A continuum

While many of the writers loved the act of writing — talking about the experience of flow while writing, or the joy of getting better at something over time, there was still a driving motivation that got them to write on Medium in particular.

A simple way to think about this is they were on the emote to promote continuum.

Note the two on the left. These weren’t actually a focus of the study because we haven’t traditionally catered to them, but they’re worth pointing out.

The poet is someone who writes for themselves, poetry or otherwise: to get out an artistic impulse. The Kentucky poet was an example of this: she wrote on Medium pretty much because it looked nice. She knew people could find it but that wasn’t really the driver.

The diarist is someone who writes about their day-to-day life to a handful of people, maybe their friends or a couple random people that come across their blog online. The audience is limited.

They weren’t actually studied very closely because the request for this research was to focus on existing writers. For the most part, Medium hasn’t focused on writers like these, but perhaps it’s worth calling this out explicitly:

Do we want to draw a line in the sand and say
we’re not building for these personas?

For instance, are we okay with saying Nathan’s friend is just not a writer we want?

Now, let’s get to the personas that are more actively on the platform.

The Sharer

Medium’s job to be done: Get a story out, stat.

The Sharer is a regular person, not a writer, who wants to get something out, whether about an experience or an opinion. They don’t have a regular place for this kind of content, so Medium presents an extremely easy way of doing it: very little set up costs, and beautiful looking by default.

A good example of the Sharer isJeremy.

Jeremy and his wife experienced a miscarriage and Jeremy was frustrated with the lack of writing on the subject from the male perspective. He took to writing on Medium to give a voice to his experience.

This is a persona that can evolve into some of the other personas, but it starts from this impulse to share a specific story. Below you can see more details about the pros and cons of this persona vs. the others.

The Moonlighter

Medium’s job to be done: Write pieces on topics I’m curious or passionate about without the constraints of a traditional publication.

The Moonlighter is someone who loves writing, often doing it professionally, but doing it on Medium for free.

They want to write about the topics that they’re curious or passionate about, whether it’s theWalMart down the street from them that’s going out of business, or focusing on a specific vertical they wish had more good writing about it, like education. They currently write unique content when they want to share quickly, without the delay and changes that come from an editor.

Though not true for all in this category, a good portion of The Moonlighters would consider writing on Medium full-time if it weren’t for the fact they needed to earn a paycheck.

Which brings us to an emerging category within this persona: the paid writer. Those in the Publisher Network program are essentially Moonlighters who are going further into the trajectory of getting paid.

Notably, all still have full-time jobs, but they’re taking Medium a lot more seriously and as a result needing a lot more features for handling the amount of content and user types they’re dealing with (e.g. editors vs. writers.)

For now, you can think of the paid writer as someone far along on the Moonlighter trajectory. Eventually, it will probably make sense to make them their own persona.

The Thought Leader

Medium’s job to be done: Establish my reputation on a specific topic.

The Thought Leader (or more often than not, wannabe thought leader), are folks that want to be well known in a particular space, often professional. Writing helps articulate both to the audience and themselves how they think about that space.

Though Thought Leaders are certainly interested in building their reputation, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an intellectual curiosity about the area they’re writing about and that they’re interested in hearing other’s perspectives.

Julie Zhuo is a good example of The Thought Leader, but there’s plenty of other folks who aspire to be well known in their field and just haven’t gotten to her level of Medium-fame, like Paul who writes about product management regularly.

The Promoter

Medium’s job to be done: Use Medium as a way to promote my [book, app, service]

The Promoter is writing to promote a specific action outside the system, whether it’s an app, a book, a university. Medium is usually just one piece of their promotional effort — they might also be tweeting a lot, going on talk shows, posting in particular paid publications.

A good example of The Promoter who’s pretty popular on Medium isKevin Ashton, who’s promoting his book that just came out. Someone who is a bit less popular is Philip. Both are very interested in how each of their posts converts aka which lead to book purchases, even though the scale of their efforts are quite different.

It’s important to note the Promoter is not necessarily one person. For instance, Ashesi University writes on Medium as a way to promote their university to potential student and donors.