Summary

The web content provides guidance on how to actively participate in the Medium community by following writers, highlighting text, commenting, clapping, and sharing articles.

Abstract

The article emphasizes the importance of active engagement within the Medium platform as a means to support the community and enhance one's own visibility. It suggests following authors whose work resonates with the reader, highlighting impactful sentences, and leaving comments to foster interaction. The act of clapping, equivalent to liking, is encouraged as a form of appreciation, with the caveat that the mechanism for clapping multiple times is not clearly defined. Additionally, sharing articles on social media platforms like Twitter is recommended as a way to support authors and contribute to the community.

Opinions

The author advises against the "follow for follow" practice, deeming it ineffective unless the content is genuinely relevant to both parties.
Highlighting text is seen as a way to acknowledge the writer's work and engage with other readers through shared insights.
Clapping for an article is viewed as an expression of appreciation, though the author is uncertain about the limitations on the number of claps over time.
Sharing articles on social media is considered a gesture of care and support for fellow writers, potentially leading to increased readership and recognition.

Follow, Highlight, Comment, Claps & Share

How to be an active member of the Medium community

One of the most recurring advice from top writers on Medium is to be active in the platform community.

What does being active means? It means to interact with other writers constructively. Not just read a piece for a few seconds but also leave a sign of your passage and help other members grow.

Follow Other Writers

When reading a piece on the desktop, the author’s name is right on top, and the following button is next to it. On the app, it’s at the bottom of the article.

Do it before reading or after, but remember to follow the author.

You won’t only see more content from that author on your home page but also tell the writer that he/she is worth following.

Don’t waste your time tasting the follow for follow practice on Medium. It doesn’t work unless you are actually writing relevant content to the person you followed.

I’m trying it with dull results.

Highlight Amazing Sentences in the Text

If there is a part of the text that impressed you or you believe it might be useful to other readers, highlight it!

The highlighting practice will tell the writer he/she did a great job mentioning that fact in his/her piece.

Nonetheless, you will receive a notification if someone else highlights the same words and vice versa. This will help you get noticed by other Medium’s members.

When you highlight a sentence or part of it, you can leave a comment mentioning that particular sentence in the response section without copying it; you can leave a private note for the author or sharing the post quoting that specific sentence.

Clapping Is Liking

The next thing I always do is clapping. It once was the measuring parameter to establish how much you were going to be paid for that article. Today is a way to express your appreciation to post. You can clap up to 50 times in a single row per article. You can give more than 50 applause to a single piece but I’m not sure about how much time must pass before you can clap again.

https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011350967

Sharing Is Caring

I’ve recently decided to share some pieces I read on Twitter.

I won’t share all the posts, but most likely, those I liked, believe are worth sharing, or I know the author has taken some time to read and appreciate one of my pieces.

Sharing other writers’ pieces on Twitter is just a matter of seconds and a couple of clicks.

It’s not only a reward for the author who might gain some extra readers and followers but also a way to go above and beyond in helping my beloved writers.