Making the Most of Medium
Opportunities are waiting!
Welcome to the 22 new writers who joined our BYW family this month so far!
Remember to say hi!
I was asked this week by three BYW writers for any tips on how to “use Medium properly” and make the most of it.
Recently, my essay, published on Medium, was featured in Memoirland by Sari Botton. She shares handpicked essays from around the web on her Substack.
I’m lazy about finding good essays to read, so I love her for that (as well as for featuring my second essay of course!)
This is one of many publishing opportunities I’ve had because of Medium.
So here we go…Making the Most of Medium
Why Medium?
People often think of Medium as a place to write for fun, or to make money. But there are other reasons to write there:
building a library of stories to use as proof of your writing chops when you pitch other non-Medium publications.
growing a fan base to sell your future book.
setting yourself up as a topic expert. You might end up with speaking requests or other opportunities.
being seen by others in your industry (and editors!)
You can’t just throw anything up and expect it to be seen, though. There are little rules to follow…
Boosting and Nommers
Without a boost, you won't earn much at all (if that's your goal).
Boosting is the new curation or distribution. It’s done by actual humans, and is more than a quality check. They see it as making cover stories.
Medium has allocated nominating power to a bunch of writers and publication editors.
Nominators (Nommers) read and select stories they think are great and send them to a team of Medium staff curators. If the curators agree, they boost the story and send it out to a lot more readers.
If your story is boosted, it means it was one of the best for that month in your niche area—memoir, parenting, politics...
As I learned in print publishing years ago, not every story is a cover story. I used to excitedly wait to see if my story was on the front page, and then feel deflated when it was hidden in the back, just before the final advertising.
It’s okay to feel disappointed for a day. But then you’ve just gotta get back down to the business of improving and keep writing!
It’s all about Publications
Medium is pushing publications again. So if you want a piece to be seen, get into Medium publications where you can get boosted.
There are some nominators floating around independently, but most of them are attached to publications.
There are certainly a lot of memoir/personal essay based publications with nomination powers: including The Narrative Arc, An Injustice, Ellemeno.
Here's the full list of publications taking submissions. Ones with boost powers have a little red balloon emoji next to them.
Titles are EVERYTHING
You need a clickable title but NOT a clickbait title.
Clear as day, right?!
Think: descriptive but intriguing.
Medium is trying to push people towards shorter titles, but so far I don't see that working. The popular stories always seem to have longer titles.
Experiment. See what works for you.
Don’t skip the small stuff
To get a boost, you also want to make sure:
your paragraphs are decent--not too many single line paragraphs. Aim for 4-7 sentences per paragraph and vary it.
images are credited properly.
you’ve linked to sources you’ve used. (No plagiarism)
you have a subtitle under your title and both are formatted correctly (highlight the sentence and use the big T to make titles and the small t to make a subtitle).
you have proofread and it’s error free.
If you’d like me to take a look at your Medium profile or ask questions, pop your profile link or question in the comments or hit reply.
Happy writing!
Kelly xx
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A comprehensive and insightful post for anyone looking to maximize their presence on Medium. Thanks for the tips!