THE FRESHIE WRITER BASICS (SERIES)

The Freshie Writer Basics: Simple Ways to Not Look Like You Are Just Starting on Medium, Even if You Are

Your writing home on Medium: “setting” up for your first impressions and impressions thereafter are important

Life not abrupt (L.n.a.)

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New Writers Welcome

5 min readSep 30, 2022

Hi freshie writer,

Even though our usual days may be a home looking very much lived in when you invite someone over to your home, do you leave your place in this unkept state or take the time to tidy it up before your guests arrive?

I assume you take the necessary time to get things back in order; do the dishes, put your kid’s toys in their play area, reset the furniture in the living room, etc.

Why do we do this? It is simply that we want to present our best. We value how people see us.

So, like your physical home, you want your digital home to be inviting for your virtual guests.

Since we are going to be judged anyway, let us make sure it is a positive judgment and not a negative judgment.

Before getting into the tips there is one more analogy I want you to think about.

We can control who we invite into our real home, but in contrast, our digital home on Medium is public. There is no option to make our profile private.

Do not let this scare you.

Although your Medium profile is public from the moment you create it, being new is to your advantage because it is very unlikely that you will have visitors immediately.

I say this not to discourage you but to encourage you that this is honestly perfect because it gives you the chance to make Medium your own before people discover your writings.

Like any new home when you move in it is empty at the start, but with some interior design, your home became yours, full of the things personal to you. As so with your writing home on Medium, it will transform into your personality.

Here we go! The simple ways to not look like you just started on Medium even though you have. It is all about a polished interior.

The interior is to be designed for your Medium home by you.

Before Writing Your First Story Explore Settings

Profile name: Decide whether you want to use your real name, a pen name, or a brand name.
Profile image: Pick what you will use for your profile picture, for example, a picture of yourself, your logo, or a picture of something else.
Profile short bio: Choose what you want to type in your tagline. Be concise as it is limited to 160 characters maximum, so make sure every character counts, lol.
About page: If you find yourself restricted by the short bio character limit, and wish there was a way to add additional details. Well, there is! You can share more about yourself and what you write about on your about page, and can even include pictures and other links you want your future readers to explore.
Design: The color scheme is the visual appearance of your homepage and story page. To personalize it, you can pick background colors, font colors and styles, and a header. Medium’s default for your homepage and story page is a white background with black lettering. Need inspiration? Browse other writers’ Medium pages for ideas.
Medium domain/subdomain: The default for your homepage URL is domain medium.com/@username, but you have the option to change to a subdomain username.medium.com. Something to consider in making your decision is a new Medium subdomain takes longer to rank in Google compared to a Medium domain.
Tipping: This new feature that you can enable lets readers send you a tip through popular third-party platforms, like Patreon, Ko-Fi, PayPal or donate to a cause important to you. Once enabled, tipping will appear at the end of all your published stories.
Email subscriptions: This allows readers who subscribe to your email list to automatically receive your story in their inboxes each time you publish. You can select whether you want to enable this feature and you can either keep the default text or customize it. Once enabled, the email subscription form will appear third down on your Medium homepage and at the end of all your published stories.
Import an existing audience: If you have an existing email list, you can import up to 5,000 email addresses from a csv or txt file.
Notifications: You can enable social notifications to know when someone follows you or engages with your content (clap, highlight, save in their list) and mention notifications to know when someone @ you in their story.
Social media: If you have a Twitter account you can connect it with your Medium account and have the Twitter icon visible on your profile that links to your Twitter page.
Private note: You have the choice to enable the private note where you can receive notes from others.

Done With Those, Now It Is Writing Time

Stories: It is time to write your first story, then your second story, and on.

NOTE: If you have content already published somewhere else on the internet, you can cross-post it on Medium and credit the original publishing platform. Most Medium publications only accept content that has not been published on an external platform or in another internal Medium publication. So for your already published content, your options on Medium are self-publish under your name or self-publish in your own publication if you made one.

Pin: Once you have a couple of stories published, take advantage of the pinning feature. You can pin up to five stories at a time. Your pinned stories will remain at the top of your homepage and will be the first ones readers on your homepage will see. At any time you can unpin any and replace them by pinning other stories.
Lists: You can turn your own stories into lists and can turn the content you read from other Medium writers that you enjoy into lists, too. Lists are public by default but can be made private.

In Closing,

You will thank yourself later for spending your time upfront to set up these elements, so as your future readers begin discovering you, they will have an experience that will keep them returning to your digital home.

Your profile (profile image, profile name, profile short bio) is visible on every story you publish, whether self-published or in a publication.

That is why it is important in my opinion to have this done before writing and publishing. I believe that even though you are just getting started, it does not mean you have to look like you are just getting started on Medium.

Thank you for reading and I hope I delivered helpful information in this story!

I would love to know any thoughts or questions you have! You can get in contact with me by public commenting to me, private noting me, or emailing me lifenotabrupt@gmail.com. :)

Are you new to reading this series about writing on Medium? Glad you’re here and welcome! Or are you a returning reader who’ve missed reading a story in this series? No worries! The easiest way to find all of them is in this compiled list I put together for you. ⬇