are writing about marketing, you should check which tags are doing well in that niche or on that day. For example, today is a Monday, and #mondaymotivation is trending. You should tweet with that hashtag.
4. Engage with influencers in your niche. In fact, engage with commenters in your influencers’ tweets as well. They might become your followers.
Read more below to learn how to use Twitter effectively —
Need Twitter Followers Quickly? 5 Easy Tricks That Actually Work
Let’s move to Facebook
Facebook is a bit trickier. But, you should first of all become part of Medium related groups like —
They have some rules about how you should promote your links. Post using them and you will see some reads from the channel. You will also get follows and subscribes. These groups are very helpful. You should also give back as much as you can.
You can post on your own profile too! Use regular posting options and Facebook Stories. That will bring in your friends and family. I got my first referral member through my Facebook network.
Additionally, search for relevant groups. If you are writing about Warren Buffet, there are so many groups talking about him. There are so many others talking about investing, personal finance, etc. You should post your links there, and make the description engaging.
What About Reddit?
Reddit is one of the genuine forums in my opinion. If you just drop links, you will not get much interaction. You might even be rebuked and get banned. But if you write a good description along with it, users will upvote your post. You will see a stream of viewers. One of the Youtube Channels I know generates a high number of external viewers from Reddit. It posts on related subreddits with interesting descriptions.
The trick is to find the right subreddits, and then post with a good description.
Additionally, look for subreddits that talk about your niche. For example, I posted my articles on “How To Get Into INSEAD MBA” in r/INSEAD, r/MBA, and r/businesschool.
Should You Cover Quora too?
Quora takes a bit of extra time. You can’t just drop links and run. You have to put in an answer to a question and then add a link. For example, I wrote articles on the marketing funnel. I shared 3 important points and then asked the readers to read the rest by clicking on the link.
If you don’t find a question where you can drop links, you can add a question yourself. Then add an answer to it. I have reached more readers with that sneaky method.
I promoted an article titled “5 Powerful Tools That Will Make Your Writing More Engaging” in Quora.
One problem with Quora is the time it takes. Writing these answers takes time so I can only do them once a week. I also only promote one article each week to save time.
Another problem, as mentioned by Sh*t Happens - Lost Girl Travel, is that Quora can suspend your account after dropping links. They don’t want their users to leave the platform either. So, like all the other social media, they are policing links in comments too. My suggestion is to mix it up and increase the gap between drop linking.
Pinterest can be a reader magnet
Em Hoccane, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Iva Ursano, Jason Weiland, Sarah Nderi, and others have written at length about using Pinterest for driving traffic to your blog.
The trick is to use great visuals. Pinterest is a visual media. In fact, it is considered a search engine for images. So the image you use in Medium for attracting readers, might not get you viewers on Pinterest.
For example, I recently read an article where the author said he doesn’t want to read what successful people do anymore. That’s great. He used an image of a person in red as the featured image. That image might be enough to bring readers to the story, but it won’t work on Pinterest. Pinterest users who will search for a person in a red shirt’s image will get to that one. But that is not what the article is about. So the author may not generate any meaningful views from that pin. So, it’s better for him and that article to create customized images for Pinterest.
Linkedin is my favorite
If you write on topics that are relevant in Linkedin, then go for it! My articles like “7 Underrated Tips to Create Effective Resumes” generated substantial views from Linkedin. In fact, it was shared by others on Linkedin because it goes with the overall theme.
You can follow these tricks for Linkedin:
- Post regularly — At least once a week
- Engage with other posters — Like and comment on their posts
- Don’t post the link directly — Write a text with an image and post the link on the first comment. Linkedin doesn’t like posts with outbound links and reduces its reach. Although, I sometimes post links directly if I think it will interest my network.
- Respond to all comments on the post except the last one. Reply to it later. When you reply, the entire post will become visible to your network again. That way the post will get some extra views.
- The first 2 hours are crucial — You can even ask your friends to like and comment on the post during that time. Linkedin will then think it’s working well and show it to more people.
Final Thoughts and Other Platforms
It is better to start with one channel and then slowly expand. Otherwise, it becomes overwhelming. You can eventually use all 6 of Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Quora, Pinterest, and Linkedin to generate traffic. But start with the one you are most comfortable with.
Additionally, you can look into large Slack groups, Discord servers, Digg, etc. I haven’t seen much traction from them but maybe I am not using them right.
Good luck with promoting!