How to Write, Format, and Promote Your Medium Stories Effectively
Do you want a 5-step guide that describes everything you really need to succeed?
Many new and existing writers on Medium are having trouble navigating the site, and finding ways to create and promote their stories successfully.
Writers on Medium will benefit from this detailed step-by-step guide. It’s simple, but it contains valuable advice on writing, formatting and promoting Medium stories successfully.
The story was inspired by Margaret Tye and her plea to the writing community to provide some concrete assistance.
READ: Writers I Need Your Help — Please give me advice without the fluff and padding.
I don’t profess to have all the answers, especially since I only recently returned to the platform in May of 2021. But as of the update to this story (9/25/2021), I have published 345 stories.
This huge portfolio of titles have given me the data I need, to analyze and evaluate which stories work and why, and which ones don’t.
I’m glad for the Feedium publication, which allows me to speak directly to new Medium members who have just started writing on the platform.
Hopefully, they find this information useful, as they begin to to write, format, and promote their Medium stories.
1) What should you do before writing your Medium story?
Whether you have decided on a subject you want to write about, or you’re fishing around for a good topic to get started on, consider the popularity of the category, and whether you can bring a unique approach to the subject.
Once you decide what you’ll be writing about, before writing your story, these are the things you need to give specific attention to:
Title, subtitle, 5 category tags and subheadings
We already know we should have an eye-catching title AND subtitle. They should have appeal, AND indicate some kind of benefit to the reader, particularly: financial, physical, emotional, mental, or purely entertainment.
But what we sometimes forget is that our title, subtitle, 5 category tags and subheadings should ALL be in agreement.
And while we’re on the subject of tags, many writers are taking tags for granted, to their own detriment.
“Tags are keywords and keyword phrases that are added to stories by the writer to improve story discovery and categorization.”
The above definition is from the Product Manager @ Medium (Tatiana Colligan). She writes how Medium has improved how tags can be used, because they want to help our stories get discovered.
So stop taking tags for granted. Use them all, and use them wisely!
Whatever category tags you choose, those SPECIFIC words should be included in the body of your story, as well as in the title, subtitle, and even the SUBHEADINGS in the story.
Remember, you have five tags to creatively insert into the story — at least once for each tag. You can also use versions of a tag.
FOR EXAMPLE: For the “writing” tag, your story should include words like write, writer, wrote, written… (you get the picture).
2) How should you format your Medium story?
This information is not going to insult any writer’s intelligence by presuming to tell you how to craft your story. All I can suggest is that you:
- Organize and dispense your facts or information in a logical way
- Write in a conversational tone that’s easy to follow and understand
- Incorporate anything that’s practical, to help keep your reader’s attention and maintain their trust about what you’re conveying.
If you have fancy graphic skills and want to show them off, that’s fine, but it’s also not necessary.
Your stories can still succeed if you simply write nice clean content with short sentences and paragraphs, the key is to make the formatting of your stories look appealing.
When it comes to formatting, long blocks of text are an automatic turn off — period. Remember, just because you can get away with it, doesn’t mean that most readers find it acceptable. Many new writers may not want to hear this, but that degree of poor formatting is just plain lazy.
The sad thing about this type of formatting is that it can actually turn people off from bothering to stay and read. When this happens, it’s everyone’s loss, especially the story writer.
3) What should you do before publishing your Medium story?
Once you’re satisfied with your formatting, and that your title, subtitle, subheadings and content are all in harmony with your 5 selected tags, there are a couple more boxes to tick before publishing.
In order to make sure Google will do all it can to help your story be found in the search results, there are some things you can do to take control of that.
First, look at the main image you selected for your story. It’s okay if you decided to use just the one image for the cover. But make sure you indicate who to credit that image to.
Medium and most publications are real stickler’s about this, so don’t risk your story being passed over by a publication or for curation, simply because of this little oversight. Maybe they might contact you and ask you to fix it, and maybe they won’t, but why take the chance, if this is might prevent your story from being seen?
Another thing to do for your image is click on the image, and notice the pop up box, prompting you to identify the image with an “Alt” message.
Most of us probably ignore the prompt. I get it. It’s a hassle, stopping to type a description about the image, even if it might help someone who’s visually impaired.
But would you consider doing it if you knew it could help get your story discovered online? Don’t underestimate the power of your images.
There is one additional basic SEO strategy you can include BEFORE publishing your story. I describe this as talking directly to Google. It refers to using your “More Options” tab in the long drop down box, so you can create a short “kicker” opening to your story, exclusively for Google.
I wrote all about this in the Google story, and you can read about it later, after you’re done with this story. The details I provide tell you how to go back and talk to Google, after you’ve already published your story.
But like I mention above, the best way is to do this is before your story publishes, so Google gets it right the first time out.
The last thing I make sure I do before I click the link to publish my own story, or send it to a publication, is to: Tick the box to “email” the story to your subscribers.
It’s right below where you insert your tags, and above the box you tick to indicate if you want the story to earn you money. Yeah, I thought you’d remember where that one was :-)
4) What should you do after you publish your Medium story?
One of the very first things I do after I publish my Medium story is to grab both the “story link” and the “friend link” and I shorten them for easy posting (I use Bitly.com but there are tons of sites that do this).
As we all know, most of the readers on Medium are already members, so I mostly promote my regular story link here on the website, often within my own stories.
However, the tweets I post on Twitter mostly include my “friend link” for all those potential Twitter viewers who come visit, but don’t have an account yet.
Of course, I hope to convert them so they become members while they’re here, that’s why I provide my Referral link for all who want to join now.
5) What should you do while waiting to see the progress of your Medium story?
This might very well be one of the most important parts to being successful on Medium. Don’t underestimate any of the steps already discussed, but most of all, don’t underestimate this one.
“What is the next thing I do after all the above is done? You guys know the drill. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wash, rinse, repeat. Wash….”
If you recently joined the Medium community, and you need help getting off to a good start this year, these stories are for you.
Enjoy reading about these important themes:
