The 1 and Only Way to Get the Most Out 0f Medium
The 1 and Only Way to Get the Most Out of Medium
Do this one thing, and you will be a better reader and gain more useful knowledge from Medium
Why You Are Here
If you clicked on this story, chances are that you did so because I included a number in the title. Is this a good thing? Read on, and we can decide together…
Just How Many of Us Click Titles With Numbers?
¹ In his story “5 Data Insights into the Headlines Readers Click” on moz.com, Nathan Safran performed extensive research on the click rate performance of titles on Buzzfeed. Although these numbers are not Medium specific, I do think the numbers are typical of the search performance of titles on any platform.
² The following are his results:
As you can see, the Number Type of title results in nearly one third of the Male population of readers clicked on titles with numbers, and nearly 40% of Female readers clicked on titles with numbers. That is a huge margin of readers!
But Do We Get Any True Value From the Number Titled Stories?
The answer to that question is a resounding No. I’m not saying that some stories that have numbered titles don’t offer some real value to the reader, but the sad truth is they typically do not offer any useful information for us at all.
These titles are typically click-bait. And like a fish drawn to a worm on a fishing hook, we bite the bait. But when you pull this fish out of the water and look at what you have been lured into, it is for the mass majority little more than canned tuna. Just jibber-jabber advice that we already know of, or heard of, and was most likely just copy and pasted plagiarism by the author from someone else’s story they found on the internet.
Why Do Click-Bait Fisherman Do This?
Refer back to the table above. The answer is we fall for it, and the click-bait fisherman knows this, and in my opinion this type of click-bait Writer is discreditable, disreputable, unscrupulous, unethical, and simply does this because they have no writing talents of their own to share. Their goal is no more than an attempt to gain followers, without regard to the real human needs of the reader, they are providing no true value and no empathy for you.
The 1 and Only Way to Get the Most Out of Medium
Although I included a number in the title of my story, my intent was to use a click-bait numbered title to lure you into helping you understand that if you want more value out of Medium, then stop biting the click-bait fisherman’s lure!
In a perfect world where no one responded to click-baited numbered titles, you would never have read this article – And that would make me happy!
Here are some real tips on how to get the most out of Medium
- Don’t be lured in by click-bait that contains a number!
- Be leery of stories with titles with words like: “Ways you need to…”
- Be leery of stories with titles with words like: “How to…”
- Be leery of stories with titles with words like: “Ways to…”
- Be leery of stories with titles with words like: “What are the ways to…”
Instead of the above do the following:
- Do a search of Medium for the Top Writers on the subject you are interested in. If a Top Writer’s stories are titled as above, first give the story a quick scan, then if it’s click-bait move on to the next Top Writer.
- Read stories in Top Publications that require an Editorial Review of the stories that they accept for publication, such as Illumination. This gives you a higher likelihood that the stories they publish will be of higher quality and of more value to you.
- Read the Writer’s Profile. Many members forget to do this. Serious Writers will have professionally written profiles that contain their areas of expertise and some even include their writing credentials and educational level. (By the way: Don’t by any means use a profile anything like mine. I changed it recently in a very wrong way, and it is an example of exactly the type of profile you don’t want to see!)
- Use specific and more descriptive adjectives that relate to the search results you want to see when using the Medium search feature. The simple searches (such as listed above) will predominantly return click-bait.
- Know that in many cases Top Writer is not in direct correlation to Top Quality.
- Know that the number of claps that a story has is not in direct correlation to the quality of the story
- Know that the number of followers a member has is not in direct correlation to the quality of their stories
- Become more familiar with the topic you are searching for to read by googling the topic outside of Medium. By reading those search results. you may find terminology and more descriptive terms to use when searching for stories on Medium. Again the click-bait rules apply to Google as well, so only read stories from well known companies, institutions, organizations, and governmental websites.
That’s all for now folks. What I have provided you here is the difference between intellect and wisdom:
“First, use wisdom in the choice’s you make in what you read, and then intellect will follow.”
Citations
[¹ ²] Nathan Safran. (2013, July 17). 5 Data Insights into the Headlines Readers Click. In moz.com. Retrieved 12:11, November 1, 2020, from https://moz.com/blog/5-data-insights-into-the-headlines-readers-click
