The 3 Medium Updates Are Likely Not Going to Impact Most Writers (A Reason Behind Each of Them)
If you joined Medium in recent months, this is for you
Medium is the best place for new writers and accounts to try out their latest ideas, art, or thoughts that they have, if they can relate them back to life and are backed by personal experience.
If you go onto your feed, you wish one of those trending or viral articles were yours. Me, too.
We all know that articles can reach very far and board on Medium, but why are your articles just not doing that?
I wish I knew the answer, so I don’t have to spend time writing this.
It says that there are 3 things you can do to improve that, maybe by just a little bit. But it’s some real tips and reasons behind it.
Reason #1 — You didn’t get enough external traffic.
You have no friends on other social platforms. Or you only use them to repost your Medium articles. In a way that is not going to work out.
When I first started on Medium, I would repost every article that I published on X/Twitter. Oh boy, it was a classic mistake.
What most writers don’t know is that users will rarely leave a platform to read someone else’s stuff unless they already know them.
I’ve seen Medium writer repost their Medium articles’ link on LinkedIn and hope that someone is bored or kind enough to go check it out.
The success rate will be pretty dang low if you really think about it.
Even on the same platform, when you drop a link to your article or do a backlink to one of your other articles, the chance of getting a read is still very low.
I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but if you are talking about each platform seriously and not just using it because it has a larger pool of users, then you should rethink what you should share under your name on each platform.
You might be surprised if you just post part of your content there instead of asking them to look at you on Medium. (They were never going to anyway, but they might give you 20 seconds on that same platform to decide if they like your work or not)
Reason #2 — You can’t get any people from a search engine to look at you.
You do not have a digital presence on the internet. Don’t worry, me, too.
SEO is like magic to me.
When I first started writing online, I started with 0 followers as well. If you are more well-known else, you might get a head start, yet on Medium, I found even the larger creators have a hard time getting consistent traffic and engagement.
The best example is the man who inspired me to write online, Dan Koe.
Well-known for writing and his growth on other social platforms, he does well from YouTube to X/Twitter, LinkedIn and into Substack.
Yet, the only platform that he and his team weren’t able to master is Medium. This tells a lot about how hard it is to stay consistent on Medium.
While Medium is encouraging writers to attract external traffic from other social platforms and search engines.
It does feel like bringing your own food to a BBQ party. Not sure how that gonna work out.
Which leads to the next reason for coming home and looking at your wife or spouse who has been caring about you all alone.
Yes, I’m talking about the existing supporters of yours, Medium just realised that, too, how nice.
Reason #3 — You forgot to check that email notification box.
Sometimes I just want to sit and write down some clear thoughts before I forget them.
But I never forgot to check that “Notify 2.1K subscribers” box.
If that is you, then you need to read this part carefully.
There was one time, I purposely didn’t check the box and hit publish.
The article did alright to so-so, not because of not sending email notification to subscribers, but more like it wasn’t a well-optimised article in terms of topics, headlines, and formatting of the article.
Many have noticed that either those emails are under some promotion tab or were never sent to the subscribers.
This is likely true because how can a group of people who just subscribed not even come to take a look after I published a new article?
Not even a few new faces after all that many new people subscribing to our accounts.
This only proves that the system is not helping the writer or that the subscriber is not real. I don’t think someone with an awareness of subscribing to you and not even bothering to look or skim through your work when you publish something new.
It really has only been a few days, or in some cases, a couple of hours.
Bonuses
You are now only able to publish 2 paywalled stories within 24 hours.
These 3 are exactly the latest Medium updates from October, November and December. They are more for an earnings reward for the traffic, yet the distribution is also at stake.
Keep showing up, and the algorithm will notice you, maybe.
Thanks for Reading
This story was originally published on [Medium] and is cross-posted here for a wider audience.
Agree with each nd every point you mentioned here. I started with medium as well but i never promote my work and didn't know that something like SEO something exist, i just share what i know and what i wanted to share.