Uncovering the Secrets of Curation by Analysing Medium’s Obsession with COVID-19
How to apply the factors that editors use to select their favorite stories to your advantage.
Later in this article I will analyse the top 260 stories listed on Medium’s Featured Story page on Monday 13 April 2020 to glean insights into the curatorial process.
To get there, I present my rationale for this analysis:
If you joined Medium to develop an income stream, you need to reach the largest audience possible. There are 5 ways to do this:
- Build your reputation and followers over time
- Gain exposure via Publications with an existing following
- Have your story go viral externally, raising attention internally
- Be deemed of interest by a Curator who approves your story to appear on the homepage, topic pages, and in their newsletter
- Utilise your unnatural, magical powers to subvert reality and bend others to your will
We can ignore the fifth option. If you had these magical powers, you wouldn’t be reading this article.
The third option will likewise be ignored, as it also requires those aforementioned magical powers.
So we are left with 1 (Build Reputation), 2 (Publications), and 3 (Curation).
Build Reputation
The first option is obvious and what we’re all doing.
The more we output = the more chances of being seen…
The more chances of being seen = the more chances of being read…
The more chances of being read = the more chances of being followed…
The more followers = the more chances of being seen…
And so the cycle continues.
It won’t happen overnight, but eventually, it should happen.
Publications
This article is itself in a publication, Illumination. A collaborative content-culture that aims to bring a community together to cross-pollinate ideas. In encouraging writers to strive for quality and excellence, the publication becomes a curator, attracting an audience craving guaranteed excellence.
A Medium within Medium.
Acceptance and release of your work by a Publication doesn’t guarantee success, but it helps raise your visibility and credibility:
- You reach an audience previously beyond your reach, providing a chance to grow your own follower base.
- By being published in an existing publication, the reader is assured of a certain level of quality.
Curation
Considered the holy grail by Medium writers, curation can take the eyeballs who see your story from single to six digits in the blink of an eye.
Some believe if they write things that Medium disapproves of they will end up in ‘Curatorial Jail’. However I don’t believe this to be true.
It makes sense that Curators can tag accounts that have broken the rules, but if a story is good enough, there would be little reason to not distribute it.
Every story read in full on Medium has kept another subscriber happy. A happy subscriber renews their monthly dues. The business continues.
Medium want your stories — now more than ever. But they have to be the stories Medium believe the audience wants to read: high quality, and topical.
How Does Curation Work?
As stated by Medium on their own Guidelines page, the act of curation is a combination of artificial and human intelligence.
With thousands of articles published on Medium daily, it would be impossible for a team to read every single one. Unless that team was enormous, and a team of readers that size would send any company bankrupt.
It makes sense for the initial screening to use artificial intelligence: an algorithm. Processing thousands of terms that Curators find interesting results in a shortlist of stories that match their popularity requirements.
Unlike a human, an algorithm does exactly what it’s told to do. Every single time. If the algorithm has been told to prioritize certain words or phrases it will do so. Relentlessly.
No doubt in 2016 those words included ‘election’ ‘Clinton’ ‘Trump’. 2020 also would include these three, but three new ones eclipse even them: ‘coronavirus’ ‘COVID-19’ ‘social distancing’.
So a computer program, written by coders and instructed by Medium staff, ‘reads’ your article upon publication:
- Confirming your tags match your text,
- Analysing your headline for keywords (and clickbait),
- Running a spelling and grammar check,
- Identifying if it is fact or fiction,
- If fiction, is it a short story, poem or photo essay?
- If fact, are you the information provider or collating external sources?
- If collating externally, have the sources been quoted accurately?
- If it is from an original author, is it 1st or 3rd person?
- If an emotional story, is it believable, and more importantly, honest?
- And most importantly, no matter what the answer to any other question: is it in the author’s voice — something unmistakably theirs?
It would then generate a score, using the algorithm to deem you worthy of further investigation, or immediate rejection.
Then you are placed in a queue for human judgement, and your story will eventually be read by one person who decides if it shall be distributed or ignored.
What Are Curators Looking For?
Unless you’re currently a Medium employee you won’t have access to that magical equation. Nor will they publicly reveal their curatorial wish-list.
But they do. Every day.
