How I Maintain my Top Writer Badges as a Newbie

Hold the eye roll🙄for a sec because it is not easy as you might think

Yes, I understand some don’t care about a Top Writer badge but hey I do and for these reasons:

Visibility: I am a fairly new writer who languished as a tiny speck on Planet Medium for the first 3 months after joining this platform. Then Lo and Behold, I got my first top writer badge which gave me a big boost visibility-wise.

I’m in the top 50 writers in Social Media right alongside Medium heavyweights Tim Denning and Tom Kueglar.

The last time I checked there were 120K writers and check this — 257K stories on the Social Media topic!

The topics, other than Social Media, that I have consistently maintained top writer badges on are Writing, Creativity, Inspiration and This Happened to me.

In addition, going with the big pubs that are also active on Social Media can boost views and garner more eyeballs on your articles. This is one such example from the pubs which recently published an article of mine.

Proof of Social Authority: It is great to not only be selected out of thousands of writers by Medium’s algo but as JJ Pryor says — it is also a proof of social authority. Socialbizflow.com describes social authority in these words “ A measure of trust and credibility that accrues from mastery of subject matter and a willingness to share that expertise.”

While I claim no mastery over any subject matter, I can nevertheless say that I understand my forte which is personal stories as well as what works best for me on this platform.

And I have no qualms about sharing these tips and tricks through my Medium articles like this one “What I’ve Learned from Publishing in Small, Medium and Big Pubs.”

Brandwidth: If you are serious about becoming successful on this platform, it can be difficult to stand out among the thousands of articles that are churned out on a daily basis. Here is a comment I received on one of my articles that introduced me to the term “brandwidth.’

I have discovered that not only is it important to have a style of writing that readers can identify as uniquely yours but also to be able to build up a reputation of credibility and trust. This goes a long way in building brandwidth (the level of brand recognition) like my Medium friend Kristina God.

However, what many writers fail to realize is that achieving Top Writer is only half of the story.

The other half is maintaining the tag because check this — the top writer lists (it could range between 20–50) are updated daily. That means you could be a Top Writer this week and boom next week it’s gone! Your spot has been taken by a new darling.

Jun Wu in her article titled “The Truth About Top Writer Status on Medium” talks about the misconception some writers may have “Many people have the misconception that if you are a Top Writer in one tag, you will stay on that list. This is not true. Medium uses an algorithm to determine who will be on that list for a specific tag. This list changes every day.”

She goes on to explain that these lists are created by a combination of 3 factors:

• The impact of your articles in that tag, the frequency of your publishing in that tag, and what tag Medium wants you to publish in.
• You can lose a Top Writer status that you just gained by not publishing in that tag for a week.
• You can gain a Top Writer status in a tag with just one single viral article in that tag.

In my case, I publish at least one article per week using the relevant tags and make sure to produce quality content that resonates with my readers.

As I mentioned earlier, the top writer lists are updated daily so I just wanted to let all the wonderful writers out there (who are interested in achieving the top writer badge) know anything is possible and to keep doing what you do 😊

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