Summary

The web content provides strategies for new and established writers on Medium to gain recognition, increase followers, and attract readers to their stories.

Abstract

The article titled "How To Get Personal Recognition On Medium" offers practical advice for writers seeking to expand their audience on the platform. It emphasizes the importance of active engagement with the community through reading, following, highlighting, and commenting on other writers' works. The article suggests utilizing features like clapping for stories, creating appreciation lists, and becoming a paid member to access more content. It also advises writers to join publications, write compelling content with attention-grabbing titles and images, and use popular tags to improve visibility. Additionally, the article highlights the significance of crafting an engaging About page, adding a personal touch to story sign-offs, and including a profile image to appear more credible and approachable to the Medium community.

Opinions

Engaging with other writers by following them, highlighting their work, and clapping for their stories can lead to mutual respect and potentially more followers.
Commenting on stories is seen as a valuable way to interact with other writers, fostering relationships and building a readership.
Creating appreciation lists not only helps organize content but also increases interaction with other writers when they are notified of being added to a list.
Becoming a Medium member is encouraged for full access to content and to support the platform and its writers, with the option to use an affiliate link to help a favorite writer financially.
Joining publications as a contributor can enhance a writer's visibility and credibility, especially for those with limited followers or email subscribers.
Writing compelling content with gripping titles, subtitles, and relevant images is crucial for capturing readers' attention.
Using popular reader interest tags is considered essential for making a writer's work more discoverable under relevant topics on Medium.
An eye-catching About page with a personal bio, links to social media, and samples of work can effectively showcase a writer's identity and attract followers.
Signing off stories with the writer's name, possibly linked to their About page, serves as a reminder of the author's identity and can direct readers to learn more about them.
Including a personal photo or image in account settings is recommended to convey professionalism and personality, making a writer more relatable and memorable to the Medium audience.

ARTICLES | HOW-TO | YOU’VE BEEN INFORMED!

How To Get Personal Recognition On Medium

Which just may lead to followers and readers of your stories

We all want to be noticed, right? But what if you are new (or even a long-time writer) to a platform like Medium and no one is reading a damn thing you’ve written? Well, I have a few tips that just may help you achieve your goal of gaining followers and readers.

Become An Active Reader And Follow Those Writers

If you go to Medium’s main page, you can select topics of interest and it will populate stories by writers in those topics. Once you find a few stories that interest you, follow the writers of those stories. Most of the time, those writers will follow you back.

Highlight Stories

Once you do find a story you like, highlight areas (drag your cursor over the area and when the tool box appears, use the ‘crayon’ feature and it highlights the area) in the story that really stick out to you. This allows the writer to know what has worked in their stories. It also shows the writer that you are actively reading their stories.

Clap

When you are done reading the story, give a clap (or up to 50!) for the story. The ‘clap’ feature is present at the bottom of stories with a ‘hand’ icon. This will show up in the writer’s stats as Fans. It also helps Medium’s algorithms decide if stories are getting viewed and read.

I know all of our time is valuable, but when you go that extra mile for writers to leave a comment, it can be a real boon for them. It also leads to mutual respect and even friendships. This interaction with other writers is one of the best ways to build followers and readers on Medium.

Create Appreciation Lists

We all have the function here on Medium to create Lists. It can be found on your main page along with ‘Home’ and ‘About’. Medium already automatically generates two lists for you — ‘Reading List’ and ‘Archive’. Reading List allows you to save stories that you want to read and then once you’ve read them, you can add them to Archive. But you can also create other lists for your own personal stories to break them up by categories to make them easier for other readers to find. AND you can create appreciation lists! For instance, I like to keep track of how many stories I’ve read each month, so each month, I start a new list specifically for that. This month, my list’s name is ‘December Gifts 2022’. I also have another list called ‘Stories That Leave Me In Awe’. I add stories here that have touched me in some awe-inspiring way. If writers have their notifications set for such things, they will be notified that you’ve added one of their stories to your list. They can then go to the list and leave a comment. This allows for more interactions here on Medium.

Become a Member

By becoming a member of Medium, you will get access to all of the stories on Medium, not just the few free ones per month. The cost is relatively low. You can choose a monthly option at $5 per month or yearly option at $50 per year. Before you join, if you find a writer that you really enjoy and they share their Medium Affiliate link at the bottom of their stories, help them out by using their link to join. They will get a portion of your membership fee, but it won’t cost you anything extra.

Join Publications

Another way to get recognized is to join active publications here on Medium by becoming a contributor. You can usually find a publication under the topics you’ve searched stories for. Each story, if published in a publication, will show where it has been published at. You can click on the publication and view their Submission Guidelines to see how to become a contributor. Most writers’ work gets more recognition if it published in a publication, especially if you do not have many followers or email subscribers.

Write Compelling Stories

Whether you are writing personal essays, articles, poems, or fiction, make your stories compelling for your readers. Think about your targeted audience. What do you think they may want to read? If you are writing a personal essay or article, break your stories up into easily read bits by using dividing lines (…) or section dividing subtitles. If you are writing poetry or fiction, use gripping titles and subtitles and make the first line(s) of your piece attention-getters. Sometimes an image can also be a game-changer for your pieces. Don’t just settle for the first image you find. Do an active search that relates well to your story.

Use Popular Reader Interest Tags

Tags are one of the best ways to get your work recognized. Tags turn into Topics on Medium’s main page, so when someone selects a topic, your work is more likely to show up under that topic. Here is a tutorial I created for my publication Promptly Written that lists most of the popular tags on Medium:

The Curious Workings Of Tags

A How-To tutorial

medium.com

Other Ways To Get Noticed

Create An Eye-Catching ABOUT Page

Medium now allows us to create individualized ABOUT pages. When you click on your own ABOUT page, you can edit it. The first thing you will see is whatever short blurb you wrote about yourself when you first joined Medium (yes, you should do that if you haven’t already! You can do this in your Account Settings). You can then add a dividing line image and write your own longer personal bio. You can also add a photo of yourself; list whatever publications you own or are a writer for; links to your social media accounts; or off-site blogs, businesses, or stores you may own. If you are also an artist and/or photographer, you can add images of your own art and/or photography there as well. If you’d like to see an example, feel free to check out my ABOUT page.

Add Your Name To The Bottom Of Your Stories

I know this may seem trivial, but a lot of times by the time someone has finished reading a story, they may not remember who wrote it. However, if you add your name at the end, that will help them to remember. It is also a catchy way to embed the link to your ABOUT page! Here are two examples of how I sign the end to all of my work:

©2022 Lori Carlson. All rights reserved.

~Ravyne Hawke, EIC

In the first example, this is how I sign all of my poetry, fiction, personal essays and articles. You do not have to do it as a copyrighted signature. You can simply add your name. In the later, this is how I sign articles that I post to the publications I run. You may notice two separate names. My account is under Ravyne Hawke, but I write professionally under my own name, Lori Carlson. Both names are linked to my ABOUT page.

Add a Photo Or Image To Your Account Settings

This may also seem trivial. However, a lot of people on Medium will not follow someone who has no image or just a letter in a circle by their name. For many people, it signals that you are not a serious writer on Medium. You can use a photo of yourself or an image that shows off your personality. If you notice my image, it is of a Gothic woman surrounded by ravens in a graveyard. This shows off my personality.

Well, there you have it! I hope you found some interesting tips here to help you gain recognition, followers, and readers here on Medium. This is by no means an exhaustive list. I am sure I’ve missed a few ways, but hopefully by enacting some of these, you will gain that recognition you crave and deserve.