Improving Medium
Six suggestions to enhance the author experience on the platform
Medium is in a constant state of flux, rolling out new features, and deprecating the old. Writers, faced with the challenge of building an audience for their stories, must continually adapt to a changing environment. Although the primary rule remains the same — write the best articles possible and provide quality content for your readers — we see the road to Medium success altering and evolving. Three months ago curation was the holy grail; approval from the mysterious curators would raise your article’s visibility. Now, curation appears to carry diminishing importance: the blessing no longer guarantees hundreds of readers. Followers, we are told, are what matters. We are transitioning from a topic-centered to a relational Medium.
Six months from now, the ground may shift beneath our feet and we shall move on to something else.
While it is important for Medium’s designers to continually improve the platform, it would be wonderful if there was a channel for passing ideas up the chain to those who are implementing the changes. Since there is no obvious way to do this, I thought I would offer a few suggestions in this article. I encourage you to add your ideas in the comments. Perhaps we can generate enough momentum to gain the attention of the boffins behind the curtain.
Extending Publication Technology to Writers
- Profile Categories. Although most of my Medium articles focus on history, that is not my only interest. I would like the freedom to write occasional articles on topics outside my niche. Perhaps I could write about technology or cats that I have known. It would be nice to display a topic banner across the top of my profile page (as we see here in the Illumination banner). This would allow me to group my articles into categories and make it easier for visitors to focus on the subjects that interest them.
2. Follow Categories. If we implement my first suggestion, and allow authors to group their posts by categories, why not allow readers the option to follow a category? A reader who is interested in my history articles may dislike cats. The ability to follow only a portion of a writer’s output (history, in this example) would improve the reader experience. We should also retain the present global follow option for those dream readers who love everything an author writes.
3. Newsletters. If the platform goal is to become more relational, then extending the newsletter feature to authors is a logical step. I would like to have the same ability to reach out to my readers that is enjoyed by publication editors. This would strengthen the bond between writer and reader. At present the only way to gain access to newsletter is to create an individual publication, but that means I have to choose between placing my stories in my own obscure publication (shameless plug: the Peripatetic Historian), which doesn’t even show up on my author profile, or publish in an established publication (more views, but I lose the ability to address the readers via newsletter). I know many writers are experimenting with individual publications, but if we had newsletters that could reach our followers, I suspect that most writers wouldn’t waste energy trying to grow their own publications.
4. Pseudonyms. I can also imagine wanting to write in fields that are so far from my main brand that it would confuse readers if I started to do so. I am a non-fiction author, but what if I wanted to write romance fiction? The readers who follow my account for the history articles might not want to start receiving my throbbing heart fiction. At present, if I want to attempt this interesting experiment while protecting the focus of my brand, I would need to open a second Medium account under a different name and start writing.
It would be much nicer if we could have the option of pseudonyms that are tied to a single user account. A reader would think that Richard and Madame Lily are two different individuals, but my stats and partner page would show the articles published under both names. Naturally the followers of Madame Lily would not see the history articles written by Richard, and vice-versa. This can be done now with separate accounts, but it might be nicer if it was a feature that could be exploited by cross-genre authors.
Improving Statistics
As a general rule, I find the statistics very useful, but a couple of tweaks could improve the author experience.
5. Audience statistics. I am still relatively new to the platform and haven’t drawn a huge audience. My biggest story has attracted 174 readers. When I look at the Readers’ Interests portion of the details page, I see this message: “We’re waiting until your story has more readers to show these insights.”
Why are we waiting? As a struggling author, I am trying to understand my audience. Who is reading my stories? How might I reach these readers more effectively or target people like them? Some data would be extremely valuable, especially as I work to develop a rapport with my readers. Perhaps reporting could begin after one hundred readers have digested the piece.
6. Alternate sorting options for stories on the statistics page. I have now published thirty-seven articles on Medium. Sometimes, when I suddenly get a daily spike in Views/Reads, I want to know which stories are thriving. With only one sorting scheme (chronological) one has to check the details for each story to see where the heat is coming from. It would be nice to have the option to select alternate arrangements of stories on the page. The stories could be ranked by monthly earnings (as the Partner Program page is) or by “trending” — the number of views or reads on that day.
So there we are, six suggestions for improving the Medium author experience. I am certain that there are a number of other great ideas, so please drop yours into the comments section. If we are lucky, our ideas might reach the ears of the great and powerful Oz, and we could see some of them implemented.