avatarGrace Mary Power

Summary

The provided content outlines the process and criteria for getting stories "boosted" on Medium, detailing the roles of curators (boosters) and community nominators, and lists Medium Publication editors who are nominators for the boost program as of February 2024.

Abstract

The web content explains that to get a story boosted on Medium, it must be memorable and meet Medium's quality standards. Medium curators, known as "boosters," and community nominators, who are often editors of Medium Publications, play crucial roles in selecting stories for boosting. These nominators publicly reveal their status and contribute to a dynamic list that aids writers in identifying where to submit their work for potential boosting. The article emphasizes the importance of engaging with these editors and writing with boost standards in mind to increase the likelihood of a story being selected. It also provides guidelines and resources for writers to enhance their chances of getting their stories boosted, including a comprehensive list of Publication editors who are nominators and tips for staying informed about Medium's official boost guidelines.

Opinions

  • The author emphasizes the importance of writing stories that are not only within one's usual scope but also align with the boost standards to increase the chances of getting boosted.
  • The author suggests that writers should do their research on getting boosted and engage with Publication editors who are nominators to improve discoverability.
  • The author believes that their article serves as a valuable resource for discovering information about the boost program and is not in competition with other lists of nominators.
  • The author encourages writers to keep up to date with official information from Medium and to work diligently on their writing to meet the high standards required for boosting.
  • The author advises writers to continue writing for a variety of publications, including those whose editors may or may not be part of the boost program, and to craft their stories to be boost-worthy.
  • The author provides a paid resource for writers seeking detailed guidelines on how to increase their chances of getting their stories boosted on Medium.

Who ARE the Boosters?

And how do I get boosted on Medium?

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

How do you get boosted on Medium? If your story has a “wow” factor, i.e., it is memorable in the eyes of Medium’s curators and in some ways meets most or all of the boost criteria, your story can be given a boost.

The “boosters” are the Medium curators. They read stories across the platform to look for stories to boost and to put into “Staff Picks.”

The “nominators” nominate stories to the curators to boost.

They are the community nominators, as Medium’s CEO calls them. This is because they are from the Medium “community”, which is a group of people who read and or write on Medium.

Most of the current nominators are editors of Publications on Medium who applied to nominate stories for boosting.

I am a nominator for the boost and am the editor of “Thirty over Fifty” for writers aged fifty and over.

If you want information from a nominator on what may make a story boost worthy, you may like to read my Guidelines here.

And following is a dynamic list of nominators to date, which I will add to as nominators make public that they are nominators and I find that information.

Note that Medium doesn’t give out the names of all nominators.

Nominators are not obliged to reveal who they are. But many, including me, have publicly stated that they are nominators for the boost.

Photo by Kushagra Kevat on Unsplash

Be careful with stories you find published on Medium about “Publications” that are in the boost program. It’s the Publication Editors that are in the boost program as nominators, not “the Publication”.

Some articles on Medium refer to Publications which include stories that have been boosted, as revealed by the writers. BUT that does not necessarily mean that the Editor of the Publication in which the boosted story appears, is a nominator!

Nominators can and do nominate stories outside of their own Publication for consideration of boosting. As a nominator, if I know that the Editor of a Publication is a nominator, I don’t nominate stories from their Publication, to boost. The reason why is because an Editor will nominate boost worthy stories from her or his own Publication.

List of Editors who are nominators, and their Publications. This is not an exclusive list because not all nominators want to be publicly known.

Last updated February 2024. If you have a good look around any of these Publications, you should be able to find the Submission Guidelines. Sometimes a Publication doesn’t clearly have a post (“story”) or a page titled “Submit” or “Submissions” but you can put in the time to search for their submission guidelines, if you want to.

Put in the effort and care to find things and to get the information and the resources that you need in life, and with cross-referencing and planning and doing, your life will be smoother.

You can read the official Medium Blog post about boost worthy stories at the link below, if you like.

Update by Terrie Schweitzer on the boost guidelines, August 11, 2023

Please note that this list has been compiled from information that Medium staff have publicly provided and from public posts by writers stating that they are nominators for the boost.

This article is a valuable resource (as shown by the comments).

  1. Some nominators appearing in this list may not let Medium know that they have gone “public” so won’t be in Ariel’s list. Ariel’s list has names of Publications as the sort order. A few nominators publicly post that they are nominators, but don’t tell Ariel (for whatever reason) to add them to her public list of Nominators.
  2. As a nominator I am presenting my unique insights, so NO, I am not “competing” with any other “list” of nominators.
  3. This article furthers discoverability of boost information because it is in the Publication “Boosting and Writing matters”, a Publication separate to the Medium Blog. It’s a “public service” to enhance the discovery of information, in my opinion.

Golden Rules for Getting your story boosted

  • Write what you usually write about but if you want your story to be boosted, try to write it with the boost standards in mind. I have written guidelines on what makes boost worthy stories, which can be accessed here . Medium is looking for outstanding feature stories to boost. They must be unusual or original and helpful and memorable.
  • You can submit what you think is a boost worthy story to the Publications above if you a writer for the Publication. If you don’t write in the niches of any of the publications above, don’t apply to be a writer.
  • Do your research about getting boosted as explained here. Nominators find stories across the Medium platform, related to their niche, to submit for boosting. So an idea is to familiarize yourself with the niches represented by the publications above. Then engage so that your work can be discovered by nominators.
  • Keep up to date with official information from Medium about the boost. You can do this in two ways. Make sure that your settings on the Medium platform are set up so that you receive all email types from Medium. The other way is to follow and/or visit the official Medium blog often, say once a week. Scroll to the bottom right of your Medium home page on a desktop screen and click on Blog, or click here to access it. Once you go to the Medium blog home page, click Follow at the top.
  • Work on your ideas and your writing to make them boost worthy! You need to be very stringent with your story writing to make a story boost worthy.
  • Keep on writing for Publications of which the editors aren’t in the boost program (or for Publications of which it’s unknown to you if they are in the boost program or not). Write for boosting and you may get noticed.
  • Keep writing “self-published” stories, i.e. posting just to your timeline/profile page, if that’s what you do; while crafting your story as boost worthy, with relevant topic labels (or tags) so it can be found. Engage with Publication editors whom you know are nominators.
  • Be informed by a nominator! I have written a comprehensive Guideline on how to increase your chances of getting boosted here.
  • You may be interested in the article below!
Photo by @felipepelaquim on Unsplash
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