How To Use Medium’s Short Form To Our Advantage.
As writers, you have to know this.
Medium’s Short Form feature confused me at the beginning. As a member of the Medium’s Partner Program, I wonder, why would I do Short Form? After all, our story earnings are tied to the duration of readership, and Short Form goes against that. What is the deal with the new feature?
I decided to take a look at it, giving it a try, before passing a hasty verdict.
If you are wondering how to create a Short Form, this is what you have to do.
- Select “Write A Story.”.
- Start typing into the Body (Not the Headlines).
- Bold the 1st sentence.
That is all to it. Medium’s algorithm will immediately recognize this as a Short Form feature. Short Forms look like this.
When I figured how to create Short Forms, I started publishing Short Forms for the purposes of experimentation. These are my observations.
First thing, they are short. Short of stating the obvious, but what I really meant was they are perfect for executive summaries. When I saw the format of Short Forms, I thought they could be used as a decoupled executive summary for our long-form stories.
The entire Short Form, when condensed to 100 words or less, gets completely exposed in our profiles. This is where things get exciting.
I realized that when we publish Short Forms without tagging to any publications, it leads directly to our profiles. This increases profile exposure. This is what I mean in terms of practicality.
- Self-published Short Forms leads the readers to our profile, allowing them to explore other stories we wrote regardless of the publications our stories are published in.
- It brings them from the publications where our stories are published to our Medium account where our profiles are.
This is the choice that we have as writers. When we self-publish Short Forms, people come to our profiles. If we publish the Short Forms via publications, it will be the same route as the long-form stories.
Next, Short Forms is a great tool that allows you to reference a previous article. I see Short Forms as a way to bring life to our older stories when we write an overlay for them.
The steps to attach a story onto a Short Form is the same as attaching the previous long-form stories onto new ones.
- Copy the URL of the Older Stories.
- Paste it on the body of the new stories to be published.
- Press “Enter.”.
A Short Form can be utilized to revive the older stories that are no longer earning. All we have to do is to write an executive summary for the older stories and clip them onto the Short Form.
We can choose to self-publish (to bring the audience to our profiles) or send it to publications (to reach a broader audience).
One point to note. Executive Summaries aren’t the entire book content. It is the condensed version that entices the reader to read more. The Executive Summary on its own doesn’t sell for big dollars. The book does. What the Executive Summary does is to sell the book. The same goes for Medium Short Form.
I tried and tested circulating the Short Form into social media platforms. The distribution is seamless, just like the long-form stories. And just like the long-form stories, it is important to use high-quality pictures in the Short Form as well.
You can see the difference below when I circulated on Twitter.
It looks kind of weird when the Short Form is circulated without an image. Remember to include one.
And I experimented on the number of long-form stories that can be copied into a Short Form without sacrificing the reading experience. Copying one long-form story looks ideal. Any more, and it defeats the purpose of a Short Form. Plus, the effort for a tapestry increases exponentially.
You can see the difference below. “I Love My Me-Time” carries 2 stories. “We have Our Down Days” carry 1.
Of course, this is a matter of choice and skill. A feature is a feature. We inject life into a feature as writers.
A final case in point. Short Forms allow us to circulate our older stories from Publication A to Publication B. If we are writers for 2 publications that hosts the category of “Business.”, we can carry our older stories (about Business) through Short Forms, and publish it on Publication B.
Note, the Short Form itself is regarded as a new story. In fact, it is a new story, so there is no issue with duplicating content for exposure.
These are my current thoughts about the Medium Short Form feature. I may write more about it as I try figuring it out, especially when it comes to re-purposing stories.
Let me know how you have been using it to your advantage!
Use The Available Tools To Our Advantage.
Aldric
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About the Author:
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure.
Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
As a Consultant by training, I believe in making the complex simple.
Because simplicity adds value.
And with clarity — We grow.
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