My first-month writing on medium
Reviewing my progress of the first-month publishing on medium as a novice writer.
What have I learnt in my first month.
Being a complete novice to medium, I treated the first month as a period of familiarising myself with the platform. My first aims were to see what works and doesn’t, meaning a lot of experimenting and reading.
The first thing I learnt was that the paid partnership program works on minutes spent ‘reading’ your article. The greater the time spent, the greater ‘reward’, this is cumulative. Your articles seem to cycle through the algorithm a number of times.
The second lesson learnt — just like with any other social media platform you really need to develop a positive voice in the Medium community. The more time I spent reading other articles, highlighting points, and giving claps. The more positive feedback would filter back to me.
Third lesson — consistency! Posting on a daily basis (but don’t forget about the quality). This has helped me to develop a ridiculously small presence but a presence, nonetheless. Like the saying goes.
“All journeys start with a single step,” Lao Tzu
Fourth lesson — that your responses to other articles get counted onto your stats. I must say I’m not a fan of this feature, it muddles the stats.
The fifth lesson — the power of trends, though it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. It is worth writing around a trending subject, this will improve your presence and your numbers.
Here are my stats, as you can see; started pretty low, but a presence is forming.
The days that I show more of a presence on the platform, seems to correlate with higher numbers. But that could be misleading.
What went well
There a few things that I think went well. The Platform seems to do what it says on the package which was a pleasant surprise.
I started to gather momentum, increasing my follower base from 0 to 200+. I call this a win, I did not use any other social media platform to initiate my ‘following’, (sounds like a cult).
I was able to find a way to post on a daily basis, via the use of Haiku. And I can see that the number of views, that my articles are getting is on the rise too.
What did not go so well
I definitely need to increase my daily posting of articles and not just Haiku.
The quality of each article needs to continue to improve. With that, I need to focus on trending topics more and ‘find my voice’ both on the platform and well as in my articles.
Have to improve my time efficiency, I waste too much time on writing articles that go nowhere. If an idea does not flow put a hold on it and move on to the next one. I also need to work on my work, life balance.
Work on my patience, both in the sense of progress on the platform as well as in my writing. “Rome was not built in a day!” I need to remember that.
I need to increase the time spent on reading and learning, on how to be a better writer (listen to my own advice).
The next move
The goals for the next month.
- Startup a publication of my own, to do with Haiku.
2. Join a publication.
3. Find my ‘voice’ in both the written sense and in the topic sense. This would also include the continuous improvement of my writing.
4. Increase my numbers, which is probably going to be an ongoing thing. Increasing my presence via more daily articles and community engagements.
If you have read this, first thank you for taking the time and second, I hope this can be of use to you, it definitely has been for me. If you have any advice for me, please send them my way. And if you have any question also send them my way. Once again thank you.
