How to Write, Publish, and Promote on Medium

How to write, publish and promote on Medium is a social media platform that allows anyone to publish stories and ideas. Popular topics include mental health, social media, world affairs, trending news, productivity hacks, and global affairs.

Evan Williams, Medium founder, and Blogger creator/Twitter cofounder wrote the following when he launched Medium in 2012.

“Medium does not revolve around who you are or what you know. It is about what you have.”

Medium’s overall design is minimalistic to emphasize the importance and simplicity of what you are saying.

How to Write, Publish and Promote on Medium

Writing for Medium

Anybody can create Medium content if they have a Medium account. Sign up for a Medium account for free (or upgrade to the $5/month full membership for unlimited access), and you can start writing. But your post must adhere to Medium’s content guidelines.

Medium will not allow you to promote extreme or controversial content.

You cannot facilitate selling or buying with social media interactions, even if they are off-platform. You can’t post anything that is considered affiliate marketing content.

Medium offers a platform for marketers to reach new audiences with their content. It is designed to share more extended, more thought-out content. (But, of course, it is open to all content types.)

Usually, an article will be between 600 – 1300 words to capture the interest of readers and be informative. You want to learn the art of writing to create content that will bring readers back again and again.

Get Started with Medium

1. Register for an Account.

Although anyone can view Medium content, regardless of whether they have a Medium account or not, you must indeed have an account to post and interact with others on the platform.

Click the “Sign up / Sign in” link at the top of the page. There are three options for signing up: Google, Facebook, and email.

Signing up via Facebook will ensure that all your Facebook connections on Medium will be following your account after it is created.

You can also update your username/profile URL via the Settings menu. If you sign up with Twitter, your profile page URL, by default, will be medium.com/@YourTwitterHandle. You can change this URL at any time.

You can also manage which Medium email notifications you get from the platform by going to the Settings menu.

When setting up your profile, here are some other essential points to remember. Add a profile picture and write a 160-character maximum bio for your Medium profile page. Note: Your Twitter profile photo will automatically be synced to Medium if you sign up with Twitter.

2. Follow People, Publications, and Tags

A Medium feed shows you the content you want to see. It comes from accounts you follow as well as publications and tags. Publications, tags, and people can also search for Medium content.

Medium publications are collections that collect stories around a common theme. They are easy to create, and anyone can do it.

You are the publisher’s creator, so you are an editor by default. This means that you can:

• Add writers to the publication.
• Edit and publish stories submitted by your writer.
• Review metrics for all stories in your publication. You can also appoint editors to your publication as the creator.

Let’s move on to tags

The Medium hashtags are a bit like category tags. You have the option to add up to three tags to your Medium story when you publish it. You can click a tag to go to a page that shows you more stories using the same tag as you and offers suggestions for tags you might like.

Following tags can personalize your Medium experience. This is the main benefit. You can use Medium tags to show content that is relevant to your interests. Medium uses tags instead of only surfacing content based on your social graph (i.e. the people/publications you like).

If you are interested in baseball, you might follow the tag “baseball.”

3. Share, Recommend and Bookmark Content

There are two places you can recommend Medium stories:

• Responding to Medium posts or clapping
• You can click on the nav bar at the left side of the screen as you scroll through a story

To recommend a story, click on the clapping icon. The outline of the hands will turn to solid green once you click on it.

The writer will be notified by email when you recommend a story by default. You can change this setting in Settings. The more recommended stories, the more likely they will be shared on the Medium network.

Medium’s “Top Stories” page features stories that have received the most recommendations within a specific time frame.

You can also recommend stories to these two places by clicking on one of the social icons. Or, bookmark the story and save it for later viewing by clicking the bookmark icon.

When you bookmark a story, it will appear on your “Lists” page. You can access this page from Medium’s homepage by clicking the bookmark icon.

You can find Medium posts that you have bookmarked on the Lists page.

4. Use Specific Words to Highlight

You can also recommend, share, and bookmark Medium stories. The second level of interaction is possible by clicking on a specific section of text using your cursor. A pop-up menu appears after you have highlighted the text. It offers you four options.

Highlight: You can highlight the selected text by clicking the highlighter icon (pencil sign). This will be visible to Medium followers. The story’s writer will be notified by default when a section is highlighted.

Response: click the speech bubble icon to respond to the story. Your response will include the highlighted text at the top.

Text Shot: Clicking on the Twitter icon will produce a “Text shot,” which automatically pulls in any text you’ve highlighted.

Private Note: You can send a private message to the story’s author by clicking the lock icon. (Note: You can turn this functionality on or off in your account settings.

5. Send Your Responses

Medium comments are treated like individual stories, unlike traditional blog comments. Medium responses are displayed at the bottom of stories you reply to and appear on your profile page. Your responses can take off and be highly circulated, just like traditional stories.

6. Format the Text of Your Posts

You can access the Medium editor from the homepage by clicking on the profile icon at the top-right of the Medium page and selecting “Write a story”:

Medium allows you to write a story. Its editor is intuitive, and it’s almost impossible to make a mistake in writing.

Highlighting text can reveal basic formatting options such as bold, italics, and hyperlinks. Text can be designated as an H1 (or H2) by using the big T or small t.

8. Post Drafts and Share them

Once you are satisfied with the story, go up to top navigation, and you will find two links: “Share” and “Publish.”

Clicking “Share” will give you a link to your draft, which can be shared with anyone even if they don’t have a Medium account. You can also leave notes to the people who shared the draft.

Clicking on the “Publish” button will open a menu that allows you to select up to three tags for your story.

The Medium App

The Medium app is an excellent option for those who prefer to consume and interact with content on the go. The app offers the same stories and content as on desktop with a mobile-first interface.

You can search for content that interests you on the app. These curated lists are based on tags, publications, and authors that you follow. To find exciting and new content, you can also use the Explore feature of the app.

Similar to the desktop version, the app can interact with Medium readers and join conversations as they happen.

This is an excellent place to create conversations and promote a following.

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Wishing you great success.

Warm Regards,

Lily Munday