I Was Wrong About Medium

After hearing about Medium, I was very skeptical of yet another publishing platform. What feature could it possibly have that the others didn’t include? It just looked like a place for the tech elite to share their thoughts as everyone waited on the side for their turn. This is until I was finally “chosen” and received an invite.

After joining, I cross-posted my last two blog posts on Medium. Writing on Medium is seamless. However, a better writing experience isn’t enough. It needed something more.

Then, the page views started to roll in. I pushed my first post on June 23rd and within 3 days had over 150 views. Aside from the one outlier of the 35 posts on my Tumblr, I had averaged about 50 views per post, majority of these coming from my family and the 40 friends my mom forwarded my posts to. I have always enjoyed writing and the fact that my mom or one of her friends enjoyed a post of mine urged me to continue. I figured the 150 views were a fluke

After publishing my second post on July 28th and seeing the response, I realized the potential of Medium. Over 200 people read it the first day and over 700 within two days. Medium has changed the way in which writers can be discovered. Having a following on your tumblr or Wordpress blog is not a requirement to be noticed. People that have a lot of knowledge to share but have not had the chance to acquire followers over a long period of time now have the opportunity to interact with others reading their content.

People criticize Medium questioning why to move their blog to Medium if they already have a profile and following? Medium does not need to be your profile. It gives the opportunity for established writers to acquire more views and can be a great supplement to your blog. You can share different thoughts on a variety of topics that you normally would not post on your blog because you can now get discovered in different categories. My favorite example of this is how Semil Shah has posted several more personal posts on Medium he might have never posted on his regular blog.

I’ve also seen several tweets questioning why they should read these posts written by “nobodies.” People underestimate those that might not have been able to become a successful blogger. However, being able to share high quality content and gain a following are two very separate skills. Medium has created a platform in which it focuses on the quality of the content and helps those that have had trouble with their distribution.

I think people have and will continue to see the immense value of Medium and it will become a major publishing platform in the future. We will find many people that have great ideas we can all learn from but have never had the public platform available to them.