By the power of reciprocal love

Expert Spammer Shares His Engagement Maximization Strategy For M.e.d.i.u.m.

(Ab)Use these tricks starting Today because it will make you a lot of $$$

Now that Medium pays us more for highlighting/clapping/responding, people (writers) are crazy engagement monkeys.

Readers aren’t because they barely know how to clap and don’t care about all this. They just want to read instead of socialmedializing their mind to death.

Technically, Medium explained we could do it once (highlight, clap, or reply) and have the same impact, but who reads the fine print? Everybody highlight seventeen sentences, leave thirty-two replies, and clap two hundred¹ times.

Medium calls it engagement and you can use it to your advantage.

To make other writers reciprocate and read/clap/highlight/comment your “deeply thoughtful, thoroughly researched, and boostable stories,” do this:

#1 — If you see a story you would like to read, don’t read it

Counterintuitive, I know, but let me explain.

Instead, you put it in a list called “To Be Read.” Each time you add a story to a list, Medium notifies the author. Then the author checks their notifications, sees your name, and comes to check your profile. WIN.

I recommend having several “To Be Read” lists to make the next steps easier. Seven lists are the perfect number because seven is ideal, and it’s an opportunity for creative naming:

To Be Read Monday
To Be Read Sneezy
To Be Read Taj Mahal
To Be Read Artemis Temple
To Be Read Pride
To Be Read Mediterranean
To Be Read Fa

Fun quiz: did you recognize all the groups of 7 above?

#2 — Pick a story from last week’s to-be-read list

Waiting one week makes you very likely to be one of the last readers of the stories as they tend to die after 53 hours on average (data from the Institute for Research).

Once you have the story, follow these steps:

read the story
clap for the story
leave a comment on the story

It will pleasantly surprise the author because authors like it when people read, clap, and comment, and they like it even more when it’s an “old” story. Your name will appear in their notifications and stand out in the sea of notifications concerning the story they published the day before.

Don’t stop here. Now is your opportunity to maximize engagement.

Anything that someone highlighted previously? Highlight it again! It will notify the author AND the previous highlighters. Double WIN.
Clap on all the comments and reply to some. It will notify the authors of the replies. WIN again.
Finally, click on the commenters’ profiles and add their latest story to your To Be Read list of the day.

That’s also why I asked you to wait one week before reading the story.

Bless the poor soul who highlights and comments first, for they miss too many engagement opportunities.

#3 — One last thing

Seven days later, before adding new stories to your To Be Read list of the day, you should empty it from the previous articles. But don’t just delete them. Add them to a “Stories I Loved” list.

The author will get another notification from you.

WIN.

Conclusion and recap for memory and highlighting time

With this glorious strategy that is not spammy at all, you will have:

3 points of contact with the author

7 days before Reading Day (saving to “I will read this” list)
at Reading Day (claps/highlights/replies)
and 7 days after Reading Day (moving the article to the “I read this” list)

Notified all the highlighters

Notified all the commenters

It would be a shame if none of them returned the favor. Reciprocal Writers Forever!

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