Medium Lists — Forgotten Golden Feature?

You should use them in a way you never thought of before! 😎

Hello! 👋

I am Martynas Ki. (@strangecash) and today I want to talk about one of the most undervalued features of the platform — Medium Lists.

In my opinion, this feature is deeply “forgotten” or even undiscovered by many Medium Writers.

I will do my best to explain why you should “blow the dust off” from it and use it way more often. I truly believe that the concept described here is a secret “underdog” that can become a game-changer on your Medium journey!

Ready? Let’s go! 🚀

Note: Don’t get confused — Medium stories and Medium articles are just interchangeable synonyms, so I use them both in this article (or story 😅). Call it whatever you like. It’s the same thing.

What are they?

So, the concept of Medium Lists is really simple:

It’s a collection of articles that every Medium user can create.

It’s like a folder and files. With folder being the list itself and files being Medium articles.

It’s like a library. With Medium list being a bookshelf, and a Medium story being a book.

I think it’s clear enough! 👍

You can create a new Medium List and add ANY Medium story to it, no matter who is the author, what publication it is on, and so on. You can also add stories written by you! 💪

For the creator of the list, it’s also possible to reorder added articles, delete them and so on.

To conclude — you are the boss of your created Medium Lists. 😎

Simple enough. So where’s the secret? 🤨

Well, Medium Lists have one important feature that many Medium Writers are missing out. To be honest, I also discovered that “secret” only a few days ago. 🤷‍♂️

Medium Lists and Medium Publications: Are they different? 🤔

At first sight, Lists and Publications can look very similar — they are both collections of articles.

But I think that’s the only thing they have in common.

They are very different “beasts”:

1. In Medium Publications, the author of the article has a decision right to choose the publication (or self-publish it without using any pub). In other words, if the publication’s editor spots an awesome article he can’t add it to his publication — only the author can do it. On Medium Lists, it’s a different scenario - the creator of the list has superpowers to fully manage it. 🦸‍♂️
2. One Medium story can be published in only one publication. It can’t be published in several Medium Publications. Medium Lists are different — the same article can be added to many lists. Even if the same user created several lists, he can add the same story to all of them. The only thing — you can’t add the same story twice to the same list (the article has to be unique on the list).
3. Compared to Publications, Medium Lists are super-easy to create and manage, but they don’t have as many customization options. You can still provide the title, the description of the list, and add a short note about each story. But you can’t customize the design of it. So, in the end, it is what it is — it’s a list of articles, and publications are more like online magazines/websites/blogs.
4. ⚠️ The most important thing! Other Medium users can “save” the Medium lists created by you. In my honest opinion, the more appropriate term here should be “follow” or “subscribe” to the list. I will explain this process in detail in the next paragraphs. 🚀

What’s the point?

So from readers’ point of view, Medium Lists are just a great way to organize the articles that they love.

But it also has one very useful “side-effect” for Medium writers! 🤩

💪 Advantages for Medium Writers

TL;DR — Create a Medium List with your stories and kindly ask readers to “save” it! And don’t forget to add new stories to the list constantly. The “list savers” (subscribers) will be informed with a notification and will get an email about the updates of the list.

I think “TL;DR” part was clear enough but here I will explain everything in-depth.

So to understand the secret and powerful value of Medium Lists for Writers, let’s forget about them for a moment.

Let’s imagine that you have a powerful fan base. The True Readers. With capital R. The Devoted Ones. The Herd. Call it whatever you like. 😍

How to make sure that they get your new Medium stories?

Well, they can follow your profile. But, meh… Only by following you, there is a 99% chance that your story will get “lost” in their feeds.

