How to Win on Medium (or Anywhere)
A little over a year ago, I started sharing my writing here on Medium. I heeded the advice given to me by my buddy, brilliant marketer, Gary Vee.
I’m glad I did.
Let’s hit rewind though, I started writing — stories, prose, anything that came to mind as a high schooler. I started my first blog about six years ago, and like anyone “starting out”, I struggled getting readers to care about what I had to say. For the first six months, I’d post a couple times a week, and in that first year or two, I’d consider my efforts successful if I landed a dozen or so unique visitors a day. Half of those were my siblings, parents, and friends - the other half most likely stumbled upon my WordPress blog inadvertently, with no intention of actually consuming my content. It was lonely out there, but I committed to it, and spent a few hours every day at Starbucks, where I’d see the same faces come and go, many of which were regulars, just like me, bringing their art to life.
Between then and now, a few things have changed, but the biggest difference is that I don’t post on my website anymore, at least not with the goal of getting any traction. Instead, I post almost entirely on Medium, aside for some paid gigs that have opened up since I’ve built a following over this last year.
A lot of my friends ask me about writing and blogging, seeking advice, and I’m always quick to evangelize my relationship with Medium, however it didn’t start that way. When I first joined the site, I didn’t have the several thousand followers that I have now. I didn’t have the credibility that I have now, and while I did have a decent social media presence, it certainly didn’t seem to help much in those early days. My articles would garner twelve, twenty-six, or thirty-seven views like I had grown accustomed to during my WordPress days.
Things changed.
I wrote an article that accidentally went viral, receiving 100k views a day in it’s prime. It leapt to number one on the site, was there for three days, and still receives anywhere from 500 to 5,000 views a day, depending on who shares it, and what day of the week it is. But, when I first wrote it, those first couple of weeks, it got the numbers that I’d grown accustomed to - maybe 100 in that first week. I knew it was good, and knew it could get big, but at the same time, I thought that exact same about my other writings.
So what was the difference?
You could argue that there were certain fundamental characteristics about that article that made it more “shareable”, but that’s never been my intent. My intent was, and has always been to write meaningful pieces of which people can connect with on a very basic, human level.
Since, I’ve written a couple more articles that have jumped to number one on Medium, and I definitely get more traction per story now, than I did before, which makes sense - I started building an audience of people who cared about what I had to say. It didn’t happen over night, and my writing has never been about the potential commercial success of it, even though that part, in the right context can be and has been very meaningful. It’s been about having a voice, something we all have, and choosing to use it. You can sit back like most and choose to sit it out, and I’m not faulting anyone for doing that, but to me it’s clear, the success I’ve see on Medium is in direct correlation to my commitment to sharing my voice - mine. Though I DO want it to heard by more than just my close family and friends, that’s never been the driving force. That’s just how I operate - it’s how I make menus as a chef, it’s how I make videos for YouTube, and it’s how I seek to treat the relationships in my life - with an authenticity and realism that people appreciate, knowing there is no indiscreet agenda. I choose to try things that might not work, and yes quite naturally, some of them don’t, but, then again, some of them do, and this is the place where the magic happens, when we step out of what we know as being comfortable.
So, whether you write on Medium, are a visual artist, want to create films, or would just like to be heard around the water cooler at the office, my advice would be this: create and share, not for the sake of getting anything in return, but do so because you are choosing to be generous — because you have something to say, a point of view and a perspective that the world and the people around you might appreciate. Do it because you care, not just to build a following. The attention will come, so will the following and the paid gigs, if that’s what you desire. I assure you, it will also become less frustrating. Just know that the game is long, and if you play for the right reasons, for the simple fact that you can and you owe it to the world, you’ll at least have that to be proud of in the mean time. Your time will come, and I hope that between now and then, you will always, as Neil Gaiman says,
‘MAKE GOOD ART.’
-CH
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-Chris Hill
