MEDIUM
Why I Keep Track of My Curations
A Medium strategy that works for me
I’ll never forget my first curation. I had been on Medium for nearly 2 months and was getting very frustrated that I hadn’t been curated yet. I asked around in the Facebook groups for advice. I read curated articles and studied them for structure. Some of the really big writers on Medium took looks at my stories and offered me their advice.
The hard work paid off with a double curation roughly 8 weeks after I joined Medium. To date, (being on Medium a year and 2 months) I have been curated 117 individual times, some of those being doubles or triples. I have never been curated 4 to 5 tags for one article. My curated tags number 31 different topics, with POETRY and WRITING being my most common curation topics.
I started an Excel spreadsheet those first few weeks of Medium for tracking my income, Top Writer status, and whatever I wanted to track. As of today, the tab I made for keeping track of curations is the portion of that Excel sheet that I still use.
I have a place for the link for the article, the publication it was published in, and then columns for each of the topics. When I receive a curation in a new topic I simply add another column. I highlight double curations in green, poetry in pink, and triples in aqua just so I can see at a glance which are my multiples.
There are several reasons why I keep up with my curations — aside from personal bragging rights — I mean we, as writers, get so few opportunities to truly celebrate our work, right?
Here’s why I keep up with my curations
Because I am a bit data-driven
I like numbers. Not adding them or playing mathematical tricks with them (I still count on my fingers — and I have a science degree). I like analyzing the numbers. Perhaps this hearkens back to my time in Statistics class in college, a class I hated but in which I learned so much.
Numbers show growth. They show stagnancy. They show you where you are without sugarcoating it.
To keep track of where I am being most curated
I can check out the numbers if I want with the data there — for example, today I wanted to know how many different pubs I’d been curated in — and how many times. I was able to gather this data:
Given, these data do not show how many times I have published in these pubs, so I do not know my curation ratios per pub, but I can at least get an idea of where I am getting curated the most. For example, Fiddleheads & Floss is my own poetry publication — with 17 curations. To me, this says a lot!
Also, Publishious is a fairly new publication for me — only in the last few months. So for me to have 17 curations there says a lot about the work I am submitting there and my likelihood of curation is looking good there. In PS I Love You, I rarely publish there but am curated nearly every time.
Also notable are the many curations on my wall. These are self-published pieces I had hoped would be scouted by larger publications. Turns out, they were worthy after all, at least by the highly subjective eyes of the curators.
To see what topics curators want from me
Speaking of curators, they are humans. They don’t always get it right but I’ll take the curations that come my way. These articles tend to earn more in the long run and sometimes “take off” months after publishing. Curators have a way of “encouraging” what they want to see with these curations.
They curate the kind of work they want on Medium. These curations are a hint of what curators want to see from me.
To see what topics curators are paying more attention to
Sometimes there are dry spells for certain topics — especially poetry. If I have the Excel sheet open I can look over the past month or so to see where the dry spells are and focus on other topics until it picks up again.
If I suddenly get multiple curations in parenting or self — I write more of those articles. It all changes and moves in waves. These data help me to see the trends with regards to my work.
To make back-linking easier
This one is a biggie.
Let’s say I am writing an article on parenting, for example, I want to add links to the bottom of my article of other similar articles. My Excel sheet of curations provides me with all of the parenting articles that have been curated and I have the links right there on my sheet for quick reference.
Because these curated articles tend to gain traction over time, I find it helpful to use them for my back-linking.
The Takeaway
If you have never been curated, my heart goes out to you. This is super frustrating. But don’t give up on your work. Study curated articles for format and learn from them. Work on your form and your content. Try new topics until you find what works for you.
Best wishes to you on your journey to curation and on your successes here on Medium!
More from this author:
Thank you for reading.
Christina M. Ward is a well-living blogger and poet from North Carolina. Her work has been featured in numerous blogs and poetry journals. You can follow her work here on Medium or on social media. You can join her Author Newsletter or find her recently published poetry collection here: organic.
