Can’t Force Yourself to Choose a Niche? The Lists Feature is Your New Best Friend
Helping your readers find the stories they care about
It’s Christmas in July for Medium writers and readers with the new lists feature. Use this powerful tool correctly as a reader and see your enjoyment soar. Harness its power as a writer and your stats will climb.
I’m going to outline what lists can do for you and exactly how I’m using them to my best advantage.
The problem lists solve
In the beginning, I searched for my niche. I will write about grief, I told myself or parenting, or maybe travel. I also have things to say about racism, aging, and writing. But wait, nothing is more fun than writing a well-executed humor piece.
I played whack-a-mole with my topics trying to pin myself down to just one or two areas only to have a new passion pop up somewhere else I couldn’t resist writing about. In my nine months on Medium, my top writer status has ebbed and flowed but at various times I have been top writer in parenting, reading, humor, social media, travel, LGBTQ, and feminism.
This keeps writing fresh and enjoyable for me and hopefully for my reader as well but does make it hard for someone who doesn’t have time or interest in all my prolific content.
When I like a story I often click on the writer hoping to find similar stories to read. If this person only writes one kind of thing, this works out great for both of us. I cruise down their timeline reading story after interesting story.
But what if the writer is someone like me who writes about a wide variety of topics. When I have clicked over from a humor piece, I’m probably not in the mood for a deep dive on racism no matter how much I care about the topic.
Many of us non-nichers try to be sensitive to this dilemma. We pin some kind of an index to our profile so readers can be directed to the content they want. But keeping up with these indexes takes a boatload of time we’d rather spend on writing. Mark Starlin writes brilliantly about how lists solve this problem in Thank You Medium Lists.
Enter the list
With the new lists feature everything just got a bajillion times easier for a writer who wants to steer readers to the writing they are most interested in. Anthony Lawrence explains how it works in his inspiring piece, Why You Want to Use the New Medium Lists.
I was taking a break from the task of categorizing all 337 of my stories into lists when I read Lawrence’s story. His words encouraged me to get back to the task.
You can create as many lists as you want and you can easily assign stories to one or more lists. For example, I put my story Why I’m Glad I Raised My Girls in Japan Where Communal Hot Baths are Common into Parenting, Japan, and Being a Woman.
How to easily create lists
You can decide ahead of time what lists you want to create or you can do it on the fly. I decided to knock out the task while watching the Olympics. If you are working from a laptop head over to your published stories and work your way down the line one at a time. On the mobile app you’ll need to work from the stats page.
Open the story and click on the bookmark icon. Add your story to as many lists as is appropriate, close it, and move on to the next story. If you need to create a new list you can do it right there. Easy peasy.
How to use lists once you’ve set them up
Once your stories are in lists, readers can click on your lists to find the topics they are interested in. You will also appreciate how much easier it is to find your own stories. But lists can do so much more for you.
Add lists to your pinned story
I regularly get reads of the About Me story pinned to my profile. I had a bunch of my best stories linked at the bottom but I write frequently and it was hard to keep the list fresh and updated. Now I have added a link to each list.
I just need to take the small step of clicking the appropriate boxes for each new story I write and my lists are always relevant and timely. When someone checks out my profile, they can choose to scroll and see my most recent stories or they can pick a list that matches their interests.
Anything which enhances the reader experience on Medium benefits us all.
Strategically add lists to the bottom of your stories
Okay, here is where lists turn into sheer genius. Anthony Lawrence gave me this brilliant idea. He writes:
After I get done, I’ll return to those stories and add links to the lists they are in so that related stories are grouped together.
My first thought was, that sounds like a lot of work. Then I realized for the right stories this could really matter.
Perhaps you regularly add links to other stories of yours at the bottom of new stories with some kind of “If you enjoyed this story you will also appreciate ____.” This is a great idea when you are self-publishing or in a publication that allows it.
But, if you are lazy like me, it often feels like a step too far to find the perfect story and link it. You know you should but often you don’t bother thus missing out on possible binge readers.
If you have an appropriate list, however, you can add a link to the list at the bottom of your story. Not only does this potentially give the reader a guide to the stories most like the one just published, but the link will also update automatically as you write and add new stories of the same type.
An example in action
The most popular story I have ever published on Medium has over 6,000 views and a very high read ratio. Unfortunately, it has only earned me $1.61 since almost all of those reads came from external views.
The story is Ten People you Meet in College Parents Facebook Groups. A few of my friends posted it to the college parents facebook groups they were a part of and it quickly took off from there. This story proved nearly irresistible for a very niche audience.
This was one of my earliest stories on Medium and I’ve written several other stories which should appeal to the same audience but I’ve had no good way to reach them. When I read Anthony’s story a light bulb went off.
I created the following list:
Every story in here should be highly appealing to the audience for the closest thing I have ever had to a viral story. I have added the above link to the bottom of all the stories in this list where it is allowed by the hosting publication. Anyone who reads one story will find it very easy to access all my other stories in this very tight niche.
Plus as I write stories in this category in the future I will add them to the list and add the link at the bottom. This should set off a nice reinforcement loop of my stories reaching those most interested in them rather than having them lost in the vast variety of things I write.
I hope to do the same with other groups of stories in the future as I have time.
In addition, this has the potential to bring new readers to Medium. Imagine someone finds my story via Facebook. They read the story and like it enough to click on the list of my related stories. They’ve run out of free stories long before they finish the list so they have to subscribe earning me and the other great writers they will find here some cash. Win-win, right?
An added bonus from the list-making process
It took me a few hours to go through all of my stories and add them to lists. I did it in a few separate chunks of time while watching the Olympics. Because I was using my Ipad I was accessing each story from the stats page. This had a side benefit of being a trip down my Medium writing memory lane.
As I opened each story I noted its lifetime earnings. I skimmed through several stories in the process and learned a lot about what was profitable for me and what flopped.
My best stories all have a strong dose of me in them. My voice oozes through. There is humor, links to outside research, and personal stories to illustrate my point.
I find this very encouraging — you like me, you really like me — and also an excellent reminder. I’m at my best as a writer when I am being myself AND backing up my writing with research.
The process of creating lists has given me a stronger sense of the direction I should be heading as a writer. Having lists makes it easier for me to indulge my desire to write on a variety of topics while continuing to build an audience.
Consider creating some lists of your own. It is worth the time.
You can find all of my stories about writing here. Join Medium to read not just my stories but all the other fantastic content lurking around every corner. If you like to write you can even post your own stories and make money. Use this link and I’ll get a small commission when you sign up.