avatarJ.J. Pryor

Summary

The article analyzes 51 curated humor pieces on Medium to identify common characteristics that contribute to their success, including publication in Slackjaw, use of real people in images, and certain topics and article formats.

Abstract

The author conducted a detailed analysis of 51 humor articles that were curated on Medium, aiming to discern patterns that could help humor writers gain more visibility and engagement. The study, which covered a period from May 2019 to April 2020, focused on elements such as claps, publications, authors, images, topics, titles, and article types. Key findings include a modest average of 468 claps for curated humor pieces, with a notable presence of articles by authors with large followings. The most successful humor articles often involved real people in their images, were published in known humor publications like Slackjaw, and revolved around topics such as business, food, life, love, and writing. The analysis also revealed that statement titles and listicles were popular and effective formats for humor writing on the platform.

Opinions

  • The author suggests that humor on Medium may not be as widely appreciated as other categories, as indicated by the lower average number of claps for humor articles compared to other genres.
  • Getting published in established humor publications like Slackjaw is seen as a significant advantage for visibility.
  • The use of real people in article images is recommended for better audience engagement, contrary to the author's expectation that cartoons might be more prevalent.
  • The article implies that self-publishing humor may not be as effective unless the author already has a substantial following.
  • The presence of well-known humor writers is acknowledged, but the analysis also highlights that many curated pieces were from less famous authors, offering hope to newcomers.
  • The author expresses surprise at finding humor articles in publications not typically known for humor, suggesting that a touch of amusement can be well-received even in unexpected places.
  • The analysis indicates that certain topics and formats, such as essays, character pieces, and advice articles, are more likely to be curated, providing practical insights for aspiring humor writers on Medium.

What Makes a Good Humor Story on Medium?

I analyzed 51 curated pieces to find out

Photo by Frederick Tubiermont on Unsplash

If you’ve ever written a humor article on here, you know that it can be tough to find an audience sometimes. One common way to get more views on Medium is to get curated. I spent a decent amount of time analyzing a bunch of curated humor stories to see if anything stuck out — and I’m happy to share the results.

Table of Contents
The most common way to get humor curated
Ranges and categories
Claps
Publications
Authors
Images
Topics
Titles
Type of article
Wrap up
List of 51 articles I looked at

The Most Common Way to Get Humor Curated

  • Get published in Slackjaw
  • Become Kyrie Gray (currently the Medium featured writer in humor)
  • Use a real person/people in your story’s image
  • Write about business, food, life, love, or writing
  • Use a statement as your title
  • Write in the form of an essay, POV of a character, or a listicle

Easy, right?

Please read on below for more details on the other areas I dove into.

Ranges and Categories

  • Stories reviewed: 51
  • Claps range: 0 to 2,500
  • Date range: May 2019 to April 2020 (But mostly in the last 5 months)
  • Number of publications used: 15
  • Different authors: 46
  • Image categories: None, animals, cartoons, person/people, photo
  • Topic categories: Addiction, baseball, bingo, business, candles, cats, characters, coronavirus, feelings, food, holidays, furniture, life, love, monsters, music, parenting, politics, social media, tech, writing, yoga
  • Title categories: How-to, numbers, question, quote, statement
  • Type of article: Advice, character, personal essay/story, infographic, listicle, poetry, Q&A

As with some of my previous rabbit holes, the data collection isn’t perfect. About half of the articles I selected chronologically in a period in March/April. For the other half, I tried to be very random, going back as far as December 2019 for when they were selected for curation.

As this isn’t truly random, it’s better to pay attention to the commonalities rather than the individual stats.

For those wondering how to tell if an article is curated or not, you can check out this in-depth guide I made.

Claps

I went down this rabbit hole to understand why many of my humor articles don’t receive a lot of claps in comparison to my other work. One fear of mine, which I’ve heard reflected by other Medium writers, was that humor just isn’t big on this platform.

It seems that may have been correct.

  • The average number of claps was only 468. Keep in mind these are for curated pieces. Go to any other category, and many curated articles will be a lot higher than that. Disappointing to be sure.
  • 6 articles had under 50 claps, with one having 0! I was a bit surprised at the 0 clapped article, I’m still not sure how that can happen.
  • The highest amount of claps was 2,500. Even at the upper limit, I would’ve expected to see one article in a random assortment of 51 curated articles that had at least 10,000 claps. Sadly, not the case.

I can only guess that it is directly related to the number of views and that relatively, a lot of people aren’t too interested in humor on this platform.

Of note, the higher clapped articles were all by authors with decently large followings.

Publications

I previously did a dive into finding out what publications are active in the area of humor, so I knew many of the names.

I definitely found some new ones just from this analysis. I always love finding new sources of creativity to read and enjoy, so that’s a big plus.

  • The most common publication was Slackjaw. This makes sense, as it’s the largest on the platform, with more than 100,000 subscribers.
  • 9 of the stories were self-published. Most of these had very low claps, with the exception of the highest one in the entire list. The takeaway from this is don’t bother self-publishing humor if you don’t have a huge following.
  • Oddly, Better Marketing, PS I Love You, and The Startup were on the list. These pubs aren’t known for humor, so I was surprised to see them. The articles in them weren’t 100% humor but definitely had a lot of laughs inserted.

So feel free to mix in some amusement here and there while you’re creating.

Authors

If you follow the topic here on Medium, you probably might already know a few of the famous humor writers here. If you don’t, here are some of my (and many others’) favorites:

Benjamin Davis, Jessica Wildfire, Kyrie Gray, Sean Kernan, Katie Burgess, Amanda Rosenberg, and Molly Henderson to name a few.

I was glad my imperfect random selection of curated humor articles ended up including most of them. A nice thing to also see was that there wasn’t a heavy skew towards them. Newer authors with small followings were quite common and made up the majority.

  • There were only 5 repeated authors in the selection.

So have hope, Mr. or Ms. Noobie — 80% of the curated articles were from non-famous authors!

Images Used

Having the right image at the top of any blog post is super important. I’d argue it might be even more so for humor articles.

Humor is an extremely subjective artform and having a matching image will let the potential reader know if they like it before clicking — which is important for Medium metrics.

  • Almost half of the articles had a real-life person/people as the image. I honestly expected this to be cartoons instead. Perhaps it has something to do with the availability of copyright-free cartoons vs. photos out there.
  • 2 stories had no image at all. I can only chalk this up to being new to blogging or Medium. Images give huge boosts to views of articles. The low claps on these two reinforced that.
  • 15 stories used a photo of the topic’s main object. This makes sense for articles about dogs/cats or those that revolve around a specific idea central to the piece, that isn’t a person. But I bet if it was easy to find, many of them might’ve used a cartoon image instead.

Topics

I expected the topics to cover quite a wide variety. I turned out to be right — mostly. Interestingly, there were a few common areas that occurred more than others.

  • 5 of the articles related to the current crisis. This can be expected, of course. Many people feel that during our darkest times, humor should be there to lift up spirits.

The other reoccurring topics were:

  • The other reoccurring topics were:
  • Business
  • Food
  • Life
  • Love
  • Writing

These were almost half of all the articles. So if you’re looking for a topic that has a bit higher chance of getting curated, the above list should be a great place to start.

Titles

I confess it’s a bit hard to lump all these creatives titles into proper categories. So I went a bit broad with their definition here.

  • The big majority of articles had a kind of statement as the title. Of course, the topics and how they stated things were quite varied. But in the end, stating a premise seems like a great way to introduce your upcoming humor.

The other kind of less common story titles had to do with listicles.

  • About 20% of the stories had a ‘how-to’ or a # in their title.

Of course, there’s a lot of advice out there on how to properly structure your titles with hooks, power words, etc. But as for humor, the basic premise should be in the form of a statement or a # for a listicle.

Type of Article

For the last area I looked at, I tried to figure out what format or style the article was written in. There were seven different categories that I lumped these into. And I’m pretty happy with the results — mostly an even split between four of them.

  • Eight were advice articles.
  • 12 revolved around a specific character as the underlining point.
  • 14 were a form of essay or letter to someone type of thing.
  • 12 were listicles, which are quite a common method of humor writing.

Of note was an interesting one that was just a large infographic. And it was also nice to see that two of the curated pieces were poetry.

I suppose the curators are okay with a wide variety of humor writing, as long as it supports the topic and subject.

Wrap-Up

I went down this rabbit hole with the hope of finding a bit more clarity about humor on Medium. Curation is an important part of the platform, and it can often help in leading to long-term reads on your articles.

It seems to be a bit of a mixed bag, though, when it comes to humor on here. But that’s okay; it certainly can’t hurt to get something curated.

Just try to remember the more important parts of the analysis if you’re looking to get curated.

Use people or cartoons for your images. Use statements for most humor and numbers for how-to guides. Focus on publications like Slackjaw or from the above list. And most importantly — legally change your name to Kyrie Gray.

Thanks, I hope you enjoyed the piece.

List of 51 Articles I Looked At

Humor
Curation
Medium
Satire
Views
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