Still, Medium offers great opportunities for writers. There are features built into the platform that can help you spread the word. In addition to those, you can take your own steps on Medium as well to ensure you build a loyal audience. Don’t necessarily expect overnight, viral success — just a slow and steady improvement.
1. Tag Your Posts
Tags are relatively new to Medium, but they’ll help out significantly with increasing your potential audience. They’re basically categories that people can either search for or manually click on Medium to see new and popular posts within them. When you add specific tags to your blog posts, you are essentially categorizing it so that it shows up to readers with similar interests. First, type out your entire blog post on Medium. Do this by logging into your account and clicking Write a story at the top of the page. Make sure it has a central theme, which in itself is great for obtaining an audience as opposed to typing out sporadic thoughts. When you’re ready to publish, click Publish and note that the pop-up has an area to type in tags. You can add up to three tags per post. If you start typing, Medium will provide a list of suggested tags as well as how many posts have that tag already. Try to pick tags that aren’t too unpopular, but also aren’t too popular. If a tag is rare, people probably aren’t looking for it, yet if a tag has thousands of posts yours might get lost in the crowd. Tip: If you have published posts already that you want to tag, you can view the story and click Edit at the top at any time. Then click Publish and add your tags the way you normally would, to update it.
2. Submit to Publications
Publications are collections of stories that anyone can create or follow. Previously, anyone could also submit a story to one but Medium took that feature away. If you want to submit your story to a large publication, you’ll have to request from one of the editors to become a contributor. View publications on Medium by clicking your avatar at the top of the page and choosing Publications. You’ll see any publications you’re a member of and which ones you’re following. You can also search for publications at any time at the top. For the purposes of building an audience relatively quickly, creating your own publication is not recommended. When you find one you want to join, your best bet is to click the About link at the top of the page while viewing that publication. Here is where you’ll see the editors and likely a brief description about the publication. If you’re lucky, this will include instructions on how to submit to that publication, which are completely up to the editors. Otherwise, check out the editors list and click one of their profiles to see if they’ve listed any social media or contact information where you could submit a personal request. Tip: Not all editors are open to accepting new contributors. If you find this is the case for a publication you’re after, try finding a different one.
3. Interact with Other Medium Writers
The last way to build your audience on Medium (and expand your network overall) is by interacting with Medium writers. This can be done in three ways: following, commenting and recommending. Read other posts that are relevant to the content you write and be sure to follow the authors. Click author names at the top and then click Follow on their profiles. Then, on the posts themselves, be sure to leave comments or annotations that are pertinent and insightful, potentially referring back to something you may have written as well. Click the Recommend button at the end of their posts as well to show some love for the quality content. This increases the likeliness that the author may check out your content, follow you back and recommend your posts. These tips on Medium are ultimately good for your content and even better for your own personal brand, so keep at them until you see results. Good luck. The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
