My Biggest Story Wasn’t a Story at all!

The case for giving some love (and cash) to responses

A guy could have a heart-attack, seeing a spike like this in his overnight stats.

The mystifying part was that there was no single story that appeared to have gone viral, or even done particularly well. They were all bumping along in the low double figures for reads and single figures for fans, so my immediate elation at having cracked the code and made the Medium big-league was short-lived.

The puzzle was solved when I looked at responses instead of stories and found that a throwaway two-line response had elicited this spike.

The background? This was December 13, the day that the UK woke up to a landslide victory by the Conservative Party and many Labour MPs woke up without a job. One such unfortunate was Laura Pidcock, a rising star in the party, who penned a heart-rending farewell to arms as she accepted her fate.

My commiserations, in full, read as follows:

Sorry to see you go Laura. I think you were let down by a metropolitan introspective and obstinate elite within your own party.

Later, much later, I went back and added a link to another political article, but the bolt was shot, and I didn’t get much further traffic to that post.

What was astonishing, and a little depressing, was to realise that a 10 second passing comment could eventually garner nearly 2K views, while articles which had taken serious effort and time to produce were bumping along with next to nothing.

Of course this most successful “story” ever would never bring in a red cent.

Medium treats responses almost exactly as if they were stories in their own right. Except that they can’t be curated and are not eligible for earnings under the Partner Program.

This is a shame, even leaving aside my temporary bias due to the Pidcock response.

I probably write ten times the number of responses that I do articles. And very few are simple “Nice job” messages. I try to pick out what makes the other person’s story speak to me, highlight its particular insights, or contribute related experiences and viewpoints.

My sense is that this builds engagement and community, supporting other writers and helping to maintain the nurturing environment that makes Medium so special.

Wouldn’t it be nice if such behaviour was rewarded in some way?

In a way, it already is. If I see someone regularly clapping for me or making comments, I am intrigued enough to visit their profile and check out a few of their stories. Very often I become a fan and will start reciprocating in terms of responses, not as a calculated hack to keep the pot boiling, but because

a) I genuinely appreciate the variety of views and styles on offer, and

b) It seems like a healthy and organic way to build a mutual support network.

I have by now almost stopped reading and commenting on the biggest names on Medium. They are too swamped by fans and comments to engage to any meaningful extent with individual fellow-writers. There is also an element of sameness to a lot of their output. They have cracked the code for Medium success and are milking it for all it’s worth, often resulting in a steady stream of re-vamped but essentially repetitive ideas and guidance.

I find more surprising insights and much more willingness to engage in the more overlooked writers, often during their first few months on Medium.

My hope is always that such writers won’t get disheartened by absence of feedback and give up, but will continue to present their own unique perspective on whatever takes their fancy.

I think that a few of the recent Medium changes have been designed to encourage new voices and fresh perspectives. For example, the ban on bringing back old stories with minor changes, which used to favour the old guard with prodigious back-catalogues.

I’m sure more could be done to smooth the attention (and earnings) imbalance, for instance by featuring newer writers on the Medium main page from time to time, or including them in occasional special email distributions.

And, just as YouNow has leaderboards for those who are the biggest fans or who capture the most moments, perhaps a little recognition here for the most avid commenters would be a helpful step in extending and strengthening the Medium community.

Many thanks for reading!

I always swore that I wouldn’t spend my time writing articles on Medium about writing articles on Medium. Yet here they are: