Your Stories Can Get Boosted by Medium Within These Upcoming Weeks

What you need to know about Medium’s new article Boost launch.

Today, Tony Stubblebine, the CEO of Medium, announced exciting news about how stories can get boosted even further besides “recommendation algorithm, tags, newsletters, and publications.”

This will be the “highest-level boost”, with the goal of curating more stories of a wider variety, regardless of the topic and who writes them.

Our goal is to find the best individual stories, regardless of who wrote them, and give those stories a wider audience.

What is a boost on Medium?

A “boost” is a process on Medium that helps give individual stories a wider audience by matching high-quality story suggestions with the readers most likely to be interested in each story.

What is the point of this Boost?

According to Tony, the point of this Boost is to “find and promote more stories that outperform the algorithm”.

Medium acknowledges that the people that are closest to the stories are the best curators. And “in this era of information overload, it’s time for the creator economy to be paired with a curator economy”, meaning that Medium will work with publications to find and promote high-quality individual stories on Medium, regardless of who wrote them, and give those stories a wider audience.

In short, “distributed is nearly automatic, and boost is a bonus on top of that”.

How would I know if my article got boosted?

Writers will get a notification in their inboxes letting them know that their stories have been boosted. On the story stats page, a mark labeled “boosted” will appear on their stats graphs.

What are the factors that determine whether a story will get boosted?

According to Tony, there are three such factors:

1. We are relying on publication editors to send in suggestions. They are our community curators.

2. Humans at Medium, aka our internal curation team, confirm these suggestions according to our distribution standards.

3. Our algorithms match these high-quality story suggestions with the readers most likely to be interested in each story, and weight those stories for extra distribution across Medium.

What types of stories will get boosted?

Following the question a writer asked, Buster Benson answers:

We’re excited to be able to boost stories of all types, which is a big part of why we are inviting the community of publication editors into this program.

Will this Boost work for older stories?

Following a question posed by Alexander Semenyuk. Tony replies:

It can, but in practice this is focused on newer stories. We have an announcement tomorrow about an upgrade to the Lists feature which is in the direction of boosting older stories.

Does a story have to be in a publication to be Boosted?

No, a story does not have to be in a publication to be Boosted, but it helps “a little”. Since Medium is working with publication editors to find more stories that deserve a boost, submitting your stories to their publications will increase the likelihood that your stories will be seen and boosted.

Who qualifies for the new Boost?

Everyone.

How is Medium working with publication curators in the boosting process?

Currently, according to Tony, Medium is working with 15 publication editors to find stories worth boosting; it also plans to work with all publications that want to participate, but at this time, Medium needs more editors to join the curation team. (Fill out this form if you are interested).

The so-called community curators will send stories that they think should be boosted to Medium’s curation team and get paid for their work based on how many stories they “successfully nominate for Boost”.

Tony expects this change to benefit niche and specialty publications, saying:

What we’re looking for from curators, for lack of a better word, is taste. The definition of taste varies by topic. For some, taste may lie almost entirely in the personal preferences of each reader. But on many topics, taste comes down to having the experience to know what is true, what matters, and where there is debate.

Can I know the publication curators that participate in the Boost so that I can submit my stories to them?

Medium is working with 15 publication curators, but no, you can’t for two reasons explained by Tony:

The first is that it’s the job of these curators to find you. The second is that listing them now has a tendency to stick when we expect it to shortly be many or most publications.

How will the articles distributed by the algorithm (non-boosted) be affected?

Articles distributed by the recommendation algorithm on Medium will continue to be distributed as usual, with some exceptions based on the newly updated distribution standards.

For stories that “outperform” the algorithm, human curation will be involved in the curation process and potentially further boost those stories.

How big is the boost?

This “Boost launch” will last for a few weeks with the purpose to test the algorithmic change. Medium will boost between 500 views and 100,000 views with the goal of giving every boosted story “at least 500 extra views”

What are the new Medium’s quality standards?

As part of this change, Medium has reorganized the standards by which it will review stories for distribution. However, “the gist remains the same”:

Our goal is to work in partnership with community curators to maintain a high standard for stories that get this Boost: stories that are constructive, original, written from relevant experience, well-crafted, and memorable.

View the updated Medium’s Quality Standards here.

Is this how publication editors will get paid in the future?

On December 5, 2022, Tony posted an article titled “Boosting the boost” where he discussed Medium’s upcoming plans for boosting “quality writing” on Medium.

The reason for this Boost is:

We want to elevate publications, and not just the big ones, as important curators. The editors of the publications here know so much better than us what is an important read and why.

With that being said, Tony announced that publication editors would get paid, and it seems we all have the answer to how they will get paid, at least for now:

Curators will be paid for their work based on the number of stories that they successfully nominate for Boost.

My thoughts

Apparently, this is such a great opportunity for a wider range of stories to get boosted (besides through algorithmic recommendations and the Medium curation team).

I love this refreshed idea of boosting stories so that they will have a higher chance of being seen by more readers, regardless of the author’s audience or mailing list size. With the Boost available for all, more stories will be reached and suggested to be curated.

Good job, Medium! This is such a huge incentive for Medium writers to write more.

Reference

Stubblebine, Tony. “A new Boost for top stories.” 3 Min Read, February 22, 2023. Available at: