Medium is a network of ideas — a place to engage in conversation and discussion — and we’re so excited you’ve decided to check it out. It’s the perfect place to interact with an influential, engaged audience and advance your ideas.

We are creating a system for the exchange of ideas and stories, through better publishing tools and mechanisms for responding, reacting, and building on one another’s ideas. It’s an ambitious task, but we have some of the best engineers and designers in the world making it happen. Before Medium, our founder, Ev Williams, created Blogger and Twitter. He lays out his vision for Medium here:

What does this look like? A place where President Obama published his State of the Union address in advance so viewers could follow along at home; where New York Times’s Adam Nagourney responded to Steven Johnson’s post about the California drought; where newswoman Vivian Schiller, Twitter’s Karen Wickre, Craigslist’s Craig Newmark, former White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer, and Jonathan Alter debated the merits of political journalism; where Google Ventures’s Chris Dixon, Greylock’s John Lilly, Betaworks’s John Borthwick, and Ev engaged in a four-way conversation about open vs. closed systems —

Medium has increasingly become a platform for notable and influential people to publish, converse, engage, remind, and remember.

We think you have something to say as well.

This exclusive guide is full of tips and tricks to help you make the most of your Medium experience and make your stories look and perform their very best.

The Basics

I. Sign Up

Visit Medium.com and sign up using your Twitter or Facebook profile log-in information.

Medium mines your social graph, so whomever is following you on Twitter (for example) that already has a Medium account will automatically be following you on Medium as well. The same goes for Facebook (note: Medium can only be linked to personal Facebook profiles, not Pages). After that first step, you can link both channels to your account, optimizing your follower list. It’s a built-in audience right off the bat.

Be sure to set up your profile page (click your avatar at the top right, and then “Your profile”) with these two tips in mind:

1. Use your real name as the “display name” on your profile. It will help readers more effectively search for your stories. Your Medium user name will automatically be the same as your Twitter handle if you sign up using Twitter.
2. Write a descriptive biography. Beneath your name on your Medium profile is space for a short biography; again, if you sign up using Twitter, our system will pull your Twitter bio to fill this space. Edit your bio to describe yourself and the kinds of things you like to publish, as all of that information is integrated into the search index. This helps Medium users find you when they’re looking for something to read.

II. Create

Click the “Write a story” button at the top right of the homepage to open a blank draft. Or, click “Write here…” at the top center of the homepage to begin.

Compose directly on the site (just start typing!), paste in text you’ve already written, or import a piece from elsewhere on the web by clicking your avatar at the top right, and then “Import story.”

Want to get feedback on your story from trusted friends or colleagues? Click “Share” in the top right corner and copy and paste the link that’s generated to send in an email.

III. Format

The stories that do best on Medium tend to be not only well written but also make full use of our tools. Adding arresting and high-resolution images, switching up the text formatting, and utilizing links and embeds are simple steps that go a long way. This step-by-step formatting guide will help get you started.

Medium is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) platform, so make sure the post is laid out to your specifications; that’s exactly how it will appear to Medium users once you hit “Publish.”

Pro tip: Publishing from your personal account means that your name and avatar will appear in the bottom left corner of your Medium post. Clicking there takes readers to your profile page. There is no need to write a byline on your post. 

Secret Tricks

Use these tricks to take your post to the next level

• Call-to-action buttons. If you’d like to direct your readers elsewhere for a specific purpose, like to DONATE NOW, a great way to do that is to create a button. First, create an icon (as a .jpeg or .png) in Photoshop or wherever you usually create visual assets. Then, link the icon to the URL of your donation (or further reading, or volunteering, etc.) web page. To create a linked image, select the image (click on it once, to outline it in green), and click Command + K. Paste the URL into the box that appears, and then click Enter. The link will go live as soon as the post is published. Here’s some examples:

• Image grids. When inserting an image, select more than one from your files at the same time. Medium will automatically align the images into a grid. They look like this:

