Medium vs. LinkedIn Which is better for Building an Audience

My 30 day writing challenge

In May 2022, I did my first writing challenge. My goal was to write five days a week on LinkedIn and Medium. That’s 42 stories in all. Then measure the results. Well, it was a pretty interesting month. One that brought some unexpected results.

Results

I wrote 21 stories on each platform. Many of them were short (less than 200 words). Some of the stories promoted content I had produced previously. While it is not an apples-to-apples comparison, due to the differences in the platforms and their shared analytics, I think you will see some advantages to one platform over the other.

My stories had 608 views on Medium (317 for new stories) and a 45% read ratio (50% for new). The reader to views ratios were common to my overall stats for the two and a half years I’ve been writing on Medium. My earnings were the third-highest and most evenly distributed ($11.51 from 35 stories) -That is an all-time high for money making stories. My following grew by 51 and 2 people subscribed to my email list.

On LinkedIn, I had 1,800 story impressions, 35 profile views, and several offers for business opportunities. One person contacted me about writing for their website, another wanted to discuss collaboration on content for their new wellness app, and a couple more had coaching consultations. But the best was from an internal recruiter. Though according to her, the way she found me was unrelated to my content and solely based on the strength of my profile. I got the job she contacted me about, and I start next week. In the interviews, the managers I spoke with were all surprised about the amount and quality of content I produce on a regular basis.

Conclusions

From my analysis, I realized that I need to spend some time, or hire someone, to analyze how my content is consumed. I’ve realized that Thursday and Friday are the days my Medium stories get the most views. Similar to my emails which have the highest open rates on Wednesday and Thursday

Short-form can make money, too (my highest-grossing new story made me more profit than the one book I sold this month). Thus, you do not need to write long stories to attract an audience. It seems that stories between 140 and 750 words are the most appealing to my readers.

LinkedIn got very good results, too. My profile views spiked at 35 for the month. That is 10–15 more than average. Thus, writing on LinkedIn is a great way to grow one’s reach and expand your network. However, I discovered that LinkedIn stats are difficult to analyze after the fact, that they appear to be focused on weeks, not days or months, so checking once a week is important to gauge the impact of each post. The reactions and engagements with my post were from people in my target audience. That is nice.

Since my ratios were similar to months I wrote less, it would appear that writing two or three stories a week would get good results as well. However, there was a distinct difference compared with the months I did not write very much, like April when I only wrote four stories.

Ultimately what drives readers’ views and followers on Medium appears to be a back library of content. I even read a story the other day about how some readers will consume more stories from a single writer if their stories are short. However, on LinkedIn, it’s a different story. People see what you posted recently and what your followers are engaging with, so it does help to produce content consistently during the week (maybe 3+ times). Many experts say five, six, or even seven days of posting in a week is the fastest way to build your LinkedIn network.

Overall, I’d say it is better not to put all your eggs in one basket. Instead, post to at least a couple of channels. Then engage with your audience when they respond. Remember audiences are a collection of individuals, and you need to provide each of those readers value if you hope to keep them around.

What are your preferred content channels, and what have you learned about optimizing your performance there? I’d love to hear about your findings.