Medium FAQs
Medium Data Analytics Tools
What Medium data analytics tools does Medium’s stats dashboard include?
What Data Analytics Tools Does Medium Offer Writers?
Medium offers a number of tools to help writers track the views and article engagement that any post receives.
- Views are the number of visitors who clicked on a story’s page
- Reads tells you how many viewers have read your entire story (an estimate based on the length)
- Fans represent the number of unique readers who clapped for your story
Scroll over a specific day and the daily performance of all articles is highlighted.
Medium also allows writers to view article-specific stats:
Scroll over a specific day and the daily performance (views) and traffic sources of this particular article are broken down.
You can even see a breakdown of your traffic sources. Medium breaks down external traffic by broad sources:
You can also view data on the interests of your readers. To help writers better understand their audience, the “Your Readers’ Interests” chart shows the topics that the readers of your story are most interested in. The listed percentages are the proportion of logged-in viewers of the story who follow each topic. You can use this data to decide what you might want to write about next and to see whether you’re reaching your intended audience.
Note: If you are not seeing this data, your story may need more Medium-member views. Medium only displays this data after reaching a certain threshold. I’ve had articles get 50,000+ views and this chart did not appear. That is because most of the traffic was external. Medium’s proprietary threshold for displaying this chart is based on internal traffic only.
Are There Data Collection Advantages to Creating a Medium Publication?
The short answers is yes — there are benefits offered to only those who own or are editors of a publication. A major benefit of creating your own publication is the increased access to data analytics pertaining to your articles. Medium only gives writer’s a relatively small amount of data on their articles (number of views, reads, claps, fans, and some traffic sources). So any increased insight into your content’s data analytics is extremely valuable.
Below are screenshots of the enhanced “views” and “visitors” data that Medium publication owners have:
Views: The total number of views your publication has received on all posts and pages.
Visitors: The average number of unique daily visitors who have visited your publication. Each visitor is counted once per day, even if they view multiple pages or the same page multiple times.
Thanks for reading this article! Leave a comment below if you have any questions. Be sure to sign up for the Blogging Guide newsletter, to get the latest tips, tricks, and news about writing on Medium and to join our Facebook group, Medium Writing, to share your latest Medium posts and connect with other writers.
If you liked this article, here are some other articles you may enjoy:
Casey Botticello is a partner at Black Edge Consulting. Black Edge Consulting is a strategic communications firm, specializing in online reputation management, digital marketing, and crisis management. Prior to founding Black Edge Consulting, he worked for BGR Group, a bipartisan lobbying and strategic communications firm.
Casey is the founder of the Cryptocurrency Alliance, an independent expenditure-only committee (Super PAC) dedicated to cryptocurrency and blockchain advocacy. He is also the editor of several Medium publications, including Medium Blogging Guide, K Street, Strategic Communications, Background Check, Wall Street, Paywall Hacks, and Escaping the 9 to 5. He is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in Urban Studies.