In this case, the delivery “guy” will be Medium algorithm and he let’s say likes to get lost sometimes. 🥴

So this way is chaotic and unpredictable. Maybe the story will be delivered to your Readers, maybe not. Not good enough. 🤦‍♂️

Ok, your fan then can subscribe to your Medium Newsletter which means that they will receive an email whenever you publish a new story. Better, but still… These days inboxes are full and your fan can easily miss it. Or at the moment he receives an email he can not have time to read the story. 😔

Sadly, Medium does not have a “subscribe bell” option like YouTube or Twitter. With that functionality, every “bell” subscriber would get a Medium notification + an email when you publish a new story. That would be great! 👍

I think this would be amazingly useful because usually when people login to Medium, in my opinion, they have more intention to read. 📖

But there is no such “bell subscription” functionality, Mr. Tony Stubblebine. Why, oh, why dear CEO, why?? 🥺😂

Yeah… Life is life.

So are there any “subscribe” weapons left for us poor writers? 🤔

No. We have just to sit in the corner and cry…

Na-aah! Just kidding! 😁 Medium Lists to the rescue! 🦸‍♂️

Why?

Because if your fan “saves” the list, he will get:

• Medium Notification whenever you add a new story to the list; 🔔
• An email about it. 💌

So it’s two in one. 👏

Also “list savers” can clap and leave comments on the list itself, which increases engagement. 👍

What is more, Medium lists provide a lot of flexibility for the writers! 💪

Let’s imagine you write about two completely different topics, for example, cats and pizzas. So now you can create two separate lists for each category. And when you publish the story, you just add it to the appropriate list. And then cat fans get cat stories, pizza fans get pizza stories. If they have saved both lists, they will get both stories. Problem solved! ✅

Also, you can add stories by others, which would make your Medium List even more valuable! Found useful tips about pizzas by some random dude? Add his article to the pizza’s list and your “list savers” will be more than happy! 🍕

It’s just yin and yang. ☯

So to recap, this is a workflow that I strongly recommend:

1. Create a Medium List;
2. Constantly add your stories there (+ maybe relevant valuable stories by others);
3. Ask your readers to “save” the list.

Maybe I missed something, but I have not seen anyone doing this on Medium! At least actively. 😳

Everyone is talking about followers, email subscribers, views, reads, and earnings. I haven’t seen anyone saying I have 10k “list savers”. 😃

It doesn’t sound good. It’s not “sexy”. But the benefits, in my opinion, are unquestionable. 🦸‍♂️

To be honest, I only realized this concept only a few days ago so I don’t have many “list savers” yet also. But if nothing drastically changes on Medium, this concept should be incredibly effective, in my opinion.

The only problem that I see with this workflow is — convincing a reader to click that “Save list” button. Because it’s a bit hidden.

Show me an example, sir! 🧐

No problem, man. 😁

For the sake of example, I will show… Medium itself.

They have a user here with some lists created, so I will focus on this one:

The shocking fact about this list — Medium (as a user) has 79 million followers, and the list is saved only by... 480 people. 😨

In my opinion, this fact shows that the method described here is not very widely known, used and promoted. Even by Medium itself. 🤷‍♂️

Nevertheless, I am one of those lucky 480 “list savers”. So I will show you what happens when Medium decides to add a story to the list.

First, you get a notification like this:

Secondly, “list savers” get an email:

I think this is the best way to broadcast to the world that you wrote something on Medium! 💪

Time to practice! 🏋️‍♂️

So yeah, now it’s time to practice. 💪

It’s good to know everything in theory but let’s see how it works in the real world.

Did you like this story?

If yes, then become a “list saver” of this list:

The saving process looks like this:

I will put only truly valuable stories about Medium in this list, so I think it’s a win-win situation for us both. 🤝🏻

Thank you! 🙏

How can I create my own Medium List? How to make them popular? How to…

Well, these are great questions, my buddy. 😎

But this story is already way too long so I can’t cover all the technical details here. 🤷🏼‍♂️

I will answer all of these questions in another article, which will be published in the upcoming days. 📅

Don’t want to miss it out? For the love of God, SAVE THAT GODDAMN LIST!!! 😡😂😂 Really, go ahead and do it! You won’t regret it. 😉

Thank you! 🙏

In a while crocodile, 🐊

Martynas Ki. (@strangecash) ↯ Pure. Brutal. Honesty.