Beyond the Basics: Advanced Strategies for Writing Engaging Stories on Medium

Reminders to make Medium stories and publishing work

In this piece, I try to de-mystify and point out some features that are important for success on Medium.

Because Medium’s algorithm is so pernicious, I’ll likely be annoying and insert this after the first few lines included in the SEO description:

[Please scroll to the bottom so the writer gets credit for the read. If you prefer to listen to this piece, please leave the original work open to acknowledge the writer’s contribution. The author regrets the need for this commercial break.]

I’ve been an avid reader of Medium’s content for many years under a number of variations on my name. While some of my original comments may have qualified as stand-alone writing pieces (sorry Jason Provencio), I only started writing with an eye toward publishing a few months ago.

I’ve made a lot of discoveries since then about how Medium does and doesn’t work. The algorithms for Views, Reads, Claps, and Followers can be confusing. But not as confounding as the device used to determine earnings per piece published.

Once you’ve opened a vein and spilled out precious words, there are a few things to consider before publishing. For starters, do you want to publish it as a stand-alone piece under your name alone? Finding the right publication is important and takes time, but can substantially add to your followers and reads.

Do you want to publish now, or schedule the piece for later? Activity is easier to track if you don’t publish more than once daily. Some publications put a limit to the number of times you can submit in a week.

Pay attention to the Title and description that will appear when someone searches your topic using Google, Bing, or another search engine. (SEO settings)

Meter your story: allows your story to earn money. If you’re signed up for the Medium Partner Program, I’m not sure why you wouldn’t check this.

Send a link to your email subscribers: The fans who get emailed when you publish will be notified if this box is checked.

Writing is an organic experience. I often start with a seedling of an idea or purpose but don’t get really engaged until I’ve veered off in a more interesting direction.

For example, I started testing the new AI ChatGPT tool everyone’s been raving about. That spawned a lot of creative ideas and made me concerned.

As a result of testing ChatGPT, I became more interested in thwarting the opportunity for kids to cheat on homework. That concern became the nexus for the piece identifying how to tell if something is computer-generated.

This piece took weeks of accumulated research and writing. To date, I think it’s received 5 reads. But, it fed my curiosity about how kids learn, why learning to reason and study is important, critical decision-making, and how some of the new companies attempting to detect AI-generated output are positioned.

My working title for an early draft of Issues With Current ChatGPT and Emerging AI Technology doesn’t quite lead a logical progression to another draft “How Children Learn”, or “OpenAI Can’t Police Itself in AI Detection”. That’s why it’s necessary to review content and titles.

On and Off Topic(s)

Finding the right topics for a story can be a chore. Without them, your piece has little chance of discovery. Medium allows up to five.

It’s not uncommon to open a piece with a subtitle or question like, “How will my decision to break up with my girlfriend affect my kids?” Too often I read essays that promise to make me more attractive, and productive, or have an amusing hook designed to make me laugh.

But the promise goes unfulfilled. The premise of the piece is never realized, so it lets me down. If I look at the Topics the writer assigned to the piece, I might find “Travel”, “Psychology”, “Partners”, “Productivity”, and “Humor”.

Wait… Travel? People assign topics so their work can be more easily found. Sometimes, the link to a certain topic is very muddy, missing, or exaggerated.

How could I qualify this piece to include a link to Travel? “I believe worldly travel helps us become better humans. My trip to Brazil taught me that even without speaking Portuguese, I was still at home dining with my hosts.”

Do those two sentences make me eligible for a Travel tag? No. They don’t fit, so don’t force them.

Topics that might fit this piece: Medium, Writers, Medium Tips & Tricks, Algorithms, and maybe Publishing.

If I want to get greedy, I could probably also exaggerate the reach and scope to include Narcissists, Mental Health, Data Science, and Behavioral Science, and even make a new one called “Look at Me!” No, Influencer works.

As a reader, if the piece doesn’t deliver on its promise and the topics aren’t relevant, I’m not going to be happy and won’t follow the author.

Okay, so this speaks to my own particular issues. I’ve been fighting with commas and the idea behind whether my subject (Big Bird’s Empire), hereafter referred to as “It” should ever be granted possessive pronoun status.

Note to my English teacher: Big Bird’s empire was possessive. “It’s” empire is still possessive. Do I really have to find and replace “it” with “Big Bird” every time I wish to use an apostrophe and ‘s’? That’s stupid. A contraction! But it could have belonged to ‘That’! Then, could I have used two apostrophes? Both the idea and that — are dumb. That’’s. Spell incorrigible.

I use images as reminders frequently when writing. Maybe it’s a sign of old age, rushing, or forgetfulness. Regardless, it helps me avoid mistakes.

Medium has been an important part of my life since I first discovered it nearly ten years ago. During that time, several changes have occurred, mostly for the better. Still, there are things that drive authors crazy.

Conni Walkup Hull recently posted a piece outlining several important issues. Reader responses included “I never knew you have to scroll to the bottom of the page for a read to count.”

I’ve noted that some of my longer pieces earn less than short ones, and can only guess that the reader got distracted while reading 500 words — why else would it take 11 minutes to read? Speed-reading is costly.

Conni’s piece also touches on how listening to an essay usually results in an interpretation not intended by the writer, and questions if and how the writer is compensated for pieces that are heard, but not read.

The Medium community is strong; its readers and writers are appreciated. But writers only know that if you scroll all the way to the bottom — including the stuff we don’t intentionally put there.

Thanks for reading!

Join Medium for a low $5 monthly fee, a small portion of which helps me continue this dream! @pmemphis5421/membership

I see systems. I’ve always been fascinated with patterns, logic, and social constructs. The trade-off has been a poorly functioning body.

If ChatGPT and other AI tools had personality, they’d be rude, but funny.