10 reasons why you should publish on LinkedIn instead of Medium

There’s a bit of a misconception among new writers when it comes to the best channel for publishing business or industry content online. They assume LinkedIn offers an audience that’s limited to the people they already know, and channels like Medium offer a broader audience of everyone on that channel.
This couldn’t be more wrong.
To understand my argument, the first thing you need to know is what I call the golden rule of online publishing: Every reader is earned. If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this. On most channels, you’re starting with an audience of none, and you alone are responsible for earning every single reader after that.
On most channels, you’re starting with an audience of none, and you alone are responsible for earning every single reader after that.
On LinkedIn, you’re starting with an audience you’ve already earned. These are people in your network who already know you. They have some understanding of what you have to offer and why they might want to read what you have to say.
Listen, I’ve worked with thousands of bloggers in my career, and I’d say maybe one in one thousand is talented and dedicated enough to build and sustain a dedicated readership. It’s a rare talent. Most people think they can do it, but they can’t. I’m not that one in one thousand, and — hard truth — the odds are you aren’t either.
If this intro alone hasn’t convinced you, read on for my full list of reasons why you should publish on LinkedIn instead of Medium. I’m planning to publish this post on both channels, so we can watch some of these points play out. I’ll update you on the results in the comments.
- You do not have a following on Medium. But you do on LinkedIn. Right off the bat, even if you’ve only spent a little time building your network, you have a larger built-in readership on LinkedIn.
- Your readers on LinkedIn are already targeted. They’re people you’ve worked with or met at conferences or know as colleagues. If you’re writing about business or industry topics, at least some of your LinkedIn network is already interested in the same topics that you are. This is not the case on Medium.
- Most of your readers haven’t heard of Medium. But many have heard of LinkedIn. If you do have good content to share, people are more likely to click a link to a channel they’ve heard of and understand before clicking a link to a channel that’s new to them.
- Sharing is easy on LinkedIn. See that curved arrow button at the bottom of this post on LinkedIn? Do me a favor and click on it. Now click “share in post” and then click the blue post button. See how easy that was? I dare you to try to do share this post on Medium. You’ll hit a few road blocks.
- Commenting and liking on LinkedIn are easy too. On Medium, you can clap for posts you like with one click, and you can comment. If you are signed in. Again, most people are not signed up on Medium, let alone signed in. Almost everyone you know is signed up on LinkedIn.
- Your extended network on LinkedIn is bigger than you think. Even if you only have a few dozen connections on LinkedIn, that can make for a large number of friends of friends. All it takes is a few of them to share your post to expand your readership.
- New readers will not follow you on Medium. Say you send out a tweet to your post and convince a few people you don’t really know to click through and read your post on Medium. Even if they love what you have to say and want to read more, how many of them are going to jump through the hoops it takes to set up a Medium account to follow you? But they’re already on LinkedIn. And following you there is easy.
- The best content on Medium is gated. Yes, there’s a pay wall. And, no you aren’t behind it. But even if your post isn’t gated, the good stuff is. And the good stuff, the stuff everyone is reading, isn’t linking to you if you aren’t part of the paywall.
- Most brands left Medium in 2018. This point is complicated, but it has to do with the paywall. Once Medium decided to focus on its own subscription model in 2018, it left little incentive for brands to continue publishing content there. Brands don’t want readers to have to pay for their content, but Medium’s new subscription model left little incentive for sharing and promoting the ungated content.
- The “more content” on LinkedIn is YOUR content. If you publish more than one article, the suggested content at the bottom of your post on LinkedIn will be your content. On Medium it will likely be other people’s content. You could make an argument for the community aspect of promoting other content on Medium, but we’re talking about building your audience here. That’s more likely to happen if more of your content is promoted.
Before you think I’m only bashing Medium, let me tell you a few things I like about it as a publishing platform. The interface is unmatched for simplicity in design and ease of use. The author home page is more reader friendly than the overpopulated LinkedIn profile page. The functionality for highlighting favorite lines in articles is brilliant, especially for people like me who were born wanting to highlight and scribble notes about their favorite quotes.
But none of that makes up for the pros you have on LinkedIn, especially the network. It’s all about that network. You’ve earned it, so you should use it.
