The No-Excuses Guide to Medium
How to get your friends (or parents) to sign up, follow, recommend and write for your publication on Medium
I know my friends want to support me. They make kind comments on Facebook about my essays and tell me they liked such-and-such a piece when I see them in real life.
But this often doesn’t translate into recommends or follows. Perhaps Medium’s content management system, elegant as it is, is a little confusing for beginners. Or maybe it’s just baby boomers. My audience.
So here goes. A guide for people who want to help you boost your readership on Medium but were afraid to ask. If your friends don’t need it, give it to your parents.
- First, point them to the Sign in/Sign up button, top right.
2. Next they’ll see this screen. If they don’t have Twitter or Facebook, I guess it’s game over. But even my dad has Facebook, and he’s 85.
3. Now that they’re signed in, they can recommend your stories. It’s at the bottom left of each story.
4. Next, they can share your story on Facebook, Twitter or email with the button on the bottom right.
5. Now, if you have a publication, tell them to go up to the top of the story and click on the name of the publication. It will be there right under the words PUBLISHED IN and it’s clickable.
6. They’ll now see your beautiful front page, all your other wonderful stories, and be able to follow your magazine — getting notifications whenever you publish something new.
7. They can also follow you as an author — either by clicking on your name in green or on your round icon.
8. That will take them to your author profile page, which will look like this, with a simple-to-find follow button. Hi Blake!
9. Now maybe they want to write their own story! They can always navigate back to the front page by clicking on the M or word Medium (top left).
10. And when they get back to the front page, if they’re logged in, they will find a “Write a story” prompt top right.
11. Writing a story is pretty simple, type next to the + button to add text. You can copy and past from Word too.
12. Or click on the + button for more advanced options, like adding photos, videos and tweets. Each button explains what to do.
13. Highlight some text to format your type with bold, italics, or various headline options.
14. Now if your friends want to write for your collection, they’ll have to tell you first so you can add them as a writer. Once you’ve added someone as a new writer, they will see an “Add to publication” drop-down menu (top left) and be able to submit a post to your publication.
15. One last tool: the magnifying glass, in case your friends get tired of reading you and want to start exploring Medium on their own.
That’s about it. Now there’s no excuse for your friends and family not to help you out because they don’t understand Medium.
And if you’re a friend of mine, a baby boomer, or just want your fill of generational warfare, be sure to follow my collection, Midcentury/Modern.
