Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

Abstract

e the cut with the readers most likely to be interested in these stories.</p><figure id="2bfa"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*z2cqqXQ5svMTLq3-.gif"><figcaption>tenor</figcaption></figure><p id="74dc">Medium’s algorithms weight those stories for extra distribution across Medium.</p><p id="27ef">In regard to boosted stories…</p><blockquote id="cd70"><p>“(i)nstead of being the judge of what’s good, the algorithm will play more of a matchmaking role between what humans think is good and what readers like to read.”</p></blockquote><p id="aa32">Plus, almost all articles will continue to get distributed by the recommendation algorithm.</p><p id="6306">However, “engagement” (the old gold standard of curation) is not the same thing as providing satisfying reads.</p><p id="b098">This is what the algorithm is looking for:</p><ul><li>what topics a reader follows</li><li>what they read</li><li>who they follow</li><li>what people they follow read and clap for</li></ul><p id="3f52">Let’s dig a bit deeper now into the role of publications.</p><h1 id="a8b5">The impact of Community Curators and Publications</h1><p id="e337">Before I get into the FAQ section, I think it’s worth speaking about the role of publications.</p><p id="fe52">Publications will become important curators.</p><p id="df5c">At the moment there are <b>15 Medium publications </b>that are testing the Boost button and are having a major say in what gets boosted.</p><p id="3b39">In the near future, it can be any high-quality publication.</p><p id="1ae1">The owners and editors know “so much better than (Medium) what is an important read and why”.</p><p id="e7a4">For becoming a trustworthy partner, Medium will pay editors based on the number of stories they successfully recommend for boosting.</p><p id="ff37">Medium is looking for taste: “taste comes down to having the experience to know what is true, what matters, and where there is debate”, <a href="https://blog.medium.com/a-new-boost-for-top-stories-541884654fdb">Tony shared.</a></p><p id="07a4">Medium’s wish is to spark an influx of new publications.</p><h1 id="74ea">FAQ</h1><p id="ba42">These new changes are raising a lot of questions.</p><p id="a1fc">I aggregated the most popular questions from the comments, stories and official announcement:</p><h2 id="92ac">Who qualifies for this Boost?</h2><p id="dc92">Everyone.</p><h2 id="621d">Does my story have to be in a publication to be Boosted?</h2><p id="ee92">No, but it does help a little.</p><h2 id="c5e5">Which publications are curating?</h2><p id="02b4">Medium isn’t telling us yet who the 15 publications are.</p><p id="f0ed">Here’s the reason:</p><blockquote id="6304"><p>“The first is that it’s the job of these curators to find you. The second is that listing them now has a tendency to stick when we expect it to shortly be many or most publications.”</p></blockquote><h2 id="5baa">What should I write about to get boosted?</h2><p id="8178">Tony’s #1 tip: “write what you want to write.”</p><p id="3728">Since there are a lot of meta stories about Medium that are totally misguiding.</p><p id="b2b6">Here’s what Tony recommends:</p><h2 id="bfb5">Tips from Tony Stubblebine to get boosted:</h2><ul><li>writing can’t move you in any substantial way unless it can first move you to click and read.</li><li>Medium wants to reward you for writing your best stuff, but only you know what that is.</li><li>the top-performing stories had the most engaging titles, the most compelling intros, and the most entertaining writing.</li><li>attention-grabbing is not the same as useful or valuable or entertaining.</li><li>often the tricks of engagement lead directly to disappointment.</li><li>Authors who promote their articles through social media, email, to their followers, and publications are now more likely to get their articles picked up for a boost.</li><li>Medium wants to boost great writing, not great growth hackers.</li></ul><h2 id="d26a">Which posts are Medium boosting and why?</h2><p id="975d">These are the types of stories Medium is looking for:</p><ul><li>constructive</li><li>original</li><li>written from relevant experience</li><li>well-crafted</li><li>memorable.</li></ul><p id="650c"><a href="https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006362473">Click here to read the updated Distribution Standards.</a></p><h2 id="ba86">Is the Boost big enough?</h2><p id="5920">In the test period, Medium has seen boosts between 5

