Readability Tips
A Minor Tweak Can Go A Long Way
Trying a simple link brings more readers
Getting views and reading times on Medium require personal effort and time investment. Leaving our content to the algorithm for finding readers does not work. Algorithms are busy to serve millions of stories.
I keep experimenting using new techniques to increase exposure to stories contributed to my publications. Most of the techniques worked. Before giving advice and tips, I always try them myself, and if they work, I recommend them to other writers to try.
In addition to many techniques that I tested on ILLUMINATION, I recently tested a simple technique for one of my small publications. I host my personal stories serving a specific audience on this publication. It is like a personal blog to me.
I don’t promote this publication as I do to ILLUMINATION, so naturally, it does not get many views and reading times. It is by choice.
My point is just leaving my publication’s destiny to Medium algorithm provided almost no reading times as most of the readers are external.
However, I started adding a link to this publication in my personal stories on Medium around mid-February this year. I noticed a considerable change in reading times by Medium members.
You can see the results for reading times from this diagram.
With a minor tweak, my stories in this neglected publication started finding readers on Medium.
With this empirical evidence, I encourage writers to create links to their stories or publications.
The bottom line, unless we take personal responsibility, we can’t get desired number of readers from Medium. I proved this via various experiments over the last 14 months. This recent test confirmed my hypothesis.
Here is the sample link I used at the end of in my stories.
“My other relationships, health, fitness, self-improvement, and lifestyle stories are hosted on TRANSHUMANISM.”
You can customize your statement appealing to your audience.
I also created an index of my publication which brought more readers to my personal stories as pointed out in this guide.
I added a note at the end of stories saying: “You can find more stories from my publication”.
Here is the sample index of my publication.
You can create similar index and submit it to ILLUMINATION. I plan to compile and feature them for you.
There appears to be some improvement on Medium. You can check my recent findings in this story.
Thank you for reading my perspective.
I hope your stories find my readers. Keep shining.
About me
I am the founder and chief editor of ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR, Technology Hits, and SYNERGY. I established these significant publications supporting 8,600+ writers and serving 110,000+ readers on Medium.
Join my publications requesting access here. You are welcome to subscribe to my 100K+ mailing list, collaborate, enhance your network, and receive technology and leadership newsletters reflecting my industry experience.
You can show your interest to support my publications as an editor. My free content strategy and marketing newsletter can be accessed from Substack. I also write for News Break and Vocal Media.
Most of my content can be found on my Medium blogs.
