avatarDeon Christie

Summary

Deon Christie shares his experience and insights from writing 90 Medium stories in 90 days, which led to an explosion of ideas and a significant increase in engagement and growth on the platform.

Abstract

Deon Christie embarked on a challenge to write 90 Medium stories in 90 days, leveraging his past experience with content marketing strategies. Despite initial skepticism, the goal led to a proliferation of writing ideas, a surge in responses, and a deeper understanding of content engagement on Medium. Christie emphasizes the importance of consistency, audience engagement, and keyword research for generating fresh content ideas. He also discovered the effectiveness of shorter titles and the use of GIFs in profile images for increased visibility and interaction. The challenge not only exceeded his expectations but also resulted in a personal growth of about 35% beyond his original goal.

Opinions

  • Christie believes that setting ambitious writing goals can lead to significant personal and professional growth.
  • He values the power of consistency in content creation and its role in gaining traction and visibility on Medium.
  • Christie suggests that engaging with the audience and leveraging keyword research are effective methods for generating new writing ideas.
  • He found that shorter titles on Medium can lead to better targeting and engagement, contrary to his initial belief in longer titles.
  • Christie experimented with using GIFs in profile images, which he discovered by chance, and found it to be an innovative way to capture attention on the platform.
  • He is enthusiastic about the continuous learning process and the unexpected knowledge that surfaced during his writing journey.
  • Christie is generous with his insights, offering free gifts to new subscribers, including eBooks and memberships to traffic tools, to foster a community of growth on Medium.

Writing 90 Medium Stories in 90 Days or Not!

Writing on Medium until your own goals blow up!

Medium Non-Members Can Read The Full Story HERE!

The image was designed with Canva and uploaded in PNG file format by Deon Christie. The author assumes responsibility for the provenance and copyright. The author assumes responsibility for the authenticity.

What you will learn from this article

Setting the 90 Medium stories in 90 days goal.

My Medium writing goal blew up in my face.

Some tips for getting Medium story writing ideas.

New things discovered for Medium story writing.

Setting the 90 Medium stories in 90 days goal

I set myself a goal of 90 Medium stories in 90 days. This I did when starting fresh on Medium in October 2022, as my second try with Medium. This time only, not starting from scratch, but from experience. This whole ordeal was my stupidity, I will just have you know, not Medium.

This was necessary to get some proper traction with a new Medium profile. Or any profile for that matter, consistency gets you noticed. You cannot expect to be noticed if you’re hardly ever active, and neither can you expect any growth that way.

Now, I have set up several content marketing strategies. Then nurture and grow that content marketing strategy until it delivers “fruit”. Once it does, you know that the particular content marketing strategy is ready to run on autopilot. But not before.

For instance. A particular content marketing strategy I came up with for Quora. Is currently running on autopilot, averaging around 72K content views per month, without me doing a thing. This is what many don’t understand about making money online.

It takes time and it is not easy. You have to challenge yourself. Set goals and smash those goals. If you normally work until 5, then work until 7. If your competitors post twice, then you post three times. Always do just a little bit more, and in the end, you will become more.

My Medium writing goal blew up in my face

What a wonderful explosion — there I was writing and BOOM! I’m sitting there behind my keyboard in my underwear strap around the waist. Burnt black from the “explosion”. Setting this goal was the best decision I ever made.

The image was designed with Canva and uploaded in GIF file format by Deon Christie. The author assumes responsibility for the provenance and copyright. The author assumes responsibility for the authenticity.

Now I have money for new underwear…lol! Once I started writing, again, ideas just exploded. The voices in my head had arguments, there were staff meetings, and it was chaos to get all the ideas written down somehow. The more I wrote, the more ideas started flowing like an endless river.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. In fact, I didn’t realize I knew about so much s*it! Ideas, methods, and content marketing strategies that were thought forgotten. Suddenly started blossoming and an ocean of knowledge just opened up! Thank you Medium for making this happen!

