Summary

The article discusses the impact of Medium's algorithm on story visibility, particularly how a viral story can boost views for an author's other content, emphasizing the importance of consistent writing and reader engagement for sustained success on the platform.

Abstract

The Medium platform uses an algorithm that promotes stories to readers based on their reading history and engagement, such as clapping and commenting. A viral story can lead to increased visibility for an author's other work, but this boost is temporary unless the author's content is curated or continues to engage readers. Consistency in writing and maintaining reader interest are crucial for long-term success. The algorithm also tends to recommend more stories from the same author if a reader has recently engaged with their content, but this preference wanes if the reader does not continue to interact with the author's new stories. The article suggests that writing regularly in one or more related niches and ensuring that content remains high-quality and engaging can help authors maintain visibility and grow their audience on Medium.

Opinions

The author believes that the Medium algorithm's recommendation system is influenced by factors such as reading history, clapping, commenting, and the duration of engagement with an article.
Success on Medium is seen as a combination of talent, proper advertising, connections, and understanding the platform's algorithm.
The article posits that a single viral story can significantly increase the visibility of an author's other stories, especially if they are in the same niche.
It is noted that the absence of curation does not necessarily lead to a loss of views, as demonstrated by an article that continued to be recommended two months after publication.
The author suggests that consistent writing and reader satisfaction are key to maintaining visibility on Medium, as the algorithm favors authors whose stories consistently engage their audience.
There is a view that the algorithm may stop promoting a story if the click-through rate (CTR) drops, indicating that the story is no longer of interest to readers.
The article emphasizes the importance of choosing related niches or topics of general interest to increase the chances of sustained success on the platform.
It is implied that authors should not take their readers for granted and should strive to provide value in every story to ensure that readers remain interested and engaged.

Why a Viral Story boosts views of Other Stories ?!

To achieve consistent success, we need to understand how the algorithm works! I’ll explain it in simple words!

Reading the Medium is interesting, and sometimes very useful (Including for copywriters and writers!). Here you can read about all the feelings of both aspiring and experienced writers, as well as readers’ appreciation and dissatisfaction, and their criticism.

Medium is complicated! But it teaches us different lessons, learning which we grow not only as writers, but also as marketers.

Nowadays it is very rare for a writer to rise to the top of his career on his talent alone without the help of proper advertising or connections, so most of us should just accept the fact that without good promotion we can hardly achieve a stable and desirable result.

One such element of promotion on Medium is its artificial algorithm, which aims to show stories to readers that are associated with certain triggers, such as reading history .

For example, if I recently read a story about News Break, I’m pretty sure that very soon the algorithm will suggest me to read another story on a similar topic. The same applies to broader topics. The algorithm shows me the articles on writing, making money, and health the most.

Because I am most focused on reading these topics, the algorithm understands this and offers mostly what can interest me. For example, I almost never read stories about movies, and this is why I do not see in my news feed similar proposals.

I recently came across an article by Haris Khan . In it, he talked about how his recent viral article completely lost views after a few days of rising. After that, the rest of his articles got a noticeable drop as well. I can understand how it bothered him! When at first you see the fruits of your hard labor every day, you expect even greater successes ahead, and you get total disappointment in return. He blames the algorithm. In fact, there are two reasons. The first is that his story was not curated, and therefore could not be maintained by the algorithm for a long time. Curated stories can be shown to readers for many months.

Update! While I was finishing this article, I took a moment to read some articles by other authors. Algorithm recommended to me an article written by Tessa Schlesinger.

I recommend that you read it too. Note that this article was written on January 13, which means that almost 2 months have passed since it was published. I asked Tessa if the article had been curated and her answer was no!

So the lack of curation does not mean that the article is guaranteed to lose views. At least that’s what’s happening at the moment. I don’t remember why this article was recommended to me.

Maybe I had read a very similar article a little earlier, maybe I had read another article by Tessa recently, and based on that data, the algorithm decided that I might be interested in this story.

But let’s go back to the algorithm features that I noticed. Probably many of you have noticed it too!

If I have read an author recently, for some time his stories show up in front of my eyes again. And not just once, but for an extended period of time.Moreover, sometimes two of the first ten stories I see in my recommendations are by the same author!

The algorithm shows me stories of the same author for a short period of time (from a few days to a week at most), and if I ignore his new stories, then comes the moment when the algorithm no longer shows me his stories. Alas.

I suppose that clapping and commenting also play a role in this aspect of the algorithm’s preferences, but it’s not yet clear what exactly that role is. It is possible that the stories under which we clap for a longer time appear in our news feed.It is also possible that the duration of reading an article and whether it is read to the end matters too.

But these are all theories so far.What is clear for sure is that if our regular readers miss all of our new stories several times in a row, then at first the algorithm will start to show them less of our articles, and later it will stop doing that altogether.

This new medium model forces us to be both consistent in our writing and at the same time interesting to our readers. If they see 10 stories and don’t go to any of them, it means that they’re no longer interested in us. And the readers don’t really owe us anything, we owe them.

I read some positive examples of success, and I realized that it is not necessary to write every day, but it is necessary to write regularly and in an interesting way, the reader should leave satisfied, as well as the listener after the concert of his favorite artist.

So why did Haris experience a spike in daily views of many articles after one of his stories went viral? As I wrote above, the fact that your story was read by a lot of readers almost guarantees that the algorithm will show them some of your other stories again. At least that’s what will happen for a few days.

Especially if you write in the same niche. That’s why the viral article was followed by an increase in views on other stories. At some point the algorithm decided that the viral article wasn’t interesting anymore and stopped showing it often. As a result, his other stories lost their views.

But why did the algorithm decide that it was no longer necessary to show a viral story in recommendations? Maybe because the number of clicks decreased in relation to the number of impressions (recommendations to read).

In simple words ctr dropped dramatically — Or maybe because the algorithm already recommended this article to everyone who recently read Haris.

Key takeaways

1. To succeed on this platform you need to write regularly

2. If one of your stories goes viral it dramatically increases the likelihood that your other stories will also be recommended to readers of your viral article

3.Choosing one or more related niches increases your chances of success overall. Or the topic should be interesting to everyone.

If I read an article on a health topic, but the author writes the next story about cars (which I’m much less interested in), even if the algorithm shows me his new article based on the fact that I recently read his other story, I probably won’t read it.

4. Our articles should not disappoint our readers so that they want to read us again.

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