How to Build Your Medium Writing Community

Stair steps of influence to inspire and educate you

I listened to an extremely informative and super fun conversation on Friday on YouTube with Itxy Lopez and Anangsha Alammyan. They chatted about a plethora of different aspects of writing for Medium, I eagerly took notes, and I had a little epiphany in the middle of their conversation in relation to the composition of the community of a good writer.

See, I’ve been writing full-time on Medium for a little over two months and I’m still learning so much. I have a little over 600 followers, I’m still struggling to format my articles in a concise and understandable way, and I’m sometimes a little overwhelmed by the world of trying to make a living with my words.

Itxy and Anangsha are both approaching 3,000 followers on Medium, write expertly structured pieces, and have so much knowledge that they were graciously willing to share (both on YouTube and in Facebook groups). In short, from where I am in my career, I can stand to learn a lot from them.

At one point during the interview, Itxy said something that gave me an epic AHA moment. She said that she has the privilege of being coached by Ayodeji Awosika — one of my other favorite writers. Wait . . . I thought — one of my favorite writers is a mentor for one of my other favorite writers?

It totally makes sense since, though. Ayodeji is a rock star writer who has been writing on Medium longer than Itxy and has more followers. There probably is a thing or two that he could suggest for her path on this platform.

I contrasted this revelation with an article I published recently about my first two months writing on Medium. I actually had a few people who were newer than myself comment to say ‘thank you’ for the information I shared.

I realized that, within our Medium community of writers, it’s extremely helpful to have people with multiple levels of success within our sphere of influence. Here are the four levels of success that can both inspire you and educate you:

• Writers who are newer to the platform than you — folks with whom you might share a little insight
• A community of writers that are your peers — people who have been at it for about the same amount of time, have around the same number of followers, and have similar writing skills
• A writer or two who have attained a level of success that you hope to achieve in the next few years
• An ultimate aspirational writer—a writer who is slaying the game and writing one viral piece per week on their yacht off the Greek Islands (okay, maybe not that extreme, but you get what I mean).

Let’s look at each of these groups of folks individually.

Help a writer out

The importance of paying it forward is paramount. Whether you help out your fellow writers by publishing an article to convey information, you host a fantastically helpful conversation on YouTube (like Anangsha and Itxy), or you answer their questions on a Facebook group — helping others learn has two major benefits.

First (and I’ve been a teacher for a long time so I can personally attest to this), the more you teach something, the more you learn about it. Helping other writers understand how to navigate the world of Medium (and anything else in the writing world) will only help you solidify your knowledge of it.

One of the more common ways to develop self-efficacy in the education system is to have students teach subjects to their fellow students. A study in Applied Cognitive Psychology showed that “Teaching educational materials to others enhances the teacher’s own learning of those to‐be‐taught materials”

I learned this in grad school. When I had to give a presentation about something in front of the class without looking at my notes, I sure as heck made sure I learned everything about what I needed to present before I got up in front of my classmates. (Additionally, when you’re teaching something, there is always the risk of students asking follow up questions. And, to me, that is terrifying enough to inspire an extra dose of research).

Don’t think you have a bit of information with which to grace the trajectory of another writer? You’re probably wrong. If you’ve written even one thing, you probably have learned something. And, even if you haven’t, you can still provide encouragement to people who are working hard to become better at their craft.

Find your peers

There is nothing better than sharing an experience with a person who knows exactly what you mean and is in the exact same place. I posted the following on a rant thread on a Medium Facebook group, “You know when you think you write the perfect article specifically for one specific publication and then they reject it almost immediately and you assume that they think you’re a terrible writer and have blacklisted you forever?”

Almost immediately, a few writers responded with encouraging words. “I’ve totally been there,” wrote one of the participants in the thread. I instantly felt a little bit better. Logically, I know that I’m not alone in this difficult profession. As I nurse the sting of rejection, though, there is solace in the simple reiteration of the fact that others share my frustrations.

Your peers can cheer you on, your peers can share new insights with you, and your peers can dry your virtual tears when you receive rejection number five from such-and-such publication. And, just as importantly, your peers can call you on your bull$h!t.

When I heard Itxy Lopez and Anangsha Alammyan say on their YouTube conversation that they’re in a mastermind group together, I was stoked! I immediately started crafting a message to both of them to ask if I could join.

As I was typing, Itxy said, “I only reached out to people with 1,000 followers or more.” I put down my phone and sighed. I completely understood. These ladies wanted to be reviewed by their peers as well. I don’t yet have the experience and insight that they have (and that’s totally okay — I have other peers with which to commiserate!). I figured — I’ll get there eventually.

Which brings me to my next category of writers I recommend you include in your circle of influence:

Find someone(s) to look up to

I can’t stress this enough. It’s so important to observe people who are more successful than you currently are. Learn from them. Ask them questions. And then, support them in return. Inevitably, if someone is more successful than you and/or has been doing something longer than you have, they know more than you.

There are countless articles that have been written on the importance of finding a mentor in your field. I don’t necessarily think that you absolutely have to find just one person, though, to be your official mentor. The Medium writing community allows you to connect with thousands of people from whom you can glean information, inspiration, and perhaps (if you’re lucky) some advice on your work.

You can privately message folks and ask kindly for advice when you need it, you can read their pieces and compare/contrast with your own, or you can listen to interviews with them. There are so many ways to learn from others who are more successful than you are. I just highly recommend that you receive the information you hear/read in a gracious way and pay it forward when you can.

For instance, I am writing this piece on a Friday (literally an hour after I finished listening to Itxy and Anangsha’s conversation). Normally, I would submit it to a publication immediately (after one quick skim and a run through Grammarly). However, after listening to their advice, I’m going to wait a few days to do anything with it. Maybe I’ll come up with some other ideas overnight.

Listening and learning take a pretty healthy dose of humility, by the way. As a person who happens to be at the very tail end of Generation X, I recognize that I can learn just as much (if not more) from people younger than me as from people who are older. I may have had a significant amount of success in other careers in the past, but when it comes to writing on Medium, I can definitely use all of the advice I can get.

Dream huge

“Shoot for the moon. If you miss it, you will land among the stars.” — Les Brown

A final type of person that I believe every writer should have in their community is an aspirational writer — the person who has made it to exactly as far as you want to go with your writing. The person’s career that you would be happy to embody for the rest of your years here on earth.

Now, will that person give you the time of day? Maybe not. (There must be a tipping point at which there is no longer time to respond to every comment.) However, it can be extremely inspiring to choose a very specific writer to look to when times get tough.

My aspirational writer is . . . Tim Denning. I know, I know. It’s not original. Everyone wants to have 137,000 followers on Medium and write 12 hours per day two days per week. I love reading his work because he’s slightly snarkily sarcastic, he doesn’t serve up any BS, and we have EXACTLY the same taste in the content we consume. If I achieved the level of success that he has currently attained, I’d be pretty ecstatic.

Having a person to look “up” to is helpful in any career. Forbes Magazine makes a pretty great point. “People talk themselves out of aiming high.” I believe that you’re significantly less likely to talk yourself out of aiming high if you have a specific target at which to aim.

I dream of doing big things with my writing. I don’t necessarily need to make boatloads of money, but I do want to inspire hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people. I want to be the catalyst for a butterfly effect that circles the globe. However, I’m still learning. We all are.

By actively choosing to expand the people in your writing community, you can learn to be a better writer, find a significant amount of inspiration, and create ways to pay it forward to other up-and-coming writers in the community. Thank you, Itxy Lopez and Anangsha Alammyan!