Reflective Writing

The Challenges of Writing for 90 Days Straight — Week 9

Follow me on my journey as I discuss this week’s contemplations and opportunities for growth.

Today represents Day 64 of 90 of my Medium writing challenge, meaning I’ve got my feet firmly under the desk into the third month of writing.

There’s been a real shift in the last few days. I’ve always been proud of my writing — even though I cringe when I look back at some of my earlier posts — but I felt this week was particularly strong, and I’ve added a new section to my reflection posts which will show ‘The Week in Stories’.

I’ve gone up by sixteen followers this week, which for some won’t sound much but, it’s a significant percentage jump, and I’m grateful for them all. I credit this to the consistency of posts, the amount in circulation and the fact that I have a couple of published pieces too, which I didn’t have at the start.

I’ve found a couple of new favourite resources to help with my writing and Medium.

The first is a publication called Illumination, which I started following a while back. I’ve found myself investing hours reading the tips, ideas and trends of successful Medium writers. It’s been interesting how some of the thoughts have been similar to my own which again supports my belief that I’m on the right track — I was lucky enough to have a post published on Illumination last week which you can check out below.

The other, useful dab of info has come from the Medium Daily Digest. I hadn’t been reading through these, but I’m so glad I did. There’s been some insightful info and ideas I’ve been thinking about during my writing sessions this week.

My highest performing post so far is still doing well. Last week it was on 186 views with just less than an hour of member reading time. At the time of writing it is now on 237 views with 1 hour 24 mins. It goes to show that there is life in the post even a couple of weeks after it was published.

Right. Without further ado, let me introduce the new section to these reflection post — *drum roll please*

The Week in Stories

A Recap of Last Week’s Reflections

Since the start, I’ve been insistent on the need to reflect on any work up to this point. It’s essential because without analysing past performance, it’s impossible to determine areas of weakness and opportunities for growth — this isn’t limited to writing; it’s a lesson for all endeavours.

For anyone that missed last weeks post, to find the SEO settings: Click on the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the post editor, then select ‘more settings’.

Contemplation 1: Looking at the SEO settings — Title

It’s difficult to tell how well this worked but here has been an increase in story views this week, and a hop up in followers. Something else I have noticed though is that the external views have also gone up and been the higher than internal views in all the ‘unpublished’ posts this week. Of course, this could be a coincidence, but for the little effort it took to change, it’s worth sticking with it.

It mentions on the SEO Settings page that “a title of 40–50 characters with commonly searched words have the best click rate.” — It’s not many.

“This sentence alone is 46 characters in length”

This would suggest the benefit of using a shorter title or at the very least a more concise SEO title, which incidentally doesn’t need to be the same as the post itself.

Contemplation 2: Looking at the SEO settings — Description

It’s hard to know exactly how much impact this had either individually or combined with the title. One thing for sure is that, coincidence or not, the external views is higher.

My understanding is that the external views are articles found anywhere other than Medium so it could be a google search or it could also be from someone sharing the link.

Again the character length is short — just 140–156 characters.

“This is an example of what 151 characters looks like when typed out. It’s not as much as you’d think, but it’s enough to summarise your story. If you can’t, maybe the post lacks clarity”.

If you leave this space blank, it will automatically use the subtitle, so it’s worth making it a good one in case you forget!

For clarity, I think it’s a perfect exercise to practice summing up your post in as little as an old-school tweet.

Again, it’s not easy to know the exact impact, but the patterns in the stats seem to suggest there could be a link between the followers, post views and external traffic and the SEO settings. For these benefits, it’s worth continuing.

This Weeks Contemplations and OFG’s (Opportunities for Growth)

• Contemplation 1: Story Structure
• Contemplation 2: Links to Stories within a Story

Contemplation 1: Story Structure

I mentioned earlier how one of the invaluable resources I’ve recently discovered the power of the Medium Daily Digest. I feel a bit silly because I’ve received these e-mails since I first signed up on a, as the name suggests, daily basis but it was only in the last week I opened it up. If you haven’t had a look, I’d recommend you do.

I will continue to do this because there are some fantastic insights.

OFG: One of the pieces that caught my attention in a recent daily digest e-mail was this:

I enjoyed the whole post but in particular the part about the story template.

It’s similar to what I was doing already, but each section, Divad suggests, should have research or examples and a takeaway which is something I often save for the end of the story.

I haven’t followed the advice religiously, but I’ve had it in the back of my mind as I’ve been writing and, in my eyes anyway, it’s made the pieces feel complete.

I will continue to think about this idea and consider other structures that may also work.

Like a song, if we follow the same structure for every piece, it will soon become predictable. The structure is effective, and it works, but it’s useful to have variations.

Contemplation 2: Links to Stories within a Story

It makes complete sense, but the more stories we post, the more the views will naturally increase. It’s easy to imagine that a post might have an impact when we first hit publish but based on my, admittedly limited, experience, the shelf life of a post is longer than you’d think.

There’s a snowball effect where the more stories we share, the more opportunities for people to see our other work increased — such as the ‘related reads’ at the bottom of each story (App) or ‘more from medium’ (Desktop).

OFG: The related reads are an effective way of increasing views on our other posts. When a piece is published, Medium will recommend an article from the publication, but this may not necessarily be your own.

Where relevant, I’m going to post more links to my own stories. If I’m lucky enough to have a piece curated or published, I can piggy-back on the exposure with another of my stories.

Closing Thoughts

This week has been great. It’s the first time where it’s felt entirely natural to sit down at my desk and write on an evening without a second thought. The habit may have formed earlier than that, but I only recognised it the other day.

My writing has certainly improved, and even though a few weeks back I was struggling for content, I’ve been pleased with some of the topics I’ve covered recently — I’d go as far as to say, they’ve been some of my favourites to write.

Keep using the curation and publication guidelines, and don’t forget the Medium Daily Digest!

Before You Leave

Thanks for being here. I’d love to keep in touch so join my mailing list now for semi-regular e-mails about what’s been occupying my mind over recent weeks.