MEDIUM PARTNER PROGRAM
Why Writing Great Stories is Not What Will Make You Successful on Medium
It’s way deeper than that
Has this ever happened to you?
You get hit with a great idea for a story, so you make an outline or maybe map it out in your head. You come up with the perfect title and subtitle, and you find the most interesting story image that fits well with your topic.
Then, you begin writing the story and it unfolds in detail as you write, so you’re really happy about that. You spend a good deal of time doing research and citing parts of the story that’s not common knowledge and need to be referenced. And you take time and care to proofread everything carefully. In all, you’ve put in at least 2 or 3 hours finishing the story and polishing it so that it’s just right.
You’re feeling really good about the story because it is a great story. It is the best that you’ve written so far and you can’t wait to share it, so you post it. Then you notice someone reads the story and claps for it almost immediately. But you don’t see much activity on the story for the rest of the day, a few reads, but that’s it.
The next day, it’s the same thing, and the next and the next. A week goes by and still not much activity on the story, then two weeks and your story hardly has any views or reads — EVEN THOUGH IT REALLY IS A GREAT STORY.
Sound familiar? If so, don’t worry too much. It’s happened to the best of us — still does, but...
It doesn’t matter if your story is great…
…if it doesn’t draw much or any engagement.
Having a great story that nobody sees is like that proverbial tree falling in the woods making a sound that nobody hears, so it doesn’t really matter if it’s loud. A great story with little to no readers is no better than a story that’s no good with little to no readers.
I know — it sucks.
The point is that you can have all the stories you want that you feel are great stories, and they may be, but the bigger issue is getting people reading your stories and engaging with your audience.
Things that factor into writing success on Medium
As a new writer on Medium, I came to the platform eager to learn how to be successful writing here. And I too thought that writing to the best of my ability and contributing great, or at least good, stories would be all that I needed to do for success.
So, I spent a lot of quality time on my stories and I wrote them with the reader in mind, as much as I knew how anyway. What I soon found out was that it was going to take way more than just putting out my best writing.
Tips to be a successful writer on Medium:
- The first thing is to realize that you are a success on the platform when you finish and post your very first story. No, really. This is true. You are a writer and that’s validated by you posting your stories anywhere, but for today’s purposes, we will refer to writing on Medium. Understanding that you are a success is a must if you want to reach higher levels on the platform because confidence is needed to keep you going at times of discouragement.
- Pay attention and study what other writers have done to achieve their levels of success. You can do this by doing a Google search for “new writers on Medium.com” and search on Medium for “new writers”, and you’ll find a whole lot of useful and helpful information to help you be successful.
- Read, read, read on the platform, follow other writers, and bookmark useful stories for future reference. And don’t just read when you read but engage with stories that you find interesting, helpful, entertaining, etc. by highlighting, clapping, and commenting. Ask questions of other writers. Most people who write here are friendly in the comments when somebody wants to know something. Engage with people who engage with your own stories, and reply to comments. Socialize.
- Learn how to write titles and subtitles that spark interest. This takes some practice and study. I like to use an online headline analyzer to help me come up with the best titles, like CoSchedule, ShareThrough, or AMI. These help out a lot. Or try tips from this story.
- Add relevant tags to your story by clicking on the 3 dots (top right of your draft), clicking on “change tags”, and adding 5 tags. The right tags will put your story in front of readers looking in a particular topic.
- Choose eye-catching, engaging images for your story, but be careful of copyright violations so that you don’t get banned from Medium. Medium doesn’t play around with this. They will close your account down. Avoid this by using free images and videos for your stories.
- Proofread before you post and be sure that you make reference to content that came from another source besides yourself. To do this, add a hyperlink to the source, by highlighting the relevant text and adding the link to the paperclip icon.
- Don’t write book reports. Not too many people will want to read something that is a wall of boring text. Add some personality and conversation to your writing and focus on evoking some type of emotion in your readers, whether that be happiness, sadness, anger, fear, empathy, sympathy, humor, etc. You get the gist. Make people feel something or give them something that they can take away.
- Apply to write for publications. Contributing stories to publications is an excellent way to get more eyes on your work. And it’s a great way to get acquainted with other writers on the platform. Publications give you more reach. But sometimes it may not be easy to get into some of them, but keep trying. I recommend the ILLUMINATION publications, as they are lenient to accept new writers, including ILLUMINATION Curated, ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR, SYNERGY, Technology Hits, and other Illumination pubs.
- Write stories and publish often, preferably every day but it’s good to be posting at least 3–5 times per week. It is important that you build an adequate story bank. This will get you more exposure so that people can read more of your work, follow you and engage with your stories. It also alerts the algorithm to your stories and profile with the activity that you’ll be putting into the platform.
It’s been my experience that these tips help tremendously and are the reasons why just writing great stories alone just won’t cut it, if you plan on being successful on Medium. You’ve got to put in the work.
