This Is What Happened When I Only Published on My Medium Feed.
Results of a 30-day long and 30-post experiment.
In November, I hit my highest views after publishing 13 stories with a read ratio of 47%. This has been my goal for some time, but I was averaging around 100 views max every month.
So what happened that my views again dropped to less than 50 the next month, i.e. December 2023?
Before I reveal the secrets, let’s understand a few things:
- Growth on Medium is directly proportional to your activity on the platform.
- You can post every day but may fail to grow your following.
- Quality trumps quantity, any day.
I knew all these even before my views declined. So what happened? Quite a few things.
Bot accounts.
Although my read-to-view ratio was good in November, my account was hit by a wave of bot accounts—the ones who highlight and comment without ever reading a sentence of your article. I wonder if Medium even counts them as a view.
You might earn attention through this mindless engagement, but the author will not follow you.
Medium has a policy almost similar to Google. If an account receives more views than reads, it will potentially be marked as a low-quality or clickbaity account, damaging the wrier’s visibility.
Family gatherings.
My sister came to visit us from Sweden, and though we don’t celebrate Christmas, we wanted to cherish the month we had with her. So, I was only able to post four times in December.
Since I had earlier reduced my posting schedule in September, I knew I would receive 50% fewer views, but getting only 50 on average was an unexpected incident. So, I decided not to post for a short time altogether.
Surprisingly, the quiet days received more comments than I was expecting. Therefore, when I began reposting in January, I decided to only post on my feed and not engage with big accounts. This caution had a few downsides but many upsides.
1- I stopped getting viewed by people who are only increasing their following.
Don’t get me wrong. Growing followers is an essential part of an online site, but when done wrong, it harms the long-term growth, which I have been very vigilant to safeguard.
2- My follower count increased, nonetheless.
My articles were viewed by 10 new followers each week as per the weekly Medium reports. This made it clear that I needed to find the right audience for the topics I wished to write about.
When I started in August, it was difficult to get into Publications, but when you are new, it is necessary to give your work the needed attention.
After a few tries, I got into New Writers Welcome. Apart from gaining views, exposing my articles to a bigger segment of the Medium audience explained to me:
- Where do I need to improve upon.
- Which topics are easy for me to write about.
- What sort of a writing style I would like to embrace.
3- It’s not about posting more.
You need to post as frequently as possible, but if you post about anything and everything, you are getting nowhere. This is the understood rule of the crowded online space.
Thus, the break from submitting articles to publications helped me understand which writing style I like to experiment with.
Since the publication’s rule restricts the topic choice, you have less room to experiment.
What were my views in January?
My views stand at 162, with a read ratio of 31% after publishing 24 articles, about ten times more effort than in November.
So:
- If you are new — find a publication to write for.
- If you are experimenting — post almost daily on your feed.
- If you are sure about a particular style — find a publication with the audience.
Growing on Medium is less tricky when you stick with a particular writing style.
Follow for more.
