Let’s face it.
Getting traffic to your blog is a lot of work.
In fact, more work than you ever imagined.
But when it’s time to write a new post, you can’t just type until you hit your word count and then click “publish.”
Your words have to be brilliant. Well-researched. Engaging.
And getting people to actually read those powerful words is another battle.
Sure, you can send your post out to your followers and subscribers. They’ll love it and share it, bringing in a little more traffic.
The problem is, they represent just a tiny fraction of your potential audience. All those other people who’d also love your post, if only they knew about it.
As bloggers and freelance writers, we assume getting more traffic means creating more content, doing more promotion to make money, building affiliate networks, and spending more time working.
Those things work, but there’s another way, too.
And you don’t need to write a word of extra content to make it work.
Why Smart Bloggers Write Less Content
We already know that you work your ass off to create stellar content that keeps your readers engaged, happy, and loving your forever.
But the influence of that content doesn’t have to be restricted to the confines of your blog.
You can get your content – and your name – in front of new audiences simply by republishing on other platforms.
These platforms already have people interested in what you have to say, and you can bring that traffic back to your website – growing your online influence and your subscriber list.
This strategy works so well that you’ll often notice top writers working out deals with big-name web publications like The Huffington Post, Business Insider, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and the like. At this level, it’s usually called syndication, and it’s a win-win: the host publication gets quality content for its readers, and the blogger generates traffic and better establishes their brand.
But there’s a problem.
Getting past the gatekeepers of these huge publications is tough. You’ll need to develop connections with the right people or catch their attention with a viral post. Even then, you have no guarantee they’ll republish your content.
But there are platforms without such a high barrier to entry that still attract large audiences – some of whom will love what you’re writing.
Consider Medium, one of the hottest content platforms around, where republishing is almost as easy as copying and pasting.
It almost sounds too good to be true.
In fact, didn’t you read somewhere that Google has a problem with duplicate content?
Why Google Won’t Penalize You for Duplicate Content
Many bloggers steer clear of any republishing strategy because getting a Google penalty terrifies them.
But in reality, republishing content with the full knowledge of its original author is not an activity Google is remotely concerned about punishing.
As Google acknowledges on its help page dedicated to duplicate content, “Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.”
“If you syndicate your content on other sites,” Google goes on to say, “Google will always show the version we think is the most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you prefer. However, it is helpful that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article.”
So Google might show the syndicated content page in its results rather than your original piece. But for most of us, getting that content to the foreground of a Google search would be a big win in the first place. And even if that does happen, there’s still no penalty dished out from Google against your domain.
Introducing Medium – The Perfect Republishing Platform
Have you heard of Medium?
It’s a community of serious readers who like to read brilliant stuff.
One of the newer content platforms, Medium has been around since August 2012. It has a great pedigree, too, since it was created by two of Twitter’s original founders – Ev Williams and Biz Stone.
Medium is a place where anyone can share their ideas with the Medium community and interact with other members’ content too. It even has its own self-contained publications that create and curate content around specific audiences, like The Coffeelicious or Life Learning.
When publications like this are thriving within the wider Medium brand, you know you have some serious numbers of readers on your hands. (At the time of writing this, for example, Editor’s Picks alone had 650,000 followers.)
How a Small Effort on Medium Can Yield Large Results
Once you’ve signed up for an account, Medium’s algorithms hand-pick and deliver content via email based on your interests and behavior. The email contains posts selected by Medium staff, posts from publications that you follow, and posts most recommended by the people you follow.
In my experience, when you open that daily email, you find yourself reading one recommended post after another – it’s addictive. Expand that behavior to potentially hundreds of thousands of eager readers and you’re talking about a large, motivated audience.
And by publishing on Medium, you have the chance to take advantage of that forward momentum, where people read one post after another.
It’s an opportunity to get the content you’ve worked so hard to create in front of a new and appreciative audience. And if they love it, you have a good chance they’ll want to visit your blog for more of the good stuff, too.
So how can you get started?
4 Easy Steps for Publishing Your Next Blog Post on Medium
If you haven’t already done so, signing up for Medium is easy and straightforward.
1. Create Your Medium Account
To sign in or create an account, you can use an account you already have (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, or Google), or you can create a new account using your email address.
I used my Twitter account, and Medium automatically pulled information to fill out my profile and matched up the people I was already following on Twitter (and who were following me) to kick off my following and follower base on Medium.
2. Decide Who and What to Follow
Next you’ll see a screen asking, “What are you interested in?” where you can select your interests from a list. Selecting your favorite topics will allow Medium to tailor the kind of content you’d like to see.
Once you’ve chosen a handful of good topics, click on “Next” in the upper right-hand corner to get to the following screen where you can follow other Medium users:
If you’re wondering where these suggestions come from, they’re based on the people you already follow on Twitter (if you registered using your Twitter account) and the topics you chose on the previous screen.
Go ahead and follow some of the suggestions. You can always go back and refine things later. (More on that coming up in the section on building an audience.)
3. Customize Your Profile
As mentioned before, if you sign up with an existing account, some of your profile will be filled out for you. But you’ll still want to go in and edit it to make sure it reflects how you want to present yourself on Medium.
To get to the editing screen, click on your avatar in the upper right-hand corner, and click on “Profile.” Once you’re there, click on the “Edit” button to change your photo and your wording.
Make sure your profile is consistent with your other profiles around the web – you’ll make it easier for your existing followers to recognize you. It will also help create a smooth transition when the new followers you gain on Medium venture outside the platform to find you elsewhere on the web.
Use the same title (in my case “Founder of Copy Power, LLC”) and make sure your blog’s name is prominent, again to help recognition across platforms.
4. Publish Your Post
To write a story (which is Medium-speak for publishing a post), click on the “Write a story” button next to the search bar on the top of the page.
You’ll go to a new screen where you can copy and paste your article into the editor with minimalistic yet intuitive editing options.
Alternatively, you can simply import a story by clicking on the “Import Story” option in the right-hand menu:
Then paste the link to the story you want to republish on Medium:
Once you’ve got the text copied (or imported) into the document, add any images and check the formatting.
Here’s a quick tip when adding images with captions:
On Medium, the text for an image’s caption is quite small in comparison to the regular text size. If your caption contains vital information, consider dispensing with captions and simply using centered text underneath the image so the font is the same size (and carries the same weight) as the rest of the content around it.
You’ll also want to make sure all of your hyperlinks transferred over correctly in the copying and pasting process.
When you’re finished copying, pasting, adding photos, and editing links, click on the “Publish” drop-down to select tags to categorize your content and then, publish it to make it go live.
The tags you choose should reflect the topic you’re writing about and the readers you’re aiming to reach. Keep in mind that the number next to each tag represents the number of people following that tag.
As a rule of thumb, the more who follow that tag, the harder it will be to rank and get attention there. But with lower-numbered tags, you’ll also have a more limited number of readers. Since Medium allows you to choose three different tags per post, trying a combination of popular and less common tags could work well.
Crucially, you’ll also want to add a call-to-action to your post before publication, compelling readers to go back to your site. (More on the mechanics of that later.)
Audience-Building Tips from the Medium Pros
Yes, Medium does have a built-in audience of readers who appreciate good content, but that doesn’t mean everything you write will automatically land in front of the people you’re trying to reach.
Think of it like any other social network: if your posts are public, technically anyone can see them, but by default they’ll only be brought to the attention of your followers – the people already paying attention to what you have to say.
Signing up for Medium via one of your social media accounts (Twitter, for example) helps because it allows you to automatically follow anyone you follow on Twitter, and vice-versa.
Benji Hyam, who’s only posted one article and already has 1.1k followers, accredits this to his large, pre-established Twitter following and the relevance of his first post (which reached the top 10).
“I’ve been really active on Twitter which led me to have over 900 followers before ever posting an article of my own,” he said. “Medium is tied to Twitter’s social graph so if you’re actively growing your audience on Twitter, you’re gaining followers on Medium.”
Your followers receive a notification when you post, so the more influential they are, the better.
But your existing social media followers are just a starting point. To gain more followers on Medium, your best bet is to interact with other content that’s related to your niche.
If you followed a handful of tags in the signup process, that’s great. They’ll help you discover content to interact with. But you can add more.
You can see which tags you’re currently following in the right-hand sidebar of your Medium home page, under “Tags You Follow.”
To add more, you can either click on any tag you find elsewhere in Medium – for example, under “Featured Tags” or the tags assigned to a post you’re reading – or search using the box in the top right corner. Type a keyword and you’ll see a dynamic drop-down list of results, including matching tags.
Make sure you add plenty of tags that relate to the topics you write about on your blog. This way any comments you make on the posts you find will be noticed by readers who will want to know more about what you’ve got to say.
This strategy is a lot like a classic blog commenting strategy but repurposed for Medium.
“Medium has responses. Not comments,” advises Jonas Ellison, a daily Medium writer with 7.1k followers. “With a normal blog, when I comment, my words get nestled below the article and I can carry on a huge conversation there without it being too interruptive for other readers. With Medium, when I respond to a post, it creates a whole new post that goes out to my entire readership.”
The best way I’ve found to get noticed is to click interesting headlines in the Medium Daily Digest email you receive and respond to those articles.
At first, you’ll get way more of a reaction to your comments than your actual posts, but it’s all part of the build-up strategy. You’re in it for the long run, not an overnight traffic spike.
Beyond that, to build your audience even more, if a publication’s editor reaches out to include one of your posts or responses (comments) in their publication, accept it.
“There are many publications on Medium that have large audiences of people with specific interests,” says Mike Fishbein, who has a 3.8k following and has had his posts picked up to be featured in The Huffington Post and The New York Observer. “Getting your story included there can give you exposure to thousands of readers that you may not have otherwise reached.”
The best part is, you don’t have to have a large following for this to happen. I’ve only recently started commenting and have already received requests from editors to publish my “stories” (responses) in their publications:
3 Tips for Getting the Most from Republishing on Medium
In addition to building your audience, there are a few other tips you can follow to maximize your results from republishing on Medium.
#1 Tweak Your Headlines
You already know that writing a great headline is a must for your blog posts, and unsurprisingly, headlines are important on Medium too. When users see your post in their notification feeds or their personalized Medium Daily Digest emails, your headline has to do all the talking for you.
So it’s worth taking a look at the headlines in your niche that have performed well on Medium because you might consider tweaking yours to suit that specific audience.
For instance, I’ve noticed that headlines appearing in my own Medium Daily Digest tend to look more like simple statements or questions than the typical “overtly eye-catching” blog headlines.
A headline like “Why Did Buddha Become Fat?” would probably perform better on Medium than a headline like “2 Reasons Buddha Has a Big Belly” for the same article.
Medium headlines also tend to be a little shorter than the average. A quick analysis on Buzzsumo of the top 20 most popular posts on Medium shows that the average headline length is just under 40 characters.
Here are some examples:
- Are You Really Pro-Life?
- Dear Muslims
- The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb
- The Case for Hillary
- Parenting Advice: Don’t Kill Them
So consider tweaking your original headline to suit a no-nonsense, hype-sensitive Medium crowd.
#2 Convert Medium Readers into Email Subscribers
Getting your content in front of more people is great for your authority as a writer, but the ultimate goal is to get more traffic for your site, right? After all, more traffic from the same content is what this post promised.
One way to get more traffic is to link from your Medium posts to relevant posts on your blog. (If you’re already using internal links in your posts, those should come across automatically when you import your post.)
Those links should result in some additional short-term traffic, but your ultimate goal should be to get traffic that supports the long-term goals of your site.
One of the best ways to turn traffic into something more valuable is to get visitors to sign up for your email list.
Since you can’t embed a sign-up form on Medium, you need to direct readers to a sign-up landing page using a simple call-to-action in your post.
Here’s the conclusion of a blog post I recently republished on Medium. Notice the large text I used for the call-to-action link, which takes people to my sign-up form:
#3 Don’t Republish Everything You Write
If someone discovers your work on Medium and then clicks through to your website, what will they see?
If they see exactly the same content they’ve already seen on Medium, they’re far less likely to subscribe, or return again in the future.
So while republishing on Medium is a great strategy, make sure you balance it out by publishing a fair number of original posts on your blog alone.
As a rule of thumb, try to make sure at least 25% to 50% of your content is only available on your blog. That way, when a new visitor comes to your site, there’s still plenty for them to explore.
That said, it’s important to republish regularly.
“Republishing tends to give you a spike in traffic and engagement,” say the people at Ghost, an open-source blogging platform. “The thing about spikes is that they don’t last. So republishing can help you if you do it regularly and you’re doing it on top of your main content strategy.”
Don’t Write More Words – Reach More Readers
Once you learn how to start a blog, getting traffic can seem dauntingly hard.
And your content deserves more than it’s getting.
That’s why making the same content work harder by republishing it on Medium is a smart option for the time-poor blogger.
Getting started is incredibly easy, and building your audience requires only a little interaction with other users and their content.
And if you already have a respectable social media following, you have a big headstart.
So why not try Medium on for size? Republish a few posts and see if it works for you.