By looking at what is promoted on the homepage, in their newsletters, and on topic pages, you can tell exactly what their curatorial team is looking for.
Yes, curatorial guidelines ensure selection of well-written stories, but Medium’s goal is to find stories that grab the readers attention. They may be informative or inspirational. They will never be dull or self-serving.
And right now, if you’re not discussing COVID-19 in some manner, you have very slim odds of gaining visibility.
Of the top 260 articles on Medium’s Featured Stories page (13 April, 2020), 223 are directly or indirectly related to the current pandemic. Only 37 had nothing to do with COVID-19, and 3 of those were written before the virus had even been identified, so only 34 recent stories make the list.
There are many lessons to be learnt from analysing these 260 stories that can be applied directly to your own work.
How does this relate to you?
Whether your focus is business, technology, the sciences, or even literature, you have to write for your audience.
Ignore your audience and they ignore you.
On Medium there are only two types of readers: paid or unpaid.
Either they are staff searching for stories to share, or they are people looking for a story.
Either reader should be treated with the same respect: you are providing them with either entertainment or information. It should be excellent.
Deliver what you promise
However method a reader comes across your headline, it should grab their attention immediately.
Stand out from the crowd.
Tell them what your story is about succinctly.
Entice them.
Once your headline has grabbed the readers attention, it’s up to your first sentence to lead them to the second, and so forth.
Do You Need A Publication?
The short answer is ‘no’. But really it’s ‘yes’. Then again, it doesn’t have to be in a Publication, but it helps. So, ‘maybe’?
The benefit of being in a feed either consisting of your own followers, or one promoted by a publication (or by Medium itself), is a mixture of visibility and credibility. In theory, more followers provides you with higher visibility.
You can examine visibility by breaking down the sources of the stories in the list: only 29 were by individuals — a meagre 12%.
That may appear bleak, until you consider three of those accounts are only recently started and have very few followers (less than 250). Proving you don’t need to be hugely popular or established, just creating quality work.
There are always exceptions to the rules, like a recent article that didn’t even include any tags but got curated. It happened to be written by a publication’s senior writer, and that publication is Medium operated.
There are also world-renowned experts with personal accounts on Medium, and they have many articles curated. This is not only expected, but good for all of us. The more high quality articles being shared on the platform, the more people will view Medium as a respected place for information.
The current pandemic also shows that it doesn’t matter how big your publication, if you’re not producing material deemed interesting, you won’t be featured.
Looking at the pie chart, you can see The Startup performed poorly judged purely on the size of its follower base (616k — the largest publication in the list). Only 2 were from The Startup, but if you calculated it proportionately, they should have taken up 112 positions. A mere 1% of the total, and 110 less than you expect if the pie was sliced proportionally.
It illustrates that size of Publication, while perhaps handy in increasing reads, doesn’t guarantee curation.
In a normal week, The Startup may very well place more. But it isn’t known for stories about surviving a pandemic, its strengths lie elsewhere.
Aside from the 29 individuals, Publications punching above their weight include Level, Marker, GEN and elemental. For its size of 52k followers a proportionate number of stories for Gen would be 10, not the 40 they achieved.
Level scored 18 stories with only 5,500 followers. If it was proportionate to their base, they would’ve been lucky to have one, so a huge win for them. Similarly Marker had 14 stories, but from a base of 43k. Not as large a percentage slam dunk as Level, but still very impressive.
Proving Yoda correct. Size matters not.
Does Length Matter?
The good news is that looking over the range of story read lengths, the answer is a resounding ‘no’. Or perhaps the answer is the classic copywriting response: ‘as long as it needs to be’.
You shouldn’t focus on how long your article is to attain income, but for how well it serves the story you’re telling.
If you go too long, readers wander off. Too short and they’ll feel disgruntled. Write for the topic and the length will be appropriate — just don’t waffle on for the sake of running up the word count.
The results:
- Average Reading Time: 6.1 minutes
- Median Reading Time: 5 minutes
- Shortest Read Time: 1 minute
- Longest Reading Time: 25 minutes (non-virus related), 20 minutes (virus related)
How to Tap into the Zeitgeist
It may be obvious to say that there’s really only one topic on Medium’s mind right now, but whether it’s a normal week or during lockdown, if you want people to read your article, you have to attract them.
