Tips and Tricks to get started on Medium

A beginner’s guide to starting blogging

Published in

Data Science in your pocket

7 min readAug 14, 2023

To go a bit non-technical this time, in my 125th post, I will be going through a cheat sheet to get started on Medium, collating my 4 years of experience with the platform. This is a must-read if you’re planning/already started blogging.

Note: The cover photo is not for bragging but to add credibility to this post if you’re a 1st time reader

But before that, why should you use choose Medium for blogging?

I started off with LinkedIn blogs and switched to Medium after writing a couple of posts as LinkedIn SEO wasn’t up to mark. Since then, it has been some ride penning down about intermediate and advanced AI.

Being one of the best platforms for blogging, the SEO is great and if you’re writing quality stuff, you might land up on the 1st page of search results for that topic on any search engine, be it Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, etc. The outreach is great and your content can reach thousands of folks.

Now that we have a good enough reason to get started, let’s start off with the most important questions to answer

Your goal

Why do you want to start blogging? Usually, your motive may fall into the below categories

To earn money
For popularity
You have writing as a hobby and nothing else

If you want to earn, then you need to take a Medium Premium membership that costs $5 per month. Also, you need to put your blogs behind a paywall hence your reach may become 1/5th of what it can be originally as only premium members have access to paid content.
So, you take a hit on your reach + a recurring expense until you’re getting enough views to make this profitable !!
For the 2nd & 3rd points (which is in fact my goal also), Medium Premium isn’t required and you have a wider audience to reach. But no money !!

Note: Medium doesn’t pay writers from many countries including India for now.

Basic structure

How you structure the topic you wish to write on is important. It becomes more important when you are writing technical stuff as the dropout rates are very high for the audience if things get too complicated. A baseline structure I try to follow in most of my technical blogs

Why should you know the topic I am explaining? and hence the use-cases & applications of the topic that the audience can connect with as my mathematics teacher from school used to say a very important thing

The 1st thing you should know before reading anything is why should I read/know this topic

Brief explanation around Pre-requisites or Jargons that I might use while explaianing in a brief. Hyperlinks should also work
A theoretical explanation of the algorithm I am going to explain with mathematical equation and all technical stuff.
Either codes to perform the algorithm over some dummy dataset or manually explain some dummy use-case by following the algorithm output at every step.
Results if possible. This actually adds autheticity to the post that you haven’t just copy-pasted stuff from here & there but actually implemented it as well.
Some gifs at points when things are very complicated for an ice-breaker. All technicalities in one go might become very difficult for folks to understand
Diagrams wherever possible.
The tone should be friendly and informal and it should appear you're having a conversation rather than a teacher teaching

The whole idea of starting with blogging some years back was because of the unavailability of examples or codes for highly complicated algorithms that make it hard to understand.

Picking up a niche

A common mistake many folks do, not just on Medium but on any content platform is to dive into multiple domains

Try avoiding that

I have been writing about AI & Data Science throughout these years with here-&-there non-technical posts like these (not very frequent). Why?

Relevance: Niche content connects deeply with a specific audience’s interests, boosting engagement.
Expertise: Specializing builds credibility, establishing you as an authority in that field.
SEO Advantage: Niche content can rank higher due to targeted keywords and less competition.
Community: Niche content fosters engaged communities around shared passions.
Monetization: A defined niche attracts partnerships and monetization opportunities.

Publish for a Publication

You might not know, there is a concept of publication in Medium which has a great advantage that can help your blog post reach a wider audience quickly as compared to independent articles (published without a publication). Especially for new bloggers who need an audience initially.

So what does a publication do?

Publications on Medium are like mini-magazines or blogs centered around specific themes, topics, or interests. They can be created by individual writers, groups of writers, or organizations.
Writers can contribute to Medium publications by submitting their articles to the publication’s editors or administrators. For this, the publication needs to first add your account
Once approved, the articles become part of that publication and are visible to its subscribers and readers. Hence, a very wide audience to reach.

Some popular medium publications are

OneZero: Focuses on technology and its impact on society, ethics, and culture.
Better Humans: Offers self-improvement, productivity, and personal development advice.
The Startup: Provides insights, advice, and stories about startups, entrepreneurship, and business.
Mind Café: Explores psychology, mental health, and personal stories.
The Writing Cooperative: Offers tips, advice, and resources for writers and aspiring authors.
Elemental: Focuses on health, wellness, and science-related topics.

Note: I myself running a pub (Data Science In Your Pocket), you can shoot me a mail if you wish to submit a draft on Data Science or AI😁

SEO optimization

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of optimizing a website or online content to improve its visibility and ranking in search engine results pages. A few things you can do to improve your article’s ranking on Medium

Choose a heading that people might type in while searching about the topic.
Use a sub-heading as well.
Try using some major keywords from your blog post in the 1st paragraph
Use a cover photo. Do use a license-free image else you might get a copyright strike.
Use the SEO Optimization option present for each article. But don’t just do keyword-stuffing else your blog may get banned on search engines.

Nearly 1/3rd of my blog posts are in the top 3–4 search results on Google so these techniques do work

Share with your network

Even when Medium is pretty good with ranking articles, you should share your blogs with your professional network as well over LinkedIn or Twitter. Even Reddit & Facebook can be a good place to share blogs. This helps you build multiple communities on different platforms. I have been sharing my post on LinkedIn very frequently.

Write interconnected blogs

This is something that goes a long way. Like for example, I have been writing multiple blogs continuously on the same domain calling it a ‘Blog-Series’. This helps people to

Get complete information about a topic and not just 1 algorithm
Helps keeping your past blogs ‘alive’ i.e. folks are searching for the previous/next parts as well.

So, for example, if I am writing on Reinforcement Learning, I make sure I add hyperlinks to all articles on Reinforcement Learning in the post.

Formatting options

Medium provides a few, but efficient formatting options ranging from Bold, Italic, Header, Sub-Header & Quotes. Also, you can integrate Images, Video, sub-sections (. . .), codes, youtube, gifs, web apps, streamlit apps, and whatnot. Use these features to make your blog post more attractive and readable.

Miscellaneous

Check out what is the best time to post your blog on the internet for a wider reach. For: Technical blogs published on Sundays don’t get as much traction as those done on working days.
Pin your best posts on your Medium profile (similar to Instagram)
I have observed very detailed posts get a lot of audience. So don’t skip small things when covering any topic.
Use apt hashtags while submitting posts for publishing. You can add at max 5 hashtags so try choosing the ones with a higher following and are related to your content.