Advice: Creating a more effective and engaging blog post
Tips on creating effective Medium posts
Writing an engaging Medium post for your Digital Society coursework isn’t just about how you write critically for an online audience, it’s also about how you engage the reader through your writing and embedded media.
The following tips will help you to create a more engaging online post.
Using Medium to create an engaging post.
If you select a word in your Medium post you will get a few options such as linking your text to a website, adding bullet points or creating headers, subheaders etc., but there is a lot more you can do with your text and images to create an engaging online post.
Try out some of the examples below, and try to use formatting effectively in your assessed coursework.
When you are editing a page you can also display the keyboard shortcuts in the Medium page by using Ctrl/⌘+?
A few examples
You can use bold (Ctrl/⌘+b) to emphasise certain words or passages of text. We suggest using it sparingly, otherwise you may lose the effect. Avoid using bold text for headings — headings have their own style, which you should use where appropriate as it is better for assistive software and search engines.
You can use italics (Ctrl/⌘+i) for emphasis too, although it is best to use it very sparingly as it can create issues with screen readers and make your blog post less accessible.
You can insert a web link (Ctrl/⌘+k) to any selected text. You should do this rather than adding links within the text (https://www… is not nice to read), and rather than adding a reference list at the end of your post.
You can and should use headings (Ctrl/⌘+Alt+1) to structure your post into sections. For subheadings within a section you can use the subheading style (Ctrl/⌘+Alt+2).
You can style quotes (Ctrl/⌘+5) to make them stand out. You should attribute all quotes appropriately.
You can type an asterisk (*) then a space to start a bullet point list. You can type 1 then a space to start a numbered list.
You can mention Medium users in your post using @username.
You can add a section separator using Ctrl+Enter (just like the below).
You can set a featured image for your post (Ctrl+Alt+8), and set a focus point for your image (Alt+click). See the video below for a tutorial.
You can embed audio, video and other media in your post by pasting a link on a new line, then pressing Enter. For common sites such as Twitter, YouTube and SoundCloud, Medium will embed the content like the below.
You can even insert GIFs in your post — make sure you have permission to use the GIF first, then paste a link on a new line (or use a GIPHY link).
Have a play with the shortcuts and get creative with your post and make sure that the images, videos and audio that you use are free to use.
Further support
Please email digisoc@manchester.ac.uk with any questions or problems.
