Blogging on Medium
Introducing our new blogging platform for Keele University: http://blogs.keele.ac.uk
The current blogging challenge we face at Keele is that there isn’t one uniform way for staff to blog. We have school and departmental blogs on both Blogger and WordPress, with no way of tying these together on one site. This has resulted in low readership numbers, and a varying quality of blog design.
We now recommend that staff who want to blog — either individually or for a school or department — use the blogging platform Medium.
Why Medium?
Medium is a blogging platform that offers more functionality than Blogger and WordPress. Medium allows users to publish blogs in the same way as Blogger and WordPress, but in addition has a community of publishers and readers to instantly connect with — Medium is sometimes described as a cross between a blogging platform and a social network.
In addition, bloggers can log into Medium using their existing Twitter credentials, and by default have their Twitter followers follower their new Medium blog — a ready-made audience!
Medium also has a clean design with little customisation required, fully integrated stats and analytics, and also offers a seamless approach to sharing blogs via Twitter.
How to blog on Medium
Blogging on Medium couldn’t be easier:
- Visit Medium.com
- We recommend that you login using your Twitter account — this will mean that all of your existing Twitter followers who use Medium will automatically follow your new blog
- The only caveat is that your Medium handle will be the same as your Twitter handle, e.g. for @KeeleUniversity, the Medium blog address is medium.com/@keeleuniversity
- Once logged in, you can review your profile settings, follow other Medium users, and write a new blog by clicking on ‘Write a story’
- All stories should include a banner image (2000px X 825px, referenced if necessary), a title and teaser (which appears in people’s feeds) and the blog itself. Images and videos can also be embedded
- The blog will auto-save as you type, and once complete can be published at the top right. When publishing the blog, it can also be shared direct back to your Twitter feed
- If the blog you have written is an expert piece, please then let the Communications team know. The blog may be suitable to be republished on the Keele University publication, or shared even wider to The Conversation UK.
Medium publications
The most useful aspect of Medium though is the ‘publications’ feature. Publications can be curated by pulling together blogs by different authors into one space. This means that bloggers retain their own individual Medium blog accounts, but by pulling them together into one central publication it allows better promotion, sharing and — ultimately — readership of blogs.
Blogs that are added to a publication are still owned by the original author. They will simply now appear in two places — the authors own personal blog, and the shared publication.
http://blogs.keele.ac.uk is Keele University’s Medium publication.
Our publication has four categories:
- Executive Committee Vice-Chancellor blogs, and wider Vice-Chancellor’s Office blogs about Higher Education issues
- Keele Comment Republishes of The Conversation UK articles, and straight-to-Medium articles if The Conversation UK isn’t an option (managed by the Communications Team)
- Keele Student Voice Student blogs, to replace our existing student Tumblr blog
- Keele Expert Voice top-level features written by Keele academics
Is Medium working for Keele?
So far, the signs are good with Medium. We’ve published 35 blogs to date (many from graduation week), and in total they’ve had over 4,000 views, so that’s averaging around 114 views per blog. This will only continue to grow as more content is added, and more stories are shared.
If you wish to discuss setting up a new Medium blog, please contact the Communications team.
