Everyone desires a wider reach for their content. Regardless of your social media follower count or website traffic, sometimes your excellent content doesn’t achieve its full potential.
While it’s crucial to provide valuable content to your dedicated readers, your current audience has its limits.
There’s a vast audience yet to discover you and your exceptional writing.
If your objectives include breathing new life into your content and expanding your audience, Medium is an invaluable tool.
What Exactly is Medium?
Evan Williams and Biz Stone established this immensely popular blogging platform in 2012. It’s promoted as a space where “everyone has a story to share, and the best ones find their way to you.” Think of Medium as Twitter for long-form content, but with an algorithmic timeline curating stories tailored to your interests. I’ve been publishing on Medium for over a year and have uncovered numerous advantages. If you haven’t taken the plunge, here are 10 incredibly compelling reasons to syndicate your content on Medium. Let’s delve into each reason in greater depth… UPDATE: Don’t miss my follow-up post: 7 Medium Optimization Tips to Make Your Posts Go Hot
1. Medium Offers a Fantastic Import Feature
If you have blog content online, Medium can import it. Simply select the “Import a story” option.
After importing, you’re free to edit it. Modify the title, rearrange images, and refine the formatting to your liking before publishing. Medium even appends a line to your imported post indicating its original publication date and source, including a link to the original.
2. Bring Your Audience Along
If you’ve cultivated a substantial social media following, there’s great news: you can effortlessly bring them to Medium.
Link your Medium profile to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and Medium will automatically connect you with users from those platforms who are also on Medium.
3. Genuine Engagement Metrics
Medium provides insights into the number of views and readers who reached the end of your stories. The average reading time is impressive, typically between 7 and 11 minutes.
Engagement on Medium surpasses Twitter. You might garner millions of impressions on Twitter, but only a fraction might translate into clicks. This is because users dedicate mere seconds to a tweet before new ones flood their feed. Post something memorable, inspiring, and engaging, and your content might resonate more powerfully on Medium than its initial platform.
4. Access a New Audience
Medium’s algorithmic timeline exposes your content to a new audience who may have never encountered your work otherwise. It effectively cultivates a new audience for you, regardless of your existing reach. After all, a larger audience is always beneficial. The key is encouraging recommendations. On Medium, it’s all about the hearts.
My analysis of several hundred posts reveals that the more hearts a post receives, the higher its visibility in user timelines, including those unfamiliar with your work. Garner 200 hearts within 24 hours, and your post might become one of the top stories of the day – a Medium phenomenon! These top stories are prominently displayed on the website and app.
Furthermore, Medium’s personalized email digests often feature two or three top stories, further amplifying your content’s reach.
5. Potential for Discovery by Major Publishers
Many prominent publishers have ceased accepting author applications, overwhelmed by subpar pitches. It’s become a waiting game. However, they actively seek out and recruit contributors through Medium. Consistently publishing high-quality, creative content can lead to remarkable opportunities. A Business Insider, Huffington Post, or New York Observer might request to syndicate your post or even offer a regular contributor position.
6. No API
The absence of an API, while significant in some ways, shields Medium from certain pitfalls. A staggering 99.9 percent of spam (such as fake followers and automated content) stems from API exploitation.
Unlike the noise of Twitter, Medium boasts a favorable signal-to-noise ratio, compared to average Twitter “followers.” This lack of clutter contributed to my rise as a top Medium author.
7. Flourishing Industries on Medium
While not universally ideal, Medium caters exceptionally well to specific industries with established audiences. Topics that thrive on Medium include:
- Life learning
- Business
- Entrepreneurship
- Startups
- Culture
- Technology
- Politics Marketing posts do OK, as long as it’s not excessively tactical.
8. Expanding Your Social Media Following
While you initially leverage Facebook and Twitter connections to establish your Medium audience, the platform reciprocates by helping you gain new followers on these platforms. Adding an “About the Author” footer to my articles, including links to my social media profiles – [Twitter](http://twitter.com/, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram – and website, has proven effective. Medium is now the primary driver of traffic to my Facebook page!
9. Launching Your Own Publication
Creating your own Medium publication is another powerful strategy for exposure. Even if individuals don’t follow you directly, subscribing to your publication exposes them to your content. I established Marketing & Entrepreneurship, a publication featuring insights and updates on social media marketing, online advertising, search engine optimization, content marketing, growth hacking, branding, and more. As of now, it boasts over 10,000 followers. Numerous brands have transitioned from traditional blogs to publishing solely on Medium.
10. Minimal Effort, Maximum Impact
The results speak for themselves – all this from simply syndicating my existing work. No need for entirely new content!
Hopefully, this illustrates the remarkable potential of publishing and syndicating content on Medium, particularly for personal branding. Republishing your existing content requires minimal effort and can yield impressive results. In essence: Medium has much to offer. What are you waiting for? P.S. Next week, I’ll share my top tips for optimizing your Medium content. Stay tuned!!