What Most Writers Here Don’t Understand About Medium

It’s a social network, stupid.

It took me a while to get this. But duh, the founder very clearly stated that Medium was supposed to be Twitter with longer stories. But I didn’t pay attention to that.

According to me, three years ago when I started writing on Medium, I was a staff writer and this was my own personal New Yorker magazine.

I used to get mad about this one little quirk of Medium. Sometimes when I commented to another writer’s story, “Nice Job, Bill, I liked it”, Medium would “publish” the comment as a story. And other people would get it in their feed. Christine has published a story. My readers would then read the following fascinating “story” — “Nice job Bill, I liked it.”

And I imagine they would be confused. Has Christine Stevens lost it? Or is she going for that Hemingway six-word novel thing? If so, it doesn’t work.

I used to think that Medium was wrong to treat my comments as “stories”

They were not stories. That was a dumb idea to call comments stories. They are comments!

But gradually I understood I had it backwards — on Medium, my actual stories are really comments. Because the social network comes first. The only meaning my stories have is as a means of communicating to my fellow members of this social network community.

This is how you gain interest in your stories on Medium.

You use it like a social network. You reach out to other members. You comment on their stories. You get to know them. You make jokes with them. And there’s a back and forth. And so on.

This is NOT your own personal New Yorker. And you are NOT a staff writer

And you never will be. Even after you gain ten thousand followers on Medium, those followers will quickly stop reading your stories if you start acting like a staff writer and don’t reply to their comments.

Those followers will fall away if you don’t read their stories too.

One good turn deserves another

Yes, it’s a good deed to read your fellow writers. To everyone who applies as a writer here at Haven, I send the following in the welcome email:

“Please make sure to look at the School tab on The Haven to see what we expect from our writers. Also, please support your fellow writers by clicking on their stories, reading, and commenting, to help keep our vibrant community of humor writers in a good mood.”

Do you know, not many of you clap or comment on the Haven stories?

We do get ONE MILLION views per month.

We get THIRTY THOUSAND views per day.

We get…wait for it…wait for it…

36 people who clap for a Haven story per day.

Pathetic, right?

You know, people in marketing often give a ratio for ad performance and so on. They call it “conversion rate.” Across industries, a good conversion rate is ten percent, or 0.10. If we had a conversion rate here, it would be 0.00012.

That’s frustrating to read, I’m sure.

But here’s what I suggest. Give yourself a rating on your community participation. For every hour that you spend working on Medium stories and posting and so on, what percentage of that do you spend reading and commenting on other people’s stories?

We can use the same “industry standard.” If you are doing well on Medium, making money and so on, then I’m pretty sure that you spend at least ten percent of your time treating this place the way it’s meant to be treated — like a social network.

If your community participation conversion rate is .00012, then I am also pretty sure that you’re not making money.

Want to make more money? Be nicer.

I don’t want to sound like Ellen now, but yeah, be kind to your fellow writers. Show them some of your love.

The love you take is equal to the love you make.

There, that’s a Beatles quote for all of yous who were mad at me for making fun of Boomer music yesterday.

See, that’s what my “feed” looks like here — it’s a back and forth. My lovely readers — you! — make little jibes and I jibe back and it’s awesome and I don’t need to be kind, actually. I have fun participating in the social network.

There are some incredibly witty and wonderful people to be jibing with here in Mediumville.

Start jibing.

Your bank account will appreciate it, I promise you.

Now, I don’t want to sound all school marmish. But how about sexy dominatrixy?

Clap more, you bad boys and girls! Or I will spank you!

You hear?

Spend more time reading your fellow Haven writers. Or I will whip you!

You hear?

That’s an order!

Look at that picture, imagine it’s me, and I will lash you with those lash thingies if you disobey me.

You hear?