How to Stand Out as a New Writer on a Crowded Platform

Think of yourself as a small business trying to survive the competition

Am I going to stay standing or topple over? I have been writing on Medium for about a month now and what I notice is that it is very difficult to get noticed on the platform especially if you are a new writer. The competition here is definitely fast and fierce and resembles the type of competition that a small business faces in a crowded marketplace.

Regardless of the competition, some small businesses are still able to survive and thrive. They do this by following specific and proven business strategies. As new writers, maybe we can look to these exact same strategies as a guide to standing out in a competitive and crowded platform like Medium. Here is a listing of those strategies and how they can be adapted for writers.

Stand out by producing excellence

In order to stand out as a small business or a new writer, you need to provide an exceptional product or service. It is not enough to just claim that you are the best. You actually have to prove it.

For example, the company imageOne, a printing services company in Michigan, stands out because they deliver extraordinary customer service. They do this by going above and beyond what is considered to be normal in the printing business. They were even included in the Forbes list of Best Small Companies in America for 2017. In short, the company was successful because they chose to focus on that “extra” bit of service in each of their customer interactions.

As a writer, you also have to provide that something “extra” in your writing. As long as you are writing consistently on the platform, the extra touch should be the focus on quality writing. Anyone can write and publish everyday but fewer people write high quality pieces day in and day out. So what exactly is quality writing?

The definition of quality writing is a grey area for most people and not everyone agrees with it. However, I like the definition produced by Teaching That Makes Sense (TTMS).

Ideas those are interesting and important, organization that is logical and effective, voice that is individual and appropriate, word choice that is specific and memorable, sentence fluency that is smooth and expressive, conventions those are correct and communicative — Teaching That Makes Sense

Producing excellent work on a platform like Medium involves focusing on quality just as much as quantity. The most popular and high earning writers on Medium write frequently and produce high quality work at the same time. Have you ever seen any of Medium’s best writers produce poor quality work?

Stand out by being different from the crowd

You want to be different from the crowd whether you are a small business or a new writer. For a small business, this might mean offering products and services that are a bit off-beat and quirky. Some of the services offered are so far out there that you wouldn’t believe it. Can you imagine offering a service for lice removal or a doll hospital to repair your broken dolls? Yet these companies have become profitable because they capitalized on these ideas. See this list of unique small business ideas.

In the same way, you can also become a unique writer instead of following the crowd. You can be wacky and weird in your writing and you could gain a loyal following of readers or establish yourself as a niche writer. Another way to stand out is to pursue novel ideas in your writing. Think about writing about a topic or idea that no one else has written about. Of course, this is easier said than done. Unless you are a genius, almost all the ideas have been thought about or written down previously.

Accordingly, the best way to be unique is to to create your own writing style. That way it doesn’t matter even if the topic or idea is popular and has been used by multiple writers. Your uniqueness can stand out. There is a lot of information online on how to create a unique writing style.

A writer’s style often manifests in their tone, word choice and sentence structure, figurative language, sensory details, and other such elements of prose.- Kristen Kieffer

Stand out by fostering good relationships

Almost all successful small businesses stress the importance of building good relationships with their customers. An online article in Forbes stresses that customers can write off a company just from a single bad experience and negative feedback can easily be spread on social media. For a small business with a small customer base, the loss of even a few paying customers can be damaging to its reputation and profit margin. Thus, it is crucial to foster customer loyalty.

In the same way, new writers should attempt to build a loyal following of fans and supporters. Do not compare yourself to the big league writers who may have thousands of fans. Even if the new writer only has 50 fans, those fans can be loyal and continue to read their work as long as quality writing is produced and the writer engages with them. Reciprocal engagement is really important for a new writer to build a following.

As an example, one of the top writers on Medium has mentioned that she responded back to every single one of her fans who left her a response during the early stages of her writing. It was probably easier for her to do this when she had fewer fans. It would be more difficult for her to do this now with hundreds of responses. The point is that she chose to engage with people positively and they in turn became her loyal fans which resulted in increased readership for her.

Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them. — Kevin Stirtz

Conclusion

On a crowded platform like Medium where you have the big league writers as well as thousands of new writers joining the platform every year, it is more important than ever to stand out and hold your own ground. You can do this by following the strategies employed by successful small businesses to survive in a competitive environment. It won’t be easy and there is no guarantee that you will make it to the big leagues but this will definitely jumpstart your reputation and earning potential. And you never know where it might lead you. Even small businesses can and do eventually turn into industry giants.

For more from Anita Durairaj about my experiences as a new writer: