Nine Months On Medium — The Good, The Bad And The Boosted

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he best things about Medium this month.</p><h2 id="12f8">The bad</h2><p id="e391">Trolls. Clap and run people. Comment and run people. Dickholes who highlight a piece of text without reading the rest and having no context and then leave a confusing (and because it is out of context, sometimes quite mean) comment that makes no sense.</p><h2 id="4afa">The boosted</h2><p id="8e12">Hahaha. Sorry, I just had to laugh because I had a blog sitting in drafts, typed out, since September or October — I can’t exactly remember — I thought it was generally awful. But I kept it in draft form. Last Friday night, I was so bummed out about being trolled and not being able to figure out what I’m doing with my life that I added a couple of paragraphs on my phone, selected a random photo from Unsplash and self-published it. I lost 20% of my email subscribers overnight and a significant number of followers. They probably never even read it but it mentioned trans people in the title and OMG, I think I got a tiny little taste of the hate they experience on a daily basis. People unfollowed me just for bringing the trans topic up for discussion. It wasn’t even about them and these people didn’t read the post at all. Because if they did, they’d see it was about autism parenting.</p><p id="ffc6">I mean, who would get upset about the mother of a disabled teenage boy’s struggle to find a safe way for her son to use the toilet in public places? What heartless bastard would do that?</p><p id="082f">Then it got boosted within a few hours. Things took off, it didn’t exactly go viral but it went well enough and I got some good feedback. I had my best day ever on Medium, both in terms of making money and generating hits.</p><p id="7336">So, it was a good article — good enough to get boosted, but it was also super offensive and made

Options

people leave bitter comments, make snap judgements and never want my emails in their inbox again?</p><p id="9ab9">Ok… I don’t get it, but ok.</p><p id="f6d2">If you want to get boosted or promoted, I’d say be human, be brave and be honest. Don’t worry about if you’re not a professional writer or you can’t get every single sentence English-teacher-perfect. Just write with your heart as well as your fingers. I’ve made it to the newsletter (first article mentioned too) and I’ve been boosted, and both times they were about my real life experiences and they were written with a little anxiety about the consequences of being so vulnerable, but I did it.</p><h2 id="7e6b">What did you learn this month?</h2><p id="b87b">That’s what led me to this decision. I will read every comment, I will clap for your comments on my post, I will comment back on yours and follow you back if you look like a genuine person with stories to tell. But at the tiniest hint of nastiness or venom I will block and I’m not engaging with comments written on my own posts any more. If I’ve said everything I need to say in my article, I don’t think I can add anything more to the discussion. Other people can say what they like and discuss it amongst themselves in the comment section. I’ll be much too busy writing the next post or paying it forward by engaging with my friends’ articles to get involved in digital drama in future.</p><p id="d00b">Perhaps people will disagree with this stance? Yes, I’m sure plenty will. But it worked for me this week when my boosted story took off. I focused on writing, engaging with interesting posts I found and clapping on the well thought out comments on my articles. And I avoided getting upset over people who don’t care whether I’m happy or sad. Medium became a happy place for me again.</p></article></body>

Which is apparently all the same thing?

That picture you see above is me, lying in bed last Friday morning after picking up my phone to type out some notes for this post. You see, most months since last May, I’ve been writing a monthly update about Medium and my progress here. I think that I’ve only missed one month so far. I almost missed this month until I realised that I had an email telling me that I had been boosted. Then I knew I had to come back and talk about this.

Medium is still confusing me, as it does a lot of us because they keep shifting the goal posts. In November and December, adding 100 people a day resulted in lots of hits on my posts, lots of follows back, lots of reads and a nice little three-figure income. It wasn’t hurt at all by the fact that one of my posts was included at the top of the Medium newsletter and did very well as a result. Then it simply stopped working.

This month, my strategy was to write more. Except everyone is writing more, so that didn’t work either.

The good

I’m starting to see the benefits of having made some really nice connections here on Medium. There are men and women on this platform whose names I see popping up in my feed and I smile, simply seeing that. I already know that I want to read anything at all that they write. That’s been one of the best things about Medium this month.

The boosted

Hahaha. Sorry, I just had to laugh because I had a blog sitting in drafts, typed out, since September or October — I can’t exactly remember — I thought it was generally awful. But I kept it in draft form. Last Friday night, I was so bummed out about being trolled and not being able to figure out what I’m doing with my life that I added a couple of paragraphs on my phone, selected a random photo from Unsplash and self-published it. I lost 20% of my email subscribers overnight and a significant number of followers. They probably never even read it but it mentioned trans people in the title and OMG, I think I got a tiny little taste of the hate they experience on a daily basis. People unfollowed me just for bringing the trans topic up for discussion. It wasn’t even about them and these people didn’t read the post at all. Because if they did, they’d see it was about autism parenting.

I mean, who would get upset about the mother of a disabled teenage boy’s struggle to find a safe way for her son to use the toilet in public places? What heartless bastard would do that?

Then it got boosted within a few hours. Things took off, it didn’t exactly go viral but it went well enough and I got some good feedback. I had my best day ever on Medium, both in terms of making money and generating hits.

So, it was a good article — good enough to get boosted, but it was also super offensive and made people leave bitter comments, make snap judgements and never want my emails in their inbox again?

Ok… I don’t get it, but ok.

If you want to get boosted or promoted, I’d say be human, be brave and be honest. Don’t worry about if you’re not a professional writer or you can’t get every single sentence English-teacher-perfect. Just write with your heart as well as your fingers. I’ve made it to the newsletter (first article mentioned too) and I’ve been boosted, and both times they were about my real life experiences and they were written with a little anxiety about the consequences of being so vulnerable, but I did it.

What did you learn this month?

That’s what led me to this decision. I will read every comment, I will clap for your comments on my post, I will comment back on yours and follow you back if you look like a genuine person with stories to tell. But at the tiniest hint of nastiness or venom I will block and I’m not engaging with comments written on my own posts any more. If I’ve said everything I need to say in my article, I don’t think I can add anything more to the discussion. Other people can say what they like and discuss it amongst themselves in the comment section. I’ll be much too busy writing the next post or paying it forward by engaging with my friends’ articles to get involved in digital drama in future.

Perhaps people will disagree with this stance? Yes, I’m sure plenty will. But it worked for me this week when my boosted story took off. I focused on writing, engaging with interesting posts I found and clapping on the well thought out comments on my articles. And I avoided getting upset over people who don’t care whether I’m happy or sad. Medium became a happy place for me again.