Options

00 views and 100,000 views.</p><p id="f473">Medium’s goal: every Boosted story should get at least 500 extra views within 7 days!</p><p id="70b0">Why?</p><blockquote id="a11f"><p>“In practice, that’s usually enough to tip a story over to a much, much wider audience.”</p></blockquote><p id="50fa">According to Medium, it’s the highest-level boost ever.</p><h2 id="edb4">Is traffic shared evenly across all authors?</h2><p id="78fb">No.</p><p id="a6da">Plus, what gets boosted changes as new readers and authors join.</p><h2 id="4f3d">How many recommendations does Medium make per month?</h2><p id="c0a4">In total, Medium makes several billion recommendations each month.</p><h2 id="9030">Can other people Boost?</h2><p id="9ff2">No other people than publication editors and owners.</p><h2 id="6f0e">Why is a Boost necessary?</h2><p id="8dff">Often authors join Medium because they want their stories to get more views and reads and to (finally) feel rewarded and recognized.</p><blockquote id="1b0d"><p>“Often, the best writing comes from people who don’t want to be audience builders. With the rise of the creator economy, these doers are often left out. Our goal is to find the best individual stories, regardless of who wrote them, and give those stories to a wider audience.”</p></blockquote><h2 id="01cc">How did Medium give the highest quality recommendations in the past?</h2><p id="cdbe">Medium had many ways to boost a story on Medium…</p><ul><li>via the recommendation algorithm</li><li>tags</li><li>newsletters</li><li>publications.</li></ul><blockquote id="518a"><p>“To give readers the highest quality recommendations, we’ve seesawed between two primary heuristics. The original model was mostly human curation, with a bias towards well-written, well-constructed, and well-supported stories. Then we swung to a heuristic that was dominated by machine learning algorithms biased toward engagement.”</p></blockquote><h2 id="fa9e">What about evergreen stories?</h2><p id="1987">Medium has already other mechanisms for boosting stories in the works.</p><p id="8e8d">Medium has started several projects to organize the best of Medium as a form of boosting.</p><p id="8310">“Evergreen writing should get boosted well beyond the day it publishes.” <a href="https://blog.medium.com/boosting-the-boost-d983f0552ab9">Tony shared.</a></p><h2 id="bcd3">What about canonical stories?</h2><p id="b7b7">Medium has already other mechanisms for boosting stories in the works.</p><p id="23d0">Canonical stories are part of it.</p><h1 id="03e9">What’s next?</h1><p id="bbcd">Getting Boosted on Medium definitely takes some effort and strategy, but it can pay off in terms of more readership and engagement.</p><p id="2b0d">Follow the tips shared above to optimize your stories for distribution and visibility on Medium’s network.</p><p id="5159">Although Medium doesn’t publish any income reports anymore, I bet a lot of writers will share how many views/reads they got and how much money they earned thanks to getting the Boost!</p><figure id="c399"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*Vzcb3tiIB5cKOJ5Z.gif"><figcaption>tenor</figcaption></figure><p id="0bf2">If you’re one of them… feel free to share your insights in the comments or send me a screenshot to [email protected]</p><p id="5bf6">Last but not least, I hope my story helped you to have the breath and no excuse to not execute and get Boosted!</p><h2 id="fd7a">Found it valuable? Want to see and know more?</h2><p id="0dc8">Sure thing!</p><p id="d2b0"><a href="https://kristinagod.substack.com/">Why not join my Substack newsletter </a>and tell me what you think?</p><div id="3262" class="link-block"> <a href="https://kristinagod.substack.com/"> <div> <div> <h2>Kristina's Newsletter | Kristina God | Substack</h2> <div><h3>Medium Blogging Tips and Tricks. Click to read Kristina's Newsletter, by Kristina God, a Substack publication with…</h3></div> <div><p>kristinagod.substack.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*1y2gGHnpmOCPEBwH)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><p id="341f"><b>P.S.</b> I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, please give it a clap👏 or share it with someone who might find it useful😊</p></article></body>

How I Found True Love

But it wasn’t where I was searching.

I was with my husband for 12 years. It was sometime during the first year that I discovered the meaning of true love. I knew I had found the one. I was only 21 when we met, but everything was so different from any relationship I had experienced before: we were made for each other.

We were the sort of couple everyone envied, for how happy we were together. The honeymoon phase seemed to last for years and anything we did together would turn out to be perfect: From perfect weather on all holidays to getting free tickets to a concert or bumping into celebrities when we just went out for a meal.

Back then I thought a lot about writing articles on true love and how to recognize when you have found the one. I didn’t need marriage or other grand gestures, I had no doubt we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

When we decided to have kids, it was for all the right reasons: I didn’t feel pressured, we weren’t at a lul in the relationship, we were still madly in love. Starting a family just seemed like a way to extend our already perfect relationship.

A few years after going back to work I developed anxiety and IBS. While I managed to control it with medication and self-help, I often wondered about the different person that I had become.

From outgoing, confident, daring, and social I turned into an introvert, shy, and over-cautious. But I focused on the symptoms more than the cause, and it never once crossed my mind that my relationship could have been a factor. That all changed when I met my lover…

He was so different from my husband. He was very attractive, highly intelligent, successful yet humble, funny and charming, kind and considerate, independent and organized, an amazing Dad, and the most amazing lover I had ever been with. We had so much in common it was unreal: He was the man of my dreams that I never knew I had. And the best part: He was madly in love with me.

He was so attentive, showered me with compliments, gifts, and love, he couldn’t get enough of me. He truly supported me in everything and any insecurities I had were swept away so easily, he seemed to love everything about me.

And slowly, through his eyes, I started seeing all the things that had been wrong in my marriage for so many years. I noticed how the lack of appreciation had been eating away at my self-esteem.

How my husband's dependency on me had fostered my anxiety. And I noticed how I hadn’t been doing the things I enjoyed for so many years. I started to realize how unhappy I was.

On the 1st of April, I played a prank on my lover. His reaction was priceless and he tried to get me back all day in the funniest ways. And as we were laughing and joking about it he suddenly said: “You know how much I love you for this. My wife hates pranks. Imagine we would be married instead, how April’s fools would look like each year.” And at that moment, I suddenly saw it so clearly: I could have a different future.

I could have a future with another man. A future with him. A future filled with those amazing little moments we had been having together. The one thing that had never occurred to me was suddenly right in front of me: I could leave my husband.

It felt as if a massive weight had been lifted off my shoulders, a weight that I never saw before: The belief that I was already married to the man I was going to be with for the rest of my life. And suddenly the world began to change.

Every morning I would wake up overcome by happiness and excitement: I felt free. I had a future to look forward to. And every evening I would lie in bed and dream of the things he had planned out already: The grand proposal he was going to make, the wedding — oh how different it would be to get married to someone who would put as much effort in as him — the vows he would make, the baby, the house, the holidays, the family.

The simple moments in life that just felt so different if you shared them with someone who truly loved you.

I conjured that there may not just be “the one”. That maybe people can have more than one true love at different stages of their lives. And at this stage in my life, it was him. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to struggle with the definition of true love as much as I did: He had never felt like this about anyone in his entire life, I was the love of his life. He said he got married for the wrong reasons, had never felt that connection with his wife, and had been trying to leave for years. And as if to prove it, he left her just weeks after and without asking or telling me first.

I took a lot longer to leave my marriage. I wanted to make sure that I was making the right decision, and that it was based on my marriage and husband and not another man.

But if I am being truly honest with myself. I still left for another man, or at least for the idea of another man. I left for the glimpses of the future he had given me. I left to feel the happiness and love he provided. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but he was so patient, understanding, and caring… Until I really left my husband.

What I thought would be the start of the happiest chapter in my life, turned out to be the start of the darkest.

The dreams I had turned into nightmares. I didn’t understand what was happening and why. He became more distant, less interested and little things started to annoy him. His attention slowly shifted. Plans for the future were not appropriate topics for discussion anymore. I was confused and blamed myself.

Why couldn’t I live up to being that person he had so clearly envisioned he wanted to spend the rest of his life with? And was this really the future I had wanted? And then there were little glimpses again, happy moments, just like the start. And they kept me going. I knew that the pain and unhappiness I was feeling was the price I had to pay for my sins. And I knew that the hardship I had to go through supporting him in all his needs was the price I had to pay to be truly happy again, one day.

But the day never came. And the story of the discard and breakup could probably fill a book on its own.

But I will say here that I will never forget the day he told me that he was in love with someone else and left. 1 1/2 years wiped out in a few sentences. All hopes and dreams for the future had always just been … dreams.

The grand waiting for the day we could finally move out of this secret life had been a lie. There was self-loathing again: I had driven the love of my life away, I couldn’t be who he needed me to be. And then there was the pain of coming to terms with the truth: The man I had fallen in love with was a con artist.

And in a moment where I didn’t know how to survive the pain, I picked up the phone and called my friend. I hadn’t spoken to her through almost my entire relationship. We spent hours on the phone and I poured my heart out.

The next day my other friend who I hadn’t spoken to in months called me and we went through the same procedure. Now we speak almost every day, they both helped me more than I could ever thank them for.

Over the past months since the breakup, I have been picking up the phone to a lot more “forgotten friends”. They listen, they support me, they keep me sane if I start doubting myself again. My friends have become my new family.

My dreams for the future are changing slowly. I can’t see the baby and the wedding anymore, I see a future with friends. This time I am confident, I have found true love. It has always been there, but I was too busy to see it.

The people around you that love you with all your flaws, make you laugh when you feel sad, build you up when you feel down, listen when you need to rant for the 300th time that day. They are the ones that truly love you, for who you are.

And it might have taken me a long time and incredible pain to get there, but I know now that they will always be the most important part of my life.