Medium’s Blogroll — Grow Your Audience, Discover New Writers
Why it’s important to cherry-pick who you follow now.
Medium recently launched a new feature — “Blogroll” that makes writer discovery seamless. You might have a prompt on how to turn it on. If not, you will find it under “Design your profile”
How it works is pretty straightforward. Under your bio, a list of people and publications who’ve published recently appears.
Turn it on, because it's a win-win
For example, If we follow each other, and we both publish often, we both get featured under each other’s bio. So my followers would see your name and vice versa. And even a short bio shows up when the readers hover around the names of people in the list. And ya, they can click on your profile and follow you too.
I think it is a great add-on because now I get discovered through my followers’ articles and they get discovered through my stories. It’s a way for me to support writers whom I love to follow.
Why writers shouldn’t blindly follow-for follow
So now I’ll tell you why you need to follow who you’d love to follow. If any reader who reads your story comes across another author’s profile, and thinks, “Oh, my favorite writer follows this person. Let me check this new person out.” And if the reader finds that you’re following someone who in no way is close to you in writing style or niche, then the reader may (in the worst case) even wonder why they are following you. On the contrary, if you follow writers whose work you really want to follow, your readers will end up thanking you for helping them discover awesome writers like you.
If you’re fearing, what if people click away from your profile and you lose your readers to other writers, then that is your scarcity mindset talking. Change it to an abundance mindset. There are enough readers for you and for every good writer. And wouldn’t you love discovering new writers whom you can follow along?
Why we all should just roll into Blogrolls
I don’t know if this has happened to you, or it’s just a coincidence or Medium’s strategy, I am seeing fresh views on a couple of my old stories. It’s not much, considering my 350+ followers, but it was high enough for me to notice it. These days I am seeing 50+ views on a day without any promotion, earlier it was just about 10–20 views. Isn’t that a sign, that my work is being seen more often now?
The one thing I find a bit disappointing about Blogrolls is, it shows publications in the list as well. That is no help in discovering new writers. And I wonder how it aligns with Medium’s strategy of empowering individual writers. I wish they just at least had an option to see only writers. But I am positive a small tweak is likely to happen given Medium’s small frequent changes in the past.
What’s the catch?
Publishing consistently is the only way to stay on top of your followers’ blogrolls. But the optimist in me likes to think of it as a motivating push if not anything else.
“Often” is a very relative term, I know. For publications, it can mean every few hours, for writers, it varies from several times a day to once a week at large. So keep those words flowing if you are here to make any serious impact and rake in some serious cash.
In one of his posts, Ev Williams (CEO of Medium) says — You can see the blogrolls only on the desktop as of now. And that’s a limitation because most people read on their smartphones these days.
All said and done, it is a positive change for readers looking for great reads, as they can discover new writers through writers they follow. For writers, it’s worth considering what you’d like to write on a long-term basis so that you can build on it and get targeted followers. Blogrolls is definitely a step towards a better experience on Medium, on the whole.
Have you noticed any impact on your reads after you’ve turned Blogroll on? Or would you rather not turn it on, and why?
Update: Medium’s Blogroll now shows only writers.
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