The uncluttered, ad-free environment is the first thing you will notice about Medium, but the professional content and big name contributors quickly make you realise that this is the future of content distribution.
Deepend’s Engagement Coordinator, Jonathan Butler, spoke to Gabe ‘The Wolf’ Kleinman, Special Projects and Partnerships Manager at Medium, to get the inside scoop on the must-visit platform.
JB: Tell us about what’s happening at Medium — what is your focus right now?
TW: We’re excited and optimistic about everything that’s happening. We’re in the process of trying to update the Medium business in terms of measurement, as well as publishing. We’re listening to the people and trying to make sure that feedback is reflected in updates to the product.
We’re also continuing development in our ‘Pop-Up Publications’ sector. If you visit www.Medium.com/gone you can see what the Marriott portfolio of brands is currently doing in the travel communication space as an example. We’re working on the launch of an Education sector project funded by a major foundation too.
JB: Is there a focus on reaching people outside of Twitter and Medium?
TW: We’re definitely looking broader than those platforms, which is why we developed the native login.
JB: But you don’t have to be registered just to read the article, so is it more of a focus on actually getting the people signed up, interacting with the content?
TW: Yes, we definitely want people interacting with the content; we’re trying to design features on platforms that they currently interact with, and that’s where you get the end line comment and the response feature.
JB: Does Medium create content in-house or do you purely manage the platform?
TW: Yes we publish our own content. We have a few different publications including Matter, That Channel, and Q Point. The grand strategy is to create a better publishing system for everyone that is driven to scale through network functionality. We seed the professional grade content on to the platform so that we continue to encourage high-end writers and organisations to jump on board.
JB: Medium boasts a few celebrity’s accounts — including Barack Obama. Is a focus of the organisation to get some big names publishing their own content on Medium? TW: Yes, we actually have a group that we are dedicated to growing at the moment which we call our VIP group.
JB: There are a few consumer brands on Medium, despite it being an advert-free environment. Do you really think brands, publishers and individuals can play in the same space?
TW: People choose to consume what they want to. If an individual doesn’t want to interact with a brand then it’s pretty easy not to. I’d also say that the bar is set much higher for brands, because they have to compete with professional and quality user generated content. There are some brands that are using it masterfully; for example, Dropbox and their publication Dropbox Makers. Dropbox is not producing content for the sake of it, they are using the platform with a definitive purpose to recruit people and showcase existing employee profiles.
JB: Has there been an instance where someone has used the Medium platform in a way that has surprised you?
TW: Yes, absolutely. You see a number of college Professors use it almost as a learning management system, which I think is really interesting. David Carr (who recently passed away) was a New York Times columnist and also taught journalism at Boston University, and he used it as a place to lay out his course outline and all of his journalism students published their work for the class on Medium. Medium became a place to host the actual syllabus and also a place for people to share their work.
JB: Within the ‘Stats’ section of Medium, content creators can learn quite a lot about how their content is performing; from clicks (views) to who read the article (read ratio), where they came from (referrers), who ‘liked’ the content (recommend) and the number of people who read the content (reads). How is the ‘read’ statistic measured?
TW: With your statistics you have views and reads. The views are the number of the people that have clicked, and the reads are the people who have scrolled to the bottom. Users that quickly scroll to the bottom are not included; you actually have to spend time on the post.
Interestingly, our own key metric is Total Time Reading (TTR). We have not made that available to all users yet, however we will
JB: What do you think is the next big thing for digital content?
TW: I think an interesting dynamic that you’re going to see on over the next few years has to do with creation versus aggregation. There are some people who are ‘creators’ and they are wonderful at making content. They may also distribute it. There are other players who are exceptional at aggregating or curating content, but don’t make any of their own. This is a classic ‘who creates’ and ‘who distributes’ scenario that we’re going to see continuing to unfold and evolve over time. For example, there are so many content creators on Facebook, yet Facebook itself is essentially the distribution vehicle.
JB: What are your top three tips for getting read on Medium?
TW: The basic rules of the Internet apply here:
1. Write a great title.
2. Get a solid image that will show up well on screen.
3. Promote your work through both Medium and other channels.
Jonathan Butler is the Engagement Coordinator at Deepend and self-professed research nerd. I’m not crash hot at Twitter either, but you can find me on LinkedIn.
Design by Deepend’s Digital Designer Elliot Midson. Hit him up on Dribbble or his website for more of his stuff.