Author account screenshot. The image screenshot was captured with “Paint 3D” and created in Canva. Shared by Deon Christie for demonstration and illustration purposes. The author assumes responsibility for the provenance and copyright. The author assumes responsibility for the authenticity.

As illustrated above, at the time of writing this Medium story (Number 111) there were 110 Medium stories published. All of them are accepted in Medium publications almost instantly. But more importantly, there are 1512 responses.

That is an average of around 17 responses per post, exactly 87 days from getting started with this challenge! 111 Medium stories to date, and 3 days to spare. Therefore, I decided to aim for 120 posts then and in doing so shattered my own goal by around 35%!

This particular goal I have set really “opened me up” as a writer like nothing else I have seen before, so to speak. You never know how much you know before you fall in love with writing and listening to the voices in your head.

Some tips for getting Medium story writing ideas

But quality and consistency are not always easy, I get that. I am fortunate to have this burst of knowledge just opening up. Well, nearly a decade’s knowledge worth of failure and testing, researching and writing just opened up. I’m excited to see what “comes out next”!

Heck, I’m even going back to some of the strategies and just breathing new life into them. But there are ways to get fresh writing ideas for your Medium Stories, through audience engagement for one. The more you comment and respond to writers, the more you will learn and remember.

You can even leverage your keyword research efforts for ideas. Do searches in search engines and establish the best keywords related to your knowledge, also based on search volume prediction. Then pay attention to the top posts ranking the first position in search engines.

Read these ranking pieces of content or listen to the videos. You will soon open up your own knowledge and remember things you have long forgotten that other people can use. Allowing you to share “fresh new” ideas and strategies to build recognition.

New things discovered for Medium story writing

Shorter titles, believe it or not. There I thought it was a wonderful way to write long titles and get a broader “targeting” opportunity. I couldn’t have been more wrong. How did I learn that? By writing for Medium publications. You learn a lot like that, with advanced writers helping you.

At first, I thought “whatever”, but decided to try it on a few posts. The next day, I changed over 85 Medium stories’ titles to shorter, more direct versions. Because it works! Seeing a remarkable climb and consistency in both views and reads. Along with more comments too.

Adding (profile) images as GIF files instead of JPG or PNG. I believe PNG is preferred with normal images. I didn’t know you could do that, I stumbled across that by pure chance. Which is why I love being a full-blown research junkie.

But your GIF image file cannot exceed the maximum allowed 25 Meg on Medium.

Always looking, always searching, and always testing. I tried all the other usual suspects, Facebook, Twitter, Quora, and LinkedIn for instance. You cannot upload GIF image files to spice up your profile photo or logo.

So yes, I am actually testing this as an attention-grabbing strategy. Just thought I’d share. I did however notice that the GIF image profile photo or logo does take a while to load with the Medium app on mobile devices.

To do this is really easy. Just use an image and video creation and editing tool called Canva. Then create your profile photo or logo and choose a video clip to overlap the image. You might want to set the video clip transparency, so it is not too dominant.

The standard size requirement for Medium profile photos or logos is 1000 x 1000. However, because this is a GIF file, rather use the 500 x 500 “Logo Size” template on Canva. This is to prevent exceeding the maximum allowed file size. Medium accepted my 500 x 500 GIF file.

We’ll teach you how to write and publish your own outrageously profitable eBook in less than a week from right now! Even if you feel like you can’t write a complete sentence or can’t type to save your life! — Source

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE: Some of the links in this post are links to affiliate offers. If you visit them to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is entirely up to you. All offers come with a full money-back guarantee!

Free Stuff For My Medium Subscribers.

All new subscribers on Medium will receive 4 free gifts. 2 of my top traffic eBooks, and 2 free memberships (invitation only) for buyer traffic tools I use. Subscribe to me (Deon Christie) on Medium and your free stuff will be emailed to you asap. Medium has no affiliation, nor do they endorse the free giveaway in any way. It is my personal free giveaway to all new Medium subscribers.

Writing
Medium
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Medium Stories
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