3 reasons to write for a Data Medium Publication
So you’ve written an article on medium and published it on your profile? Cool! But have you considered writing for a Medium Publication? Just like this post is written on DataSeries, a Medium publication, you could submit your medium story to a publication too! But what is a Medium Publication?
Medium Publications are essentially a community of readers, writers and editors who come together to learn and share about a topic of interest. You can read more about them here.
But why write for a Medium Publication? Read on to find out…
#1 Value Addition
Knowledge is like money:
to be of value it must circulate,
and in circulating it can increase
in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
- Louis L’Amour
As the quote above suggests, there is immense value adding in sharing your insight or experience from your story. Think about it: your experience or insight could actually help bounce off ideas for someone across the globe. How cool is that?
But wait, you could also do that by just publishing on your own blog right? Yes, but there’s much more value to the same story if it reaches more people.
A tried and tested way of reaching a wider audience is to publish through a medium platform, which already has a support base of active readers. While this is especially true for new writers, it applies to experienced and well-known authors as well because it helps spread their ideas to people who may not have known about them.
#2 Recognition
While not many of us write in order to gain recognition, it is a byproduct of hard work and quality writing, which certainly matters in your journey as a writer.
Since you’re reaching a wider audience, it is plausible that you will have more recognition. But to what extent and why? Let me give an anecdotal example:
I started writing on Medium in mid-2017, but never really continued (sigh). Finally, I resumed last month as one of my university courses required me to do so. Excited, I made an announcement on my Medium blog about this, which hardly gained attention (although all classmates regularly read each others’ blogs).
Fast-forward to a month, I published a story on TowardsDataScience, a popular publication on medium. While I published my story on February on 23, it was later added to TDS on February 25 as my story got accepted.
The response to my story before and after TDS published varied greatly:
As the above data visualisation from Medium shows, the reach of my article was significantly more after it being published on TDS. Furthermore, there was a greater proportion of readers from Medium (the avid readers who are active on Medium) than from external sources (such as Slack or DataCamp, where I shared my articles). This clearly supports the idea of growth in the audience through a Medium publication.
This story easily outperformed my other story from August 2017 and crossed my expectations (as I had initially written it for my own blog):
The recent story about value-adding in Data Science had more than 4 times the views my 1.5 year old story had in about 3 days. Numbers speak for themselves.
#3 Networking with like-minded individuals
A Medium publication is not just a platform to share and learn, but is a community in itself. It is a cluster of like-minded individuals, who maybe editors, writers or readers, with a common goal of learning together. You connect with them by engaging with their stories or writing stories for them, but the community-bonding always occurs. What does it hold for? A world of possibilities.
From collaborating on pieces and projects together to co-founding startups, everything becomes an enriching experience when shared with others also working towards a common goal. Furthermore, different people bring in different skills and expertise, which fosters peer-to-peer learning and greater value add (#1) and recognition (#2) as people from across the globe connect with each other.
So how do you start? Where can you publish? While this answer depends on what story you are planning to publish, there are a couple of publications I’d recommend. If your story is more generic, try The Startup or The Mission. For stories about data science, try DataSeries or TDS Team. If it is about tech, try out Hackernoon!
I’ll also be covering the steps to writing for a Medium publication in my next story. However, if you write for a publication in the meantime, do let me know by commenting below! Have fun writing!
