How to Plan for Your Success on Medium

My action plan if I was starting today

I joined Medium one year ago and looking back, I can see a few things I could have done better.

Although it is nice to have dozens of published stories and followers, not to mention the experience that a full year of Medium can give you, being at the starting point has some advantages for any beginner.

So if you’re starting your journey on Medium, read along and decide if this makes sense to you.

Newbie advantages

Lack of experience

The first one is precisely your lack of experience.

This may sound counterintuitive, but starting fresh means that you probably don’t have the ailments of the more experienced writers:

Burnout — Consistently writing can drain your energy and push you to a forced rest.
Lack of ideas to write about — I don’t like to use the term “writer’s block,” but saturation from writing hundreds of articles is something common.
Stats addiction — It’s not unusual for writers to overcheck their stats, continually analyzing the metrics to see what’s working and what’s failing. Although it is useful to have a view about this data, living for the stats can bring anxiety, demotivation, and even depression if we don’t meet our expectations.
Peer comparison — Comparing yourself to other writers with similar journeys as yours can take you off-course. Every writer has different characteristics, skills, and paces, so comparing results not always give an accurate picture of the whole scene.

Excitement for starting something new

Starting on Medium means a new project in your life, and most people feel highly motivated when starting something new. Keep your expectations on realistic levels, and you’ll stay motivated because you’ll see results much more quickly on Medium than on any other platform. After all, Medium already comes with a massive potential audience, and you will have readers right from the start.

The benefit of the doubt

There’s another advantage when starting on Medium that I’ve noticed, although I have no clear “proof” of it.

From my personal experience and from what I read on other writers’ stories, Medium curators are much more “kind” to new writers than to the established ones, so they will be more willing to attribute your stories to relevant topics.

Curation is Medium’s most significant factor for your success on the platform, as it can put your work in front of thousands of readers that otherwise would be inaccessible to you. They do this by recommending your stories to them through Medium’s homepage and newsletters.

From what I noticed, new writers have at least one curated story on their first handful of published pieces.

As I said, I have no “official” source supporting this idea, but almost every writer that shared their journey on Medium states that they had a curated story at the start. I had my second and fourth published stories curated, and when comparing them with other uncurated articles, I can’t find a better justification than this.

I understand that there’s a lot of factors involved in curation, including timing, but I have published more substantial pieces that passed unnoticed to Curators, while those first got curated.

Of course, these stories must be at least reasonably good. Still, I believe that the quality standards are a little lower for new writers, and the reason is that Medium wants the new writers to stay active on the platform, and a little push to their metrics will help to keep them motivated.

With these ideas in mind, my recommendations to anyone starting on Medium would be the following:

Write at least five strong pieces before publishing your first one. Rank them on quality, make sure to comply with Medium Rules, and choose a proper title (use CoSchedule Headline Analyzer to help with this).
Set a realistic publishing calendar. Posting every day is recommended, but if you think that’s too much for you, define a minimum of weekly posts and stick to it. At least three posts per week, anything less will make your growth much slower. If you don’t know what to write about, chose a few topics you like and write about them on specific scheduling days (fitness on Mondays, productivity on Wednesdays, relationships on Thursdays, and so on).
Create Social Media accounts to share your work. You don’t need to have them all, choose the ones you feel more comfortable with and bet on them. This is not essential, but it will help you tremendously to get more readers to your work. Facebook (Medium-related groups), Twitter, and LinkedIn are the natural options, but any Social Media will do the trick.
Publish your five stories, one per day, according to your editorial calendar, starting with the one you think is the best. Share these stories on your Social Media and engage with other writers and readers. If your stories are reasonably good, which I’m sure they’ll be, you can expect to have some of them curated in the first few days. When that happens, you’ll probably be invited by some publications to publish those curated stories with them. Accepting it will mean more views for you, so you should go for it unless you have different goals for your Medium career, such as starting and growing your publication.
Following the last idea, you should create your publication. This will make you understand better how Medium works, and it will allow you to start building a following on your publication, which will offer you the possibility to directly messaging your readers; it will be your mailing list.
After publishing your first story, keep writing, every day if possible, and get more stories ready to publish. Consistency is the key to be successful on Medium. The more you write, the easier it will get to come up with new ideas, and the better your work will be. Don’t worry about metrics, and don’t mind about what your readers will think about your stories. If you get any comments, they will be positive, and from people that enjoyed reading your work. It takes a lot for an internet troll to waste their time with an unknown writer, so be confident and keep writing and publishing, you’ll start growing a following for sure.
Besides writing, sharing your work on Social Media, and engaging with your readers, your daily tasks should include reading other writers’ work and connecting with them. This way, you will learn more about writing in general and writing on Medium in particular, and you’ll make great connections with great writers.

Medium is a remarkable platform, full of amazing people, a valuable source of knowledge and entertainment, and a place where you can develop your writing career in a way that is, in my opinion, unparalleled with any other platform.

Success on Medium is not easy, but it’s not complicated. It takes a lot of work, but the blueprint is no secret. These tips I shared are useful, and they will work, and they are not exclusive of mine; they are shared by many successful writers, and that’s another beautiful thing this community has: everyone wishes the best for everyone.

You can get help from hundreds of writers. I had help from some of the biggest names on Medium, and all I needed to do was to ask.

Starting on Medium may be one of the best decisions you ever made. If you really want to succeed and are willing to put in the work, wonderful things expect you.

I wish you the best, now write!