New Bloggers Stop Reading the Wrong Help Blogs
For instance, SEO won’t help you a jot here
Surely all help is good, no?
No. To be blunt it’s not. Let’s say you’ve just read an excellent article about how to disassemble a gearbox. Your plan for the day however, was to find out how to cook the perfect Thai green curry.
All help has its place, it’s just that taken out of context it can be misleading and confusing.
Unfortunately, there are so many ‘helpful guides’ and ‘how to’s’ for new bloggers on Medium that just don’t apply here. It’s so easy to start reading away, with good intentions too, but before you know it, you’ve just learnt how to take the gearbox apart and you’ve got people arriving in an hour, looking forward to a Thai green curry.
Okay, so what do I read and what do I swerve?
This is about as complicated as it gets and it’s one question: are you here on Medium exclusively or do you have other blogs?
The advice I’m giving you on this blog post is related 100% to user’s of Medium only.
For those of you with other blogs, by all means get out there and read every last word on the subject of Blogs and Blogging and how to get the best results, please be mindful though that Medium is its own separate entity and a lot of what you read just doesn’t apply here.
So here it is, the heart of the matter
Blogging itself, is one of the most blogged about topics out there. There’s how to’s, success stories, progress updates, listicles of all types, plus lots more.
Once you’ve digested a few of these (and you will, we all need help some time) you’re going to notice some reoccurring themes. Three of the main ones being SEO or Search engine optimisation, promoting your blog on social media and Google analytics.
Medium-only users, don’t waste your time, they don’t apply to us, and here’s why:
We get paid when other Medium members and friends of Medium, read our work. Why spend time trying to get your titles to the top of search rankings?
Are we going to hope that out of the eight billion people on the planet, some of the people who find your blog through Google search, just happen to be one of the (at last count) 760,000 paid up Medium members?
Let me know how you get on with that one and you can pick my lottery numbers this week, because that’s the size odds we’re talking here.
The other two repeated themes that are totally useless to Medium-only bloggers are:
Social media and Google analytics
The same reasons that make SEO useless to us, apply to promoting your posts on your ‘socials’
We’re just going to hope that of the three clicks Instagram provided, at least one of them also happens to be a paid up Medium member. Seriously, 760,000 into 8 billion, we’re talking lotto odds… for maybe a few pence. Take that time to brainstorm ideas and work on your writing instead. You’ll be glad you did.
Regarding analytics, Medium provides us with our own in house stats from each individual story on a daily basis, updated hourly, all the way to weekly and monthly analytics, including views, reads and earnings.
Again, spend the time you would have used on this, honing your craft and networking on Medium. Reading some excellent blogs and making new contacts and friends even.
With that being said, happy writing.
