How I Got 3,500 Views in 10 Days on a Medium Article
Without followers, curation, or a personal blog
This article will walk you through how I generated 3,500 views from 27 December 2019 to 5 January 2020 on a Medium article I wrote when I had no followers, curation, or a personal blog or website.
Screenshots of the stats
It Started With Deciding What To Write
Being new to Medium, I did not have a clear idea of the topics I wanted to focus on writing. There were just so many things I could write about. And just looking at the homepage could keep me hopping from one article to another without starting to write any.
After releasing my first light-hearted article on what I recently did, I wrote something more serious about earning money from gaming and then one related to my day job.
Nothing really took off…
One day at work, I was speaking to my colleagues and sharing stories with them about my days serving in the Navy while concurrently brainstorming new articles to write. Countless people I talked to showed strong reactions and interests whenever I told them about my diving incident.
This got me thinking…
Medium.com is a place where readers come to learn about new things, exchange ideas and read about interesting stories. And I, have an interesting story to share.
So I settled on this unique personal story about my diving incident that no one else will ever have.
After work that day, inspired and motivated, I proceeded to draft the article out, recalling the diving incident from memory.
Self-Promotion
Refusing to sit around or wait for the article to get curated, I decided to drive traffic to the story with social media.
First, I brainstormed topics that were in the story:
- Scuba Diving
- Near-Death Experience
- Military
- Singapore
Second, I searched for social media groups relevant to the topics I’d brainstormed.
Here are some groups I found for ‘Scuba Diving’ (I then did the same for the rest of the topics):
Because there were many groups and not all groups are worth the time to post in, I used two criteria to pick the groups:
- Decent group member size (A number you are comfortable posting in; the bigger the better)
- Groups that have activity (e.g. people in the group are recently posting/commenting/liking)
Next, I checked the rules of the groups, to make sure they allow the sharing of medium articles/links to other webpages. If the group does not, be respectful, don’t do it.
After checking to confirm that sharing is allowed, I crafted a message that would fit into the group (e.g. If you are sharing in a scuba diving group, focus on scuba diving).
Don’t forget to interact with other members in their posts too!
Lastly, I engaged with the readers by replying to their comments.
After following the steps above, I managed to acquire 652 views on Day 3 after the article was published. These views came on the day I posted in the various social media groups for Scuba Diving and Near-Death Experience.
I specifically chose to post it on December 29 as it is a weekend and people on social media are more inclined to read longer stories on the weekends.
It is also good to note that my stats are based on my timezone (GMT+8), which is ahead of most of the people in the social media groups, where there are many American and European members. This means that when I posted on December 29 (Sunday for me), it was Saturday for most of the other members in the groups.
I interacted with the group members from Day 3 to Day 5, allowing the Facebook post to be kept somewhere near the top of the group posts, allowing for more visibility.
As time went by, the hype in the social media groups died down and most of the posts got pushed down by other posts from other Facebook group members. This was expected.
Feeling that I had done my best on the Facebook platform, I carried on my search for other suitable social media platforms. All while juggling my full-time job and working on new Medium articles.
Day 6, I discovered the Scuba community of Reddit.
Deducing that there was relevance to post in this thread, I checked the rules and did a post there.
It did not gain traction and not much traffic was generated from it. Soon other posts on Reddit overshadowed mine and it got quickly pushed out of the first page.
And then came a dry spell. My guess was that everyone was out there celebrating 2020 or crafting new year resolutions.
On Day 10, someone shared the Medium article in the Singapore community of Reddit. The Singapore group had a large following.
It gained enough traction to stay on the first page for a day. Coincidentally, the post was also shared on a weekend (Sunday).
Based on my observation of the traffic sources, this generated a big bulk of traffic, as the citizens of Reddit shared it among their own network.
The post on Reddit even got onto the first page of Google Search for the term “How I almost lost my life”.
But the traffic from Google Search remains low and inconsequential in contributing to the total views of the Medium article.
By doing the above steps of sharing on social media and with a little luck, I was able to generate 3,500 views on my Medium article. It does not require money, but with some effort and time, you will be able to do it too. Good luck!