Apr 22, 2016
Smedian: The Tool All Medium Editors & Writers Wanted & Desperately Needed
Smedian (formerly SuperMeditor) is a community of Medium editors who need writers who need editors. I spent the last two weekends building it for all of you wonderful people who are helping to make Medium what it is. So why?
Disclaimer: While I will be an intern at Medium this summer, I am not currently affiliated with Medium in any legal way. The following project is personal.
Why This
Honestly, I don’t know what I’m about to say to you. I still feel like I’m dreaming. Please feel free to stop here and check out Smedian (formerly SuperMeditor) before proceeding. Its really “so simple a caveman could do it.”
A little over two years ago, I was a marketing major who just found the wonderful land of Medium. Shortly after, I started the Inspire the World publication, which was the most popular for inspiration. A couple weeks later, I started Marketing & Growth Hacking (MNG), which is now the largest growth hacking publication on Medium since I’ve grown it from 1k to 16k followers in the last 9 months. In just the last two years, I’ve ran more publications on Medium than you are allowed to by default. I am related to 315+ publications, write for a good deal of them, and edit a handful.
With all of that said, I think it’s fair to say I am fit to speak on the necessities of editors and writers on Medium.
The Problem
Take a look at the screenshot of my email inbox below. Then continue for a presumably unnecessary explanation.
That’s the current state of my inbox and its all because writers want a chance to contribute to the growth of MNG. Every time MNG grows by 1k followers, I call for more writers to share their stories and ideas with our readers and I appreciate all who respond. The only problem is I have become overwhelmed by the process of adding new writers.
For each email I receive, I have to parse it for the user’s Medium username or ask for it if they failed to provide it. I then have to open a new browser tab to navigate to Medium, find my publication, open the edit page and finally scroll to the bottom to add the user as a writer. I have to do this too many times a week. On top of all of that, I have to deal with my inbox being cluttered by the same types of emails.
I don’t often like to point out a problem without providing a solution, so I decided to build the solution. Introducing Smedian **and the crowd goes wild!!!**.
Smedian (Formerly SuperMeditor)
Smedian is a single page web application built and designed much like Medium because I love Medium. After logging in with Your Medium account in just two clicks, you will be able to advertise publications you edit to gain writers and request to contribute to other advertised publications.
For Editors
Smedian was built with the editor at front of mind. Editing a Medium publication takes time and energy to get right. Smedian aims to give you more your time back by making the whole process of growing your publications more efficient.
Want to gain more writers to in turn gain more followers for your publication? Login and click “Advertise Mine” to advertise any publication you are an editor for writers to act on. After providing your email by logging in with Google, it only takes one click to advertise a publication.
When a writer sees your publication, they will be able to see all of the information they need to about it and instantly send you a request to be added as a contributor.
A single email to rule them all!
At the beginning of each work day — Monday through Friday — you will receive a single email notifying you of any new requests made by writers to contribute to your publications. The email will be as clean as the ones sent by Your Friends @ Medium.
It will consist simply of a table of requests in order of the name of your publications. What’s important to you is that you simply have to copy the writer’s username, click on the link to your publication’s edit page, and paste in the username in the writers section to add the user as a contributor. If you want to learn more about the user, simply click the link to their profile page to see what they are all about before adding them to your publication’s list of contributors.
That’s it! No need to give your email address to the world and clutter your inbox with requests. And if you don’t want to accept any requests, you don’t have to. And if there are multiple editors for your publication, you all can advertise.
For Writers
I love you writers, especially those who write for Marketing & Growth Hacking. I didn’t forget about you guys. Your process is even simpler than that of the editors.
One click requests!
Stroll on over to www.Smedian.com, click a “Request to Contribute” button on any publication you like and think you would be a good fit for, and your request will be on its way to the editor’s inbox the next day. If the editor decides to add you as a contributor, Medium, not Smedian, will notify you as normal — either by email or on the site.
If the editor does not accept your request, likely because they didn’t see it or he or she does not think you are fit yet, your requests will live on and be sent at most three times over the course of 21 days. After that, if the editor does not respond to your request, you will unfortunately not be able to send a request to that same editor for that publication. Fortunately, there may be other editors advertising the same publication and you can try them.
Want to learn more about a publication before sending the request, simply hover over its name to read its description, visit its page on Medium, and visit the editor’s Medium profile.
The Future of Smedian
Chat (Update: Added!)
There are a few publication tools I would like to add. The first that comes to mind is the ability for editors and writers to chat seamlessly. No email exchanging. This will be coming in within the next couple weeks.
In-app Notifications Dashboard (Update: Added!)
Not everyone wants me or my tools in their inbox. Smedian will soon have in-app notifications panel like in Medium where you can go to act on requests if you don’t have time to do them all in one sitting from your email or just hate reading emails altogether. This is mainly for editors since Medium handles writer notifications already.
More
If you have any other ideas, please write a response below and share it with me and the others. We’ll build this thing together :)
Calling All Editors & Writers
In order for this to work, and hopefully entice the Medium staff to build this natively into Medium, I am calling on all of you to make use of it.
Now I’m just going to tag a couple superstar editors that come to the top of my head as I write this and hopefully they’ll gracefully advertise their publications on Smedian: Joel Mwakasege, Jon Westenberg, TrustLeaf, Dan Pedersen, Christian Rodriguez, Sand Farnia, Cynthia Koo, Ed Rex, Bryan Hackett, Editor@Coffeelicious, and may be even Ev Williams will grace us all. But no pressure :)
If you are reading this, please take a minute to upvote Smedian on ProductHunt
Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy Smedian.
P.S.
I posted this at 6am and by 11:30 am EST, which is when Smedian notifications are sent out, I alone received 28 requests from wonderful Mediumers wishing to write for my various publication advertised on Smedian: About Java, Inspire the World, Marketing and Growth Hacking, Startup Valley, Succeed Together, and Tech and You.
If you enjoyed this, please recommend it by clicking the heart below to help others find it.
Read Next:
