By Shaunta Grimes
Now that you're all set up with ConvertKit and Upscribe, it's time to get your Medium groove on.
Medium is a blogging platform designed by one of the guys who brought us Twitter. It's a social media site that allows you to write long-form posts.
The best part about Medium is how well it's set up for sharing and interaction. As a result, even without a large personal following, it's possible for a good post to get traction and attention.
There are a few differences between Medium and a self-hosted blog.
Medium has a built in audience. If your post gets early views and interaction via clapping by tapping a little hands icon, Medium will show your post to more readers. That’s readership that doesn’t rely on your personal self-promotion (although, you should be doing that) or your SEO skills.
A self-hosted blog, generally, needs to be focused on a niche. For instance, on my blog, What is a Plot, I only blog about writing. But on Medium, I can write about a much wider range of topics. I've written about fat acceptance, entrepreneurship, family, my plan to run an Ironman some day, short stories, and productivity.
Medium allows you to start a publication, that has the look and feel of a website, an also is also home to many publications that are constantly searching for good content to post. If you become a writer on these publications, you'll reach their audience (which is probably much wider than yours.)
There are a few ways to connect with people on Medium. They can follow you. You can add an Upscribe form and add people to your email list of people who want you to let them know when you post. And you can start your own publication, which will allow you to write a letter that will be delivered to your follower's email inboxes.
Here's what you're going to do today.
A) If you don't already have a Medium account, set one up. I highly recommend you bite the bullet and become a paying subscriber. It’s good karma, since writers are paid via paying subscribers interacting with their posts. It’s $5 a month, well spent.
B) Once you have your account set up, make your profile. You can add a picture. Also, write a sentence or two that will be at the top of your posts.
If you have your own website, you can link to that. If not, just link to your Twitter account for now. Later you can set up a landing page on ConvertKit to point people to, for joining your list.
C) Write something to copy and paste to the bottom of each of your posts. This is your prime real estate! If someone has read all the way through to the end of your post, you can tell them a little more about you and invite them to follow you.
D) Spend some time noodling around on Medium. Look at the top stories, research tags that appeal to you. Look for posts that are doing well and pay attention to why. Leave some comments. Follow some writers. And look up some publications that you might like to try to be published in some day. Follow those and look to see what they are publishing. Here's a list of popular Medium publications to get you started.
Tomorrow we'll work on figuring out what you're going to write.
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Here’s my secret weapon for sticking with whatever your thing is.
Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s represented by Elizabeth Bennett at Transatlantic Literary Agency and her most recent book is The Astonishing Maybe. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the original Ninja Writer.