The Power of Writing

The Ultimate Guide On Maximizing Your Reach On Medium

Use these 10 functions to get more eyes on your stories

Are you a writer who wants to get more views on your stories?

I bet so.

In this ultimate guide, I’m going to explain ten different Medium functionalities that will help you get more eyeballs on your work.

So whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been writing for years, read on for some helpful advice. Let’s get started!

Check this short overview to see what you can expect:

#1 Get your Stories Chosen for Further Distribution (aka Curated)
#2 How to Use Tags and What Being a Top Writer Means
#3 Grow your Fanbase with Email Subscribers
#4 Social Media Shares 
#5 Draft Links for Quality Control
#6 What are Lists and How to Use Them
#7 Pinned Stories & Index Stories
#8 Publish Comments as Stories
#9 SEO Settings or How to Make Friends with Google
#10 Share Friend Links

#1 Get your Stories Chosen for Further Distribution (aka Curated)

Curation is a powerful Medium-internal story distribution system. They have a bunch of editors vetting recently published stories. If they decide a specific story is of high quality, they will mark them as “Chosen for further distribution” for a specific topic (tag).

This story will then get shown into the feeds of much more readers interested in this topic than usually. Although it is not as powerful it used to be, it still helps in getting eyes on your work. Plus, it works as free-of-charge quality control. When your story got curated, you can be sure it is a good one.

To get your stories curated, they must be of high quality regarding content, speech, and formatting. Also, stories about Medium itself are not eligible for curation. If you want to learn more about the Medium guidelines, check this helpful article.

#2 How to Use Tags and What Being a Top Writer Means

In the Medium editor, open the story settings via the three-dotted menu on the top right corner. One section is called “Tags.” You can put up to five tags to your story. Tags are topics under which your story might be categorized.

• If you are writing about dog walks in winter, sure tags would be “Animals” or “Pets” as well as “Weather.”
• If you are writing about the latest update to a Python library, people searching for “Data Science” might be interested in your story.
• If you are writing a rant about Facebook, the tag “Social Media” would surely be a good fit.

When people search for stories, they might be interested in, they often search for topics. If you use a certain tag, your story might be shown to readers searching for content on this tag. There are a lot of universally used tags like “Writing” for example and a lot of niche-y ones.

When you start to type a tag, there appears a dropdown menu with suggestions and the bracketed number of how many stories carry this tag. Medium behemoths like Tim Denning recommend using three popular tags and two niche ones to maximize your chances of being found.

When you consistently publish with a specific tag and your stories get decent views and engagement, you might become a “Top Writer” in this specific topic. Being a Top Writer means you are among the Top50 writers contributing to this tag.

The advantage?

When searching for a topic (tag), readers also get a list of Top Writers on this specific topic. Use this elevated visibility to get additional readers to find you and your work. Not to speak of the bragging rights as your Top Writer status is displayed on your profile’s About page!

The hook?

Right now, there are just over seventy tags eligible for Top Writer status. You can find a comprehensive list of these tags at the end of this lesson. The more popular a tag is, the harder it is to become a Top Writer in it.

Nevertheless, make it a habit to blend Top Writer-eligible tags into your stories’ tags. Publish quality content on a regular basis and you surely will be a Top Writer soon.

#3 Grow your Fanbase with Email Subscribers

Medium now has a built-in email-list function. Readers can opt-in by clicking a certain button appearing on your profile. They then become your email subscribers and get notified per email when you publish a new story. You have the option to export your email list as well as import an existing email list into the Medium one.

What are the perks?

Whenever you are about to publish a new story, you get a pre-checked radio box named “Send an email to my subscribers.” They now get an email when with a short preview and a link to your story by email the moment you publish. When you submit your story to a publication, the email is sent when the editors published your story.

This is such a fantastic way of reaching your loyal fans directly in their inbox!

#4 Social Media Shares

Medium has built-in share buttons for major social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. They appear in the bottom right corner of your published stories. If you decided to connect a social media account like Twitter with Medium, you receive a pre-written tweet when clicking the “Share on Twitter” button, so all you have to do is click the “Send Tweet” button.

It is highly recommended to customize the tweet with corresponding hashtags and mentions to make sure it gains traction.

Possibly the greatest feature is “Text Shots:” When you highlight a sentence or paragraph in an already published story, a context menu appears. When you push the Twitter button, a pre-written tweet appears. It contains the highlighted sentence as a quote as well as the author tagged and a link to the story. This is such a terrific way to make the Twitter audience curious and interested in clicking through to your story.

#5 Draft Links for Quality Control

In the Editor’s story settings menu, you can take a link to your draft and share it with your writing buddy or someone from your family. They can then view the draft story and leave private notes on which spot you might need to change something or point out a phrase that sounds awkward.

Having another pair of eyes looking over your work goes a long way in prepping your stories up for success.

#6 What are Lists and How to Use Them

In your author’s menu, there is a section called lists. The default list is your “Reading List” where you can store stories you did not have the time for, but still want to read in the future. Just press this little bookmark-shaped button on the bottom of a story and it now appears in your “Reading List.”

You can create custom lists for different topics and decide whether they should be accessible to your readers or not. The best feature is to create lists for your own stories from different topics.

Why?

Because you can create embedded links for your lists as well as your stories.

For example, I created ten stories with writing prompts for a writing challenge. I then put all these stories in a list and shared the list as an embedded link in a story. People could enter it with one click and had access to all the prompts to perform the challenge.

It is an easy way to direct readers to a bunch of stories you want them to see and is especially useful for stories around a certain topic.

#7 Pinned Stories & Index Stories

Did you know you can pin stories on the top of your profile? Whenever a reader sees your profile feed, he gets to see the pinned stories at first. Behind the pinned stories the feed will appear in order of publishing.

You can enter the story settings menu via the three dots on the bottom right corner of the story. Now click on the “Pin this story to your profile” so it will appear on top. Please note the order on top of your profile depends on pinning. The last story that got pinned appears on the top of your profile.

You can get even more value out of this story by pinning an Index Story to the very top of your profile. Put some info about yourself into this story, what your readers can expect from you, and some links to your best stories or list so they can jump right into your content.

Let them know who you are and what you are all about. Chances are high you win a fan right away.

#8 Publish Comments as Stories

Comments are a wonderful way of engaging with other people’s content on Medium. Not only do you acknowledge the effort of another writer, but you can also add value with thought-out feedback or additions to the story.

Engaging by commenting on stories with a lot of readers will also mean a lot of eyeballs on you. Well-thought comments will make people find you and your work more easily. You can even publish a comment to your profile feed by checking the box “Also publish to my profile.”

On your profile stream then appears a box links with the original story as well as your comment in text.

#9 SEO Settings or How to Make Friends with Google

I highly advise you to click the “More settings” button from the story settings menu in the editor. This is where the real magic is hidden! Scroll down a bit until you find the options for “SEO Title” and “SEO description”

The SEO title will replace your story’s title in the search engine index. Your story will be displayed with your usual title, but Google will see the custom SEO title you provided. It will also be shown as the page title in the Search Engine Result Page (SERP.)

Use it to blend in some keywords your story is about, and people are likely to search about. Although it is highly competitive, think of “3 ways of making money from your home” for your online Side Hustle article. Please note SEO titles above 60 characters are cut.

The SEO description whereas is displayed beyond the SEO title on the results page. Use it to further describe what your article is about and what value you are providing for the reader. Always think about how you can make him click on your specific results on the SERP.

Why should you even bother with SEO title and description?

If you do not customize them, Medium will use your stories’ title as default for the SEO title and the first lines of your story as description. They may look great in your article but will not be so attractive on a SERP.

Although traffic from search engines on your story most likely won’t get you any money as you are only paid for member reading minutes (unless the one clicking on the search results is by coincidence a paying Medium member), it still has major advantages: More eyes on your story tell the algorithm your story is of quality and should be distributed further.

Also, if you have CTAs in your stories like email lists or referral links, even external views could get you real benefits.

Oh, and do not forget to click “Save” once you customized your SEO title and description. Otherwise, it would switch back to default when you leave the menu.

#10 Share Friend Links

In the “More settings” menu there is also the option to copy a friend link to your story. By sending someone a friend link to your story, they can read it even if they are not a Medium member and already read their three free stories per month. Use this feature to show your work to people outside of Medium, for example as a portfolio piece.

Final Thoughts

Alright, now take a deep breath. You’ve just been through ten different Medium functionalities that will help you maximize your reach and get more eyeballs on your content.

Some are easier than others and some may require a bit of effort, but they’re all worth trying. Have you tried any of these methods? Let me know in the comments below how they worked for you. And if you found this post helpful, be sure to share with your friends — they’ll appreciate it!