• Preview display image. On your Medium profile page and the homepage and in links to your story on Twitter or Facebook, a small image tile will accompany the title. Medium automatically pulls the first image in your story for this preview display, but switching it to a different image from your post is easy. Click the image you’d like to use for display (so that it outlines in green) and Command + Option + 8. The outline will turn purple. Save your changes, and you’re all set.
• Custom line breaks. Visually separating sections on Medium is easy using line breaks (just click [+] and then [ — ] to add one), but to take your story up a notch, use a custom design. After creating one in Photoshop or wherever you usually create visual assets, and insert it like you would any image. Here are some examples:

• Single spacing. Have lyrics, a poem, or something you’d like to set apart from the rest of your story by using single spacing? It’s easy. Just click Shift + Enter at the end of a line
  and your spacing
  will adjust
  accordingly.
• Symbol shortcuts. Medium’s editor offers a number of glyphs you may want to use. Pressing Option + 2, for example, inserts ™, the trademark symbol. For other symbol shortcuts, check out this post.

Pro Tip: Retina screens today are sharper and require image assets to be 2x larger in image resolution. To prevent your images from displaying at native size, use the suffix, @2x at the end of the file name. It will shrink your image to the intended size. 
For example: divider-2@x.png

…and You’re Live!

IV. Publish

When you’re ready, hit the “Publish” button at the top right corner. Don’t worry, your story won’t go live yet! At the top right, if you click the “…” button, a few options will appear in a drop-down menu. If you click “Change title/subtitle” and then “Custom,” you can edit the title and subtitle that will be displayed within Medium and when you share your piece — but the text in the draft won’t change. If you love the title you used within the post, you should click “Automatic” to keep it; if you want something catchier for social media, this is where you’d switch it in.

You have the option to publish privately by clicking the drop-down arrow that says “Publish” and changing visibility from “Public” to “Unlisted.” This will make your post live on Medium but only visible and searchable to those with whom you’ve shared the URL. Your followers will not be notified that you published.

At the bottom of your post, you can assign tags to your story. Tags are the keywords or topics that you think best describe your post; using them not only makes your story searchable by subject matter, but also organizes it with other stories on the same theme. We recommend that you use one broad tag (like “tech”), one more specific tag (like “internet security”), and then one additional tag of your choosing to make your post as searchable and discoverable as possible. Read more about tags here.

Then, click “Publish story.” If you choose the public option, your post will populate the homepages and newsletters of your followers. For the widest possible readership, avoid publishing on the weekend (most people aren’t sitting in front of their computers then).

Pro Tip: If you are publishing a lot of content around a similar topic, or want to publish together with other writers in a cohesive way, consider starting a publication on Medium. A publication is a branded, curated space within Medium; only writers who are invited to publish into one may do so. As an editor of a publication, you have control over what gets published there and when. You also have access to the publication’s stats. Read more about publications here.

For companies and brands in particular, we recommend that individuals publish in a company or brand publication, rather than the company or brand doing so on their behalf. Stories published by individuals generally perform better, as it’s a more authentic form of engagement.

V. Promote

One of the reasons Medium is such a great place to publish is that it combines the ease of self-publishing with the network effects of a social platform. Medium amplifies promotion, meaning posts are seen more, and for a longer period of time, than if they were published elsewhere. Part of this is built right into the platform, which makes it easy. But part of it is also in your hands.

The same way you would with anything you wrote on the web, make sure to use your other social channels to get the word out about your story. Tweet it! Share it on Facebook! Instagram a picture of yourself pointing to the post on your iPad! Do whatever you would normally do to let your network know you published something great.

Pro tip: Medium offers a great and easy way to tweet your favorite (or the most important) part of your story, even if it’s longer than 140 characters. It’s called a textshot, and tweeting one results in 2 to 5 times the engagement of a normal tweet. Check out the details here.

Don’t forget to check your stats page to track how your post performs. Click your avatar at the top right corner, and then Stats, to view your numbers.