Thank You — Liz and Boomerangers — I Have My 100 Followers

And it only took 5 days!

It has been a wild ride these last five days — and I’ve learned so much about writing on Medium. Thank you to all of you for your claps and comments.

My Biggest TakeAways:

1. My profile was hard-to-read (thanks, Liz Porter, for pointing that out) and BORING. BichoDoMato highlights some really interesting ones. I am definitely going to up my profile game.

2. Commenting on other writers’ work really helps with engagement and has made the platform much more fun. My writing is mostly about advocacy work, but I’ve decided to try my hand at writing other types of articles on topics that are much more playful.

3. I didn’t read Medium’s Distribution Standards , which Medium also refers to as its Curation Guidelines. This was a HUGE mistake. I missed so much about the rules of the Medium game. The article About Medium’s Distribution System was also enlightening. I have seen many articles questioning Medium’s curation system. This struck me as most important:

If one of your goals is to be featured on Medium, concentrate first on quality, but also ensure that your stories meet our Distribution Standards .

Medium will immediately publish any author’s articles, but those that do not meet Medium’s curation guidelines will not be selected for additional distribution in Medium’s emails, apps, homepage and other highlighted programs.

The “Calls-to-Action” (CTA) distribution guidelines may be affecting the distribution of some of my articles as I am promoting the website “Social Media Harms” in most of my stories. I will ensure from now on to limit my references to that website in each article and will add the URL to the website on my redesigned profile. From the distribution guidelines:

In the story body, all calls-to-action combined are not to exceed 20% of the total story length. This includes crowdfunding links, social links, inline writer bios, links to other stories, allowed first-person promotion, publication promos — everything that’s not the story. Writers are free to promote themselves, but the story body should not contain excessive promotion. Writers are also free to use their bio and profile as they wish.

The bottom line is, a writer may express him/her/themself on the Medium platform. The question is…will anyone read it? The only guaranteed method of getting more readers is getting more followers. More from the Distribution Standards:

Medium is a relational network, which gives creators more freedom and agency over building and maintaining relationships with their audience.

Writers' articles immediately appear on the personal profile page and on followers' desktops and mobile apps. Writing a headline or article that triggers Medium’s algorithms is the secret that much is written about, but still remains a mystery.

It was good to learn that participation in the Partner Program does not affect distribution. From About Medium’s Distribution System article:

Making a story eligible for earning money does not affect your distribution status. Your stories are eligible for additional distribution regardless of your Partner Program or paywall status.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Writers can change how search engines like Google, Bing, Duckduckgo and others can search for your articles. The article SEO Tips to Make Your Stories Discoverable contains step-by-set guidelines.

5. Lists. I ignored lists, too! It is so hard to keep up with the great content here on Medium. I am just starting to take advantage of this feature, but I’m sure it will save lots of time. I’ve made the list “Most Helpful New Medium Writers Articles” public. Please feel free to take a look!

6. Unsplash Filter and “Google mornings.” Jonah Malin’s article 4 Actions to Take When Absolutely No One is Reading Your Content is terrific. Lots of good advice about headlines and how to make your writing more relevant to your readers.

7. Finally and most frivolous: Medium Will Allow Emojis 😃. Robert Ralph has a great article on how to do this in 4 Editing Tips You Never Knew Existed . I write my articles in LibreOffice Writer and then load them into Medium, so I’m not sure that I will use the other editing tips. We’ll see if emojis on Medium works or not for me — if not emojis may end up in another Medium Writer “Lessons Learned” article that I write.

Best of luck to all of you new Medium writers. I look forward to reading your stories in Boomerangs!