Your choices are to create pieces that are topical or evergreen.
Evergreen pieces are eternally relevant — relationships, marketing basics, writing tips, fiction. They don’t require a knowledge of current events and as there are a handful in the current favorites page, it’s evident they still hold sway.
Topical pieces are usually gleaned by recalling the conversations you had during the day with others. What’s mentioned on the news or social media, or if you want to burrow down, what’s trending on Reddit or google.
Right now it’s obvious, but you may still find it difficult to find a way to connect COVID-19 to your cooking classes.
There is a way.
There is a link, you’ve just got to be creative.
Brainstorm ideas until you’ve found something that works for you, and matches your own personal style. Take inspiration from Cathren Killedjian who did just that for her story listed at 38 on the Favorite list: Animal Crossing Is the Religion We Need Right Now.
It’s a video game review, but in the game you can move freely — something not possible in real life. That’s the only connection. But it IS a connection.
The link may be tenuous, but if you can find a way, it will help get your article past the first stage: the algorithm. Then you only have to ensure your story is strong enough to pass the human examination.
If My Coronavirus Story is Curated, Will I Get Paid?
It’s true that Medium, like many other online providers, is allowing access to articles for non-subscribers to read for free.
And if you’re lucky enough to be curated for an article that relates to COVID-19 you may wonder if you’ll still earn money. Well, if you’re part of the Partner Program of course you will. Medium have stated on their blog that internal reading will continue to be counted in your stats. It’s just like sharing a friend link, but in the case the entire world is your friend.
By the way, the Medium official blog, 3 Min Read, is a terrific source of information on how to make the most of your writing on the platform. From basics like how to write headlines and SEO tips, through to how Medium’s paywall system works.
But I’m not in the Email
You may recall that Curation also promises distribution in emails, which differ for each recipient.
Take the personalised Daily Digest you receive daily / weekly / monthly. It’s been attuned to your reading history and interest selections, so you may not see a single story from the Favourite list.
I can confirm that mine didn’t feature a single one, as I only want to read fiction and humours stories to inspire my writing. (There’s enough drudgery on social and mainstream media to remind myself in my writing sanctuary.)
I’ve gone in search of the stories I’ve had curated, and while finding them on Featured pages, I’ve yet to see one in an email. But I’ve been told by friends that my stories have appeared in their emails. Was this due to being a follower of mine or boosted by curation I don’t know.
Will this article be curated?
No.
That was simple.
Some would argue there are a number of reasons it won’t be curated. The headline may be considered clickbait, however I believe the content of the article more that matches the headline. So no, that won’t be the reason.
I never ask for claps, and aren’t asking you to read at a different pace, or even to follow me. And my bio is within the limits regarding promotion and links (it’s been in both of my Curated stories so far). So no, none of these reasons.
The reason is because I’m breaking a pretty obvious rule: “no stories written about Medium”. Stories about curation are against their rules. And if that’s their rule, I have to live with it. This article won’t be curated. I can live with that.
But I hope it helps you achieve curation if that is your goal.
Has Covid-19 Changed My Writing on Medium
Yes it has, even though I vowed it wouldn’t.
On joining Medium I committed to focus on my fiction and personal development stories.
I’ve been working for over 30 years in marketing and didn’t feel the need to mix work with pleasure.
But a certain pandemic teased the researcher in me, and the lure of breaking down statistics to prove a point was too attractive to resist. “Who else would be interested in this,” I asked myself.
So yes, I’ve relented to write my first marketing article.
I know. I said first. We’ll see. I’ve got some satirical stories calling me.
The Bottom Line
Write about a topic that Medium regards as popular.
Use an interesting headline with a supportive subheading that draws readers in.
Write in your own voice and to the length the topic requires.
Tag appropriately, then submit to a relevant Publication if you want to.
Even if your story isn’t curated today, it could be discovered in a day, a week or even a year — as a number of articles in the featured list attest to.
About The Author
Stephen Scott. Writer of Words. Yet Another Creative. Many names, some printable in decent company. He’s been plying his trade in copywriting and creative management since, well, before you were born (if you were born in the 90’s). Yes, he’s obviously a Star Wars fan. Connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
