5 Types of Content to Avoid Posting on Medium
You destroy your credibility by doing this, yet many people continue to do it.
In the past on social media, people were just creating a bunch of content for the sake of creating content. Nowadays, businesses and brands really should be thinking in terms of campaigns.
Nothing is wrong with that, slip a message to show your purpose but still wrapped in the casual-helping article, and then you make it as daily content. Again, nothing is wrong with that.
Well, you can literally create 70% less content, but with a well-cooked strategy, you can still achieve more significant results than when you were creating tons of content.
Understanding Medium’s in general
With over 100 million active users on Medium, it is at the epicentre of social media for “Intellectual/Reader” or “Raw Materials for content Ideas” for others who like the type of underrated content.
Some of you going to say this is the long form of Twitter, well… It’s not. If you bake problems, beefing, gossip, or any kind of ‘social media street bomb’ the algorithm won’t really favor you.
Understanding how Medium prioritizes what content it is serving your followers and thus adapting your skill and behavior to what Medium is most likely to show in users’ timelines is vital.
So how does the Medium algorithm work?
Based on my research and A/B testing, the following types of posts are more likely to appear in one’s Medium feed. (perks of working with a ton of Reporter, haha)
- Content from friends, family, and groups
- Posts that ignite conversation
- Post with a lot of likes, comments, and shares
- Content that keeps users on Medium
- Native article uploads
Now after I gave you a little bit of enlightenment and bridged your mindset to find the correlation with what Im about to tell you, I want you to understand most of this will damage your readers’ engagement massively (according to your followers).
Why?
- Whether you like it or not people who crave ideas on Medium put their eyes only to your subtitle, bolded words, and quotes.
- And for those who really like to read only read from the writers that they’d enjoyed the most.
Therefore, stay away from these things.
#1 Overly promotional content
Medium is a business through and through.
But if your content is overtly selling, such as creating an organic post that asks users to sign up for a subscription to your service, you are likely to be personalized.
Instead of using this platform to try selling directly, get creative — which is the job of a marketer, not a writer — but ask yourself ‘what would I want to see as a reader of my brand?’ Better yet, if you really want to know what your community wants, simply ask them in the post.
#2 Clickbait or ‘fake news’
It’s horrible that clickbait titles and fake news are so frequently found side by side on the internet, even on national news sites.
People who use this platform will notice right away if you do something like that. Most of us here aren’t brainwashed kids, and we’re all here because we have a serious view of what happened in mainstream social media.
If you don’t trust me, read some pieces on Medium posted by folks who have more than 20,000 followers and pay attention to the subjects they frequently discuss. Don’t mess with those people — they are Medium Targaryen.
#3 Long-form article posts
Not everyone love essay; therefore it’s difficult if you’re reading on a smartphone to follow along. After a while, your eyes wander and you lose interest.
My recommendation is to keep your caption short and limit it to three sentences at the most.
One of my friends who was a pro at writing digital ad copy used to tell me that the key to writing is to treat it with succinctness of ad copy: state to takeaway upfront within the first sentence.
#4 Engagement bait’ posts
Stop using calls to action in your first sentences in the first line of your paragraph immediately and instead aim to make your posts more ‘conversational’ in nature, which will give you a modest engagement boost.
#5 Excessively comment on others
You can’t lie to yourself when you can give 50 comments on 50 different articles in a day, every day. Shut up man.
Don’t comment on an article that you are not fully engaged with, just for the sake of maximizing your reach. There’s a difference between growth hacking and spamming.
All it takes is for one person to click the tree dots to report your post as abuse, and the entire post will be removed or at least ruin your credibility on Medium.
Conclusion
If you want to do well in this one, you’ll have to struggle in the most “elegant” way. You need to do your research or at least give it a fair amount of attention, which takes time.
You are completely wrong if you think this platform is only for submitting articles or recycling, I’m afraid this isn’t the place for you.
On the bright side, I suppose this platform develops your brain more than any other. Reading is the highest level of entertainment and it’s unlikely that you’d pay an extra dollar annually to read bullshit.
Consider it this way: You pay because you get the exclusivity.
That’s all.
May you have the best of luck on this segmented platform where hard work is everything and one-hit wonder does not exist.
