Why I Try to Respond to Every Comment on Medium

The positive aspects of engaging with your readers

There have been a number of posts from top writers reaffirming their belief that they should not be bullied or pressured into responding to every comment. This is a completely reasonable stance.

However, from the perspective of someone who has been involved with writing and digital content creation for over 10 years, I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t point out some of the obvious and some of the more subtle benefits to engaging with your readers. Some of these benefits require the examination of the intent behind Medium’s design, consideration of search engine optimization (SEO), the gratitude you cultivate as a content creator, and the unexpected advice/tips you may receive from readers.

Intent Behind Medium

As Ev Williams pointed out in a past response of his own, Medium responses are intended to be unique from the standard comment section on most websites:

“Responses are posts. They are the same object in the system. They live at their own URL and can have responses and all the other features of posts on their own. This means, when someone replies they are on an equal playing field, which we’ve seen encourage substantive discourse.”

Medium has undergone a number of pivots, and it is tough to say what the final form of the platform will look like, but features such as Medium’s responses seem to suggest it will be some sort of social network hybrid.

By providing access to a growing social network oriented towards meaningful engagement, it is counterproductive to not respond to comments.

SEO

One of the consistent reactions I see when people first view a Medium article, or sign up to become a member, is that they are shocked there are (relatively) so few comments. Generally, this is true, when comparing Medium to a popular niche blog, newspaper, or Reddit where comments often times the best indicator of an article’s reach.

Medium’s high Domain Authority can give you an advantage over publishing on your own domain, which means you can target slightly higher volume and higher competition keywords.

Your comment responses are treated as unique pieces of content (unlike many traditional comments) and are also featured on your main Medium page. This allows you to continue a conversation long after the day you publish a comment. The more you use responses as an opportunity to engage further conversations, the more places your comment, as well as your profile and link, will appear across the site. This can be an effective way to create backlinks directing traffic to your site.

It’s also worth noting that because you can tag your responses to comments on your article, you have the opportunity to rank higher in Medium’s internal search algorithm.

Gratitude as an Author

Maybe I will reconsider my stance on responding to Medium comments when I receive huge amounts of them. However, I’ve had stories do well in terms of claps and views, and I am still rarely inundated by comments. And after examining some of the most popular stories on Medium, there are rarely so many comments that you cannot take the time to issue a simple response.

Ultimately, Medium allows authors something that creative content creators on few platforms get to experience — built in monetization for your work and an opportunity to experiment, for free, on someone else’s sleek tech infrastructure.

Do most authors get paid enough on Medium? No. But for those that truly want to have their ideas shared and spend less time focusing on platform software and user interface design, and focus on optimizing creative output, there should be a sense of gratitude on some level.

While you may not have to show your gratitude to readers by responding to every comment, it is certainly one way to convey this sentiment.

Unexpected Tips or Advice

One of the things that has surprised me the most about Medium’s comments section is the amount of valuable information and feedback I have received. When I write about success as an author on Medium, there is almost always one or two comments, suggesting new tools, benefiting both me and my readers.

Another surprising result of Mediums unique comment structure is that I often am able to formulate outlines for future articles, based on the questions and conversations that are elicited in the responses.

So while I don’t feel like writers should feel forced to respond to every comment, I generally think that the advantages clearly outweigh the time it takes to respond and aligns closer with Medium’s intent of overlaying social networking on its publishing platform.

— Casey Botticello

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Casey Botticello is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Blogging Guide, an online community of writers with an award-winning newsletter. He is also the creator of the popular Medium Writing Course and the Substack Newsletter Course.

Casey previously worked at several tech startups, a lobbying & strategic communications firm, and has created several businesses of his own. He is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in Urban Studies.

You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, follow his Medium publications, Digital Marketing Lab and Medium Blogging Guide, or reach out to him directly on his personal website.