courtesy of mattew ditto http://cargocollective.com/matthewdivito

If you push me, I ain’t gonna push that

I recommend that you do not recommend me to recommend

Typical structure of a Medium article:

1. The title
2. The article
3. The “pls recommend” part
4. The recommend button I won’t press for the above-mentioned part

Here’s how a typical “pls recommend” part looks like:

If you found value in this article it would mean a lot if you hit the“recommend” button below! This helps my content reach others. :)

(the random source, paradoxically enough, is an otherwise good article on how to keep emails short and avoid the TL;DR problem)

I hate that. It’s like a tedious pop-up on a web page. Like these ones.
You know, I, like 99.9% of Medium users, know what that recommend button is for. If I find your article useful and interesting, I will press it. You don’t need to push me.

I know, you’ve read a bunch of other great articles on social media marketing telling you that the best way to get people to like/RT/pin/dig/+plus your stuff is to explicitly ask for it.

Well, maybe that doesn’t work on Medium. I’m one of those who read your stuff and that didn’t work on me. Get over it.

Plus, from a UX point of view, that paragraph actually increases the distance between the real content of your article and the recommend button below.

I was on the dangerous verge of doing it myself with one of my articles, but my pal @marianoviola promptly prevented me. I realized he’s totally right.

If you found value in this article and you agree on this, it would mean a lot if you go eat an ice-cream, take a walk, have a shower, or even subscribe to Mapnaut. Up to you.

:P