Summary

The author advocates for actively engaging with other writers' content on Medium by leaving responses, rather than just reading and moving on, to increase visibility and interaction with one's own articles.

Abstract

The article emphasizes the importance of active engagement on Medium, specifically the practice of leaving responses on other writers' articles. The author shares personal experience of how this strategy led to a significant increase in claps, followers, and earnings. By interacting with the community through clapping, highlighting, and following, the author noticed a reciprocal effect, with others engaging more with their content. The article suggests that this method is more effective than simply dropping a link to one's own work and leaving, which is a common mistake among writers. The author also references a video by Tom Kuegler, which discusses the benefits of commenting on others' work to gain more views on Medium. The algorithm favors such interactions, leading to a win-win situation for all parties involved.

Opinions

The 'Drop and Leave' method, where one shares their own content without engaging with others, is ineffective.
Engaging with other writers by clapping, responding, and following can lead to increased engagement with one's own content.
Medium's algorithm appears to favor users who actively participate in the community.
Leaving genuine responses is crucial for establishing oneself as a genuine member of the Medium community.
The author's method of engagement led to a spike in their article's internal views and earnings.
The author suggests that Medium operates similarly to social media, with notifications and the potential for viral content.
The article encourages a culture shift from 'Drop and Leave' to active and meaningful engagement on the platform.

Toss Some Words To Your Writers

“Oh, members of Medium.”

Before I start, I do recommend you all to watch the Tv series on Netflix The Witcher. It’s an epic adventure of Geralt of Rivia caught between war and monster huntings (And Henry Cavill is a bae).

So in this article, I am writing this to tell you why dropping responses is more important than reading and leave. This is something I tested a week ago, and the result is astounding.

The ‘Drop and Leave’ method is not a good move, in fact, it won’t do you any good. Especially for you who are new here.

Anyways, here is my story on how I find dropping responses is an effective method.

How I found this out.

I was off from Medium for quite a while to gain more ideas. So I read Medium stories and books to get me inspired, this actually took a few days before I actually wrote something again. But I was mostly active on Medium, just reading to give myself something to take away.

Along the way reading on Medium, I dropped claps, responses, highlight, and follow authors. As a writer too, gaining them also meant a lot to me, especially the responses where I can interact with the readers.

So I have been dropping claps and responses, and if I think the writer has the potential to shock me everyday, I’d follow them.

Then, something happened.

I was opening Medium again the next day and found more and more people either clapped or drop responses for my articles or followed me. I didn’t even write a lot for that week, plus, they scrolled to the very end of my profile and clapped the old articles I wrote months ago!

I did this for a whole week and more and more people just keep coming.

As the result, when I checked my article stats and earnings, it actually spiked!

Here is an example of one of my articles. So far, this article had the most claps and fans among my writings.

Stephen King’s Guide to Consistent Writing

“How the f*ck do you write so many books so fast?” — George R.R. Martin to Stephen King, 2018

medium.com

Look at its stats below.

Yes, this is curated. However, getting curated doesn’t always mean that it’s evergreen content. It’s like social media. Once a trend went viral, it goes away pretty fast.

Now back to my point, I posted that article on April 6. I went up a bit the next day due to curation then it slowed down the next couple of days, I pinned that article to feature at the top.

On April 7–18, I wasn’t really posting a lot but mostly reading on Medium. That’s when I clap, giving responses, and following people. I did notice a couple of people clapping and following my profile, but I didn’t count how many. Some of the people who clapped my articles did appear at my network, so in exchange, I checked out their profile and see what they wrote, dropping out some claps as well, of course.

Then on April 19, that article’s internal view spiked up again!! The earning of that article and the others also increased!

Now, why am I telling you this?

First, I want to remind you that Medium is like social media. It has a notification bell that helps you to know who has been interacting with your articles.

I find the mistake that most writers do, especially on Facebook, is ‘Drop and Run’. You can’t just drop a link and expect the stats will spike just by doing that, email list may help but if there is also another way to help your stats, this is the way.

You will need to get the Medium algorithm to react to your behaviors.

Tom Kuegler mentioned this in his video on How to get more views on Medium. The more you comment on other’s articles, you will be creating awareness on others about your presence on Medium.

That way, you are interacting with more authors so that they are curious about you. They may click on your profile and they would also clap on your articles, even older ones.

The best case is that they would also follow you and the algorithm(this is very important) find that your posts may be significant to other’s home feed to make you stay on that site.

That way, you can get more views and, ultimately, claps, highlights, and all the things that appear at your notification bell.

This worked well for me as I leave comments on four to six articles a day. I gained more followers, my articles earned more views and claps, and there were responses as well.

In the end, it’s a win-win situation.

You come to read and get insights from others, then you take the time to clap, drop a response to their articles, and even follow them.

And assuming the author has time to reply, they will be aware of your presence and check your profile out and, best case scenario, clap, highlight, response, and follow you!

But don’t write a response such as ‘please check out my article’, you are only drifting them away.

That’s it! Simple as that. Let’s break out of the ‘Drop and leave’ culture here, yea?

Give a response to the articles of others. Make sure it’s a genuine response so that you come out as a genuine person who would take their time to give others feedback.

Clap and highlight definitely help, but the most effective is giving responses to their articles. That’s why my title is “Toss Some Words To Your Writers”.

I hope you learn something from here.

If you like this article, be sure to follow my profile to get more articles like this or subscribe to my newsletter to get more like it.