Medium let me know I’m in the top 10% of their user base and I’m disappointed!

Image courtesy of Thomas Leuthard

We all know Medium is the social network for those of us who like to dig a little deeper than 140 characters, but unfortunately for me tonight, I got an email from Medium, letting me know I’m in the top 10% of their user base.

The Medium team crafted a wonderful email, informing me of some of my ‘stats’ from the past year. But instead of me thinking wow, I love Medium, what it did instead is highlight how little engagement is on the platform!

I’ll save you getting the calculator out. That’s 0.36% engagement.

Twitter is famed for it lack of engagement, and it seems it’s younger sibling is no different.

Facebook on the other hand? Well…you don’t need me to finish the rest of this sentence.

So I guess this is a case of, what can Medium do better to create higher levels of engagement in its community?

It would be nice to see some responses that can maybe make their way to the desks/mobile phones of the Medium Staff bigwigs (ahem Ev Williams).

I’ll get the ball rolling.

How about letting us know in the ‘stats’ section how far the average reader views a post before leaving?

That way if a post gets a high volume of ‘views’ but a distinct lack of ‘reads’, then the publisher knows where they are going wrong, and can rectify this for future readers of that post!

Update

For ease of read, I thought it might be best to keep all the suggested updates from the comments section to this post on Medium listed below -

1. Inform writers how far the average reader views a post before leaving.
2. Ensure comments aren’t ‘hidden’ from the post. If they were in plain view it would probably encourage more interaction (from Tad Chef).
3. Enable writers to easily add their posts to publications via mobile.
4. Create publications where writers can only contribute if they are active on the platform. Essentially encouraging more users not to just lurk,but instead, add to the conversation (from Monique Ouellete – this one looks to be happening now via ‘top writers’ https://blog.medium.com/introducing-top-writers-in-tags-80817921fbbb). ✔️
5. More consistent email notifications (from Femme Appeal).
6. Ensure the platform works across multiple languages (from Pedro D’Angelo Ribeiro).