Because one thing’s for sure, the platform has a ton of engaged readers. And some of those reader would totally love your content – if only they knew about it.
All you need to do is help them find it.
Excellent post. Would you recommend we change the headline for medium when republishing?
Thanks Zak!
Depending on your blog/audience and what you see trending in your niche in Medium, I’d at least recommend experimenting with it. It’s too hard to give a rule of thumb since there’s SOOO many topics on Medium, but if you start seeing patterns that work well for other writers, why not test them out for yourself?
Ok, thanks.
Hey Zak,
Personally I would. But that’s just me. 🙂
Hey Kevin, Thanks.
This is very interesting, thanks for sharing – I’m going to give it a go!
Thanks for the kind comment, Emma!
Good luck – from what I’ve found, even if you don’t get the world’s best results, it’s so easy to do that it’s worth it. 🙂
Awesome post Chelsea. Medium sounds like a great resource. I like your tip to sprinkle in a few posts that just stay on our website so blog readers are rewarded for their visit. It’s an exciting time and I am grateful for you demonstrating how an author can expand their reach with only a modest investment of time. Good wishes.
Thanks Lita. I’m not as experienced with Medium as some of the experts I quoted, but I am loving it. (And the small time investment part is probably one of my favorites.) 🙂
What an unusual approach, Chelse.! Thank you for sharing a different perspective – especially for those ‘hoarding’ bloggers, who protect and copyright and police every word they ever publish. (Not me, but I know some.)
I look forward to exploring Medium – what better way to get out of my own inner narrative? Thank you so very much!
*Chelsea. Sincerest apologies for my butter-fingers butchering your name.
Lol, no worries, Mai! (I am the queen of typos myself.)
And yes, I think it’s great to explore the possibility of Medium for republishing… of course you can write something from scratch especially for Medium too… but all that tiiiime….!
Mai, Lol. Some of us “hoarding’ bloggers are afraid of Google’s duplicate content penalty.
Hey Hephzy, totally understand where you’re coming from.
But you can check the section above “Why Google Won’t Penalize You for Duplicate Content” to see that this kind of republishing isn’t what they’re concerned about with that duplicate content policy.
Best wishes!
I abandoned medium, now I’m going back. This is a great article. Chelsa, thanks so much
Thanks for the kind words, Johnson! And best of wishes with your new Medium efforts! Cheers!
Hi Chelsea, thank you for this insightful post. I have actually heard about Medium but i was somehow worried about the “duplicate” penalty of Google. I think I have a better understand of the concept now and I will surely give it a try. Thanks.
Ah, Hephzy! I responded to your comment above before seeing this one! Whoops!
Anyway, that’s great – I hope it works well for you! Cheers!
Outstanding piece on Medium, Chelsea. I have a very small following there, but like many others was worried about “republishing.” Thanks very much for clarifying that and I will certainly refocus my efforts on this platform.
Hey PJ – yea, the republishing thing was something that tripped me up for a while too. But once I saw people syndicating across the web, I did my research on it and discovered what Google was actually trying to penalize with their duplicate content policy, I felt much better about it.
You Rock!!!
Great post Chelsea. I signed up to contribute to Medium, but hadn’t quite figured out how to make best use of the platform. You laid it out in great detail – a perfect blueprint! thank you!
Thanks Jane. When I first signed up with it, I was a little clueless too. But now that I’ve started using it for republishing, I’m very happy with what I’m able to do with it. 🙂
Excellent article -I’ve just recently started publishing on Medium and the traffic building tips are great. Thanks
Thanks for the kind words Mark!
I was really intrigued by Benji’s follower-building tip about staying active on Twitter to get a payoff on Medium, too. It’s always great when your efforts in one place can pay of both there and somewhere else, isn’t it? 🙂
Hey Chelsea,
Really great post here.
I’ve heard of Medium but never took the time to really consider it. There’s already so many platforms to pay attention to already, right?
But like Quora, I’ll pay attention to this because it seems like something special…like the next big thing.
I’m anxious to try your strategy you outlined in this post.
– Andrew
Omg, yes, SOOOO many platforms.
I think the most important strategy though is to pick the ones that resonate most with you and your business. If Quora makes way more sense for you, go with that. If you think Medium’s worth a shot, then try it. But certainly no one can properly handle ALL of them. But good luck on Medium when you start trying it!
Cheers!
Hi Chelsea,
Awesome post. Now, I’m thinking of republishing on Medium. One question. Even though my blog isn’t indexed in Google, can I republish on Medium?
Hi Venkatesh, Don’t take my response as absolute truth here, but I don’t think it’d be any problem. If your writing showed up in Google’s search results, it’d just be for the Medium posts instead of your original ones.
But if there’s some reason you don’t want your content showing up in Google, you might want to avoid it.
Whatever you decide though, best wishes!
As long as the article is still relevant is there any problem using articles 1-2 years old?
Hey Bob, I wouldn’t see any problem at all using content that’s been sitting on your blog for 1-2 years.
If it’s evergreen and relevant still, it could be a great way to breathe new life into it and get more attention back to it. (Kind of like content repurposing, but without all the work of putting it into a different format.) I’d say go for it.
Hi Chelsea,
I loved this post. You know what I loved the most? I followed all of your advice in about 10 minutes and republished my first post on medium 🙂
I’m excited to see how it goes! I’ll report back.
~Katharine
Whoooo!!! Congrats Katharine! And only 10 minutes? That’s awesome!
Great article! I’ve been thinking of setting up on Medium for a while – this has given me the incentive to ‘go-fo-it’! Still worried about that dup content penalty, though. So was either thinking of just posting 300 word summaries of my blog posts, or creating Medium specific content that has been ‘inspired’ by my own blog posts.
Thanks, Ray! 🙂
I really don’t think you’d have to worry about the duplicate content penalty… loads of the internet’s most popular sites syndicate a good portion of their content from other blogs without worry to them or the authors that agree to contribute your content. The only real “worry” might be the non-original outranking the original.
But, you can of course post original content on Medium… loads of writers there do it and have great success with it.
What every you decide to do… best wishes!
Good post, Chelsea! I’m in the middle of Jon’s Guest Blogging course and I was just wondering the other day how the rise of Medium impacts some of what Jon teaches. My question is whether it makes sense to go after big-name guest post opportunities if publishing on Medium accomplishes the same thing. Or maybe guest posting and Medium go hand-in-hand…and we should be doing both to grow our businesses. Thoughts?
I’d say it’s definitely still worth it to go after those guest posting opportunities. The audience is already built and they provide wonderful reach.
Medium on the other hand, while it can be incredibly beneficial, only has a reach as big as the network you’ve already built for yourself within that platform and on Twitter (if you’ve got those accounts connected.)
But if you’re regularly publishing on your own blog, I’d definitely suggest re-publishing every few posts on Medium… it’s easy, fast… and why not?
I’d totally do this if Medium let people use rel=canonical tags 🙁
That’s definitely the best-case scenario for republishing your content, and I wish more sites (especially the ones that proactively syndicate other people’s stuff) would do it more often.
Suggest it to the guys at Medium?
Thanks for the guide, Chelsea! I hadn’t heard about Medium at all before this.
This sounds like a very good tactic to get your content noticed and hopefully bring this audience to your site, but I have to ask two questions:
1. How does it compare to other social media platforms in terms of directing you followers to your site? (and hopefully to your email list).
2. How much time is required to use Medium effectively everyday? I mean creating content, following people, engaging and stuff. Dealing with 4 social media platforms already I am afraid to sign up for Medium if it’s gonna steal more valuable time and not payback.
Anyway. I loved learning about this and will keep it under my radar – I might give it a try soon!
All the best.
Hey Ed, thanks for the kind words!
To answer your questions:
1 – That totally depends on how compelling your call to action back to your site is. If you’ve got a great, value-driven reason to send people back there and you demonstrate it well, they’ll be much more likely to click through than if you simply mention “article originally published on _______” and leave it at that.
2- I’d say I use it for 5 minutes or less on the average day. I don’t have the most active (or largest) Medium following, but I do see some small results from the tiny bit that I do. BUT if you’ve already got a large Twitter following, for example, and connect your accounts, it could pay off more than you’d imagine.
Awesome! Thanks, Chelsea, for the clarification re the Google penalty. I was under the impression that was an issue. I’ve been republishing on LinkedIn lately, and only a few times on Medium, but now I will probably regularly republish on both sites besides my own. I recently blogged about trying to anticipate what will happen when Facebook makes Instant Articles available. That’s going to be a huge game changer for bloggers!
Hey Jen – I’ve gotten to the point that I regularly republish on LinkedIn and Medium too. (If I do one site, I usually do the other.)
I actually haven’t hear of Instant Articles on Facebook… but now you’ve got me intrigued to learn more! 🙂
Awesome post, Chelsea 🙂
I have been researching about reposting on Medium and came across this helpful thread at Inbound – https://inbound.org/discuss/what-are-the-downsides-to-reposting-existing-blog-content-to-medium. For me, its key takeaway was that you must wait for 7-10 days before reposting on Medium because that’s enough time for Google to index your freshly-pressed content and identify your site as the original source of that content.
Good point, Disha. And that can provide a mentally “safe” buffer too for people who are still a little paranoid about the duplicate content penalty. Thanks for sharing 🙂
I confess I was worried about the Google slap over duplicate content, but what you say makes sense, Chelsea. The thing is, some of the “rules” Google seem a little ambiguous – probably because we’re anxious to escape the repercussions of violating their rules. I love the Medium interface and have posted 3-4 times, but have been lazy about following it up. Now I am definitely going to give it a try. It is true that any traffic building effort must be sustained and viewed as a long term activity. Thanks. I enjoyed your post, and nice meeting you!
Totally agree, Vidya. I think the anxiety and fear that exists across the internet of being slapped down by Google keeps a lot of us “good” bloggers frozen in our tracks when it comes to using the same content to create greater reach.
But once I realized that so many of the internet’s largest sites were syndicating content from bloggers willing to re-publish their content elsewhere, I decided to look into it an realized that it wasn’t the big deal that I thought it was.
Best of luck with your Medium efforts – nice to meet you too! 🙂
Great post – thanks a lot.
Thanks for the kind words Christine 🙂
Hi Chelsea,
I got really hooked on this article. I’ve thought about Medium for a while now but knew I couldn’t keep up original content for it and my blog. (It’s hard enough for the latter).
This article changes that as well as giving valuable tips to get started.
Thank you so much.
Alan
“knew I couldn’t keep up original content for it and my blog. (It’s hard enough for the latter).” <- OMG, tell me about it.
Thanks for the kind words, Alan. Wish you the best 🙂
Chelsea,
Thanks for the in-depth tutorial on how to utilize Medium. I’d read elsewhere about the power of Medium, but never has it been broken down and explained as well as you have here.
I really appreciate the audience building technique as well, and it’s given me a few ideas for some offerings down the road!
Question – is THIS post republished on Medium? (haha)
Hahahahaha, it’s not republished on Medium yet, and whether or not it does get republished there would be up to TPTB for this website.
I’m glad the post was helpful for you – and good luck with those offerings you’re thinking about!
Cheers!
Unless you are already famous outside of medium, you won’t get any traffic with medium . Medium , unlike huff po, does not promote your content. It’s just another blogging platform
Hey Dileo, thanks for your comment.
It’s true that Medium is simply a platform that doesn’t do any marketing for you, however since it does have aspects like integrating with Twitter and a very “community” feel for people who are involved in commenting and recommending, the potential to gain more fans is there.
And while you certainly shouldn’t expect the kind of back traffic you get for writing a unique piece for a large website, the idea is that you can increase your reach and get SOME extra traffic back in exchange for a minimal amount of your time.
It’s certainly not a strategy for everyone though, so you’ve got to make the decision for yourself on where your efforts are best spent.
Cheers!
Chelsea,
“Don’t Write More Words – Reach More Readers” that is a great Twitter quote right there.
Thanks so much Dade! 😀
This really inspired some ideas for me. I think that I will give this a try. Just yesterday I published an epic super long post. However, I could publish on Medium some original content around the idea and push back to my blog.
Thanks for the motivation here.
Thanks for the kind words, Renee. 🙂
And yes, Medium is a wonderful place for original content, too–especially when it’s a part of a bigger strategy to get some of your cornerstone content noticed.
Best of luck!
Hi Chelsea,
Great article! Between yours, Benjamin Hardy’s (on Jeff Goins’ site), and Kristi Hines’ over at Social Media Examiner, there are THREE excellent write ups of Medium in the blogosphere the past couple weeks. Each one had a different focus, but each offered superbly-helpful info.
I’ve dabbled in Medium, which is to say I republished two short posts on the platform late last year. 🙂 It (dabbling in Medium) is something I plan on doing more of in 2016, and your article will be a great resources for me to reference.
I don’t believe I’ve come across your work before, so it’s a thrill to “meet” you here at BBT! I’m off to tweet your post.
Have a wonderful Thursday, Chelsea.
– @kevinjduncan
Hey Kevin,
Very nice to meet you too!
I’ve just seen Benjamin’s article today. (Quite impressive that