I’m A Top Writer In Social Media Apparently — Can Someone Tell Me Why?

Trying to understand the mystery of Medium’s algorithm

How many of you have seen the following type of post on Medium Facebook groups or in articles here?

“I can’t believe it, I got an email this morning confirming I’m now a top writer in Gaming/Love/Movies/Parenting.” [delete as applicable!] I’m so excited.

How many of you had the same thought — how do I get one of these “top writer” tags, and what do I need to do to achieve this?

I’m guessing I’m not alone, and if you’re like me your next move will have been to research how other writers on Medium had this badge attached to their “About” page on their profile.

Maybe I’m also not alone when I say that even though I worked out what you need to do to become a “top writer”, I’m not sure how it happened when it did!

Climbing the Medium learning curve

When I joined Medium at the start of May, the concept of being a “top writer” in anything was new to me. I was still getting to grips with how to format my articles and how the platform worked — the idea of claps was new to me for one!

Most important of all was what would I write about? Any notion of being a “top writer” was not in my thoughts.

Once I got what I thought was a decent grasp of how things work on Medium, I began my research into the mystery of being a “top writer”.

How did it work?

What did I need to do?

How long would it take?

These were a few of the questions rattling around in my head before I found an article by Casey Botticello (below) which explained the concept of the tags and topics that could bring this reward.

To be clear, this is not a rehash of an article on the secret tags and topics. But what I learned was only a certain number of tags applied to becoming a “top writer”. I’d recommend reading this article if you aspire to this title and once I understood how it worked I’ve been more thoughtful about the tags I use on my articles in the areas I like to write in.

The plot thickens

With only 10 weeks under my belt on Medium so far and approaching 40 articles, I thought that my stories on “Politics” and “Writing” — 10 articles apiece so far — was my best bet for a topic to aim for. I could not have been more wrong.

Unlike the stories I read of others becoming a “top writer” I did not receive an email from Medium telling me I’d achieved this status. I found it by chance when clicking on my own “About” page.

This isn’t about false modesty and feigned surprise. I am thrilled, don’t worry about that. But the more I thought about it, the louder one question got — why have I got this? And this is the reason.

I have only written three articles (all in May) that are focused on social media and using this tag — none of which have been “chosen for further distribution”.

Here are the stats:

Let’s do the maths:

99 views

34 reads

1,258 claps

I don’t think Tim Denning who tops the list of Social Media Top Writers has anything to worry about at the moment!

To add to this, half of my other stories each outperform this trio by some margin. It’s not even as if the “Social Media” tag is an area with few writers competing for prominence — 117k at the point of writing this article.

Does Medium make any sense and does it matter?

Many other writers here will have similar tales to tell I’m sure and where “status”, “reward” and “logic” seem to be poles apart as they do here.

I’m not complaining, far from it, and seeing the “Top Writer” description on my profile — however undeserved in that category based on my efforts so far — makes me smile.

In the short time here I’ve learnt an awful lot about what I like to write, how I approach articles, and the various features that make Medium the platform it is.

What I’ve not cracked is understanding just how the hell it decides on what’s “chosen for further distribution”, deciding who gets a bonus, and on what basis you become a “top writer”!

If anyone knows, answers on a postcard, please. Or maybe that should be in a tweet given my new-found status!

If you enjoyed my article, here are a few more from me that hopefully catch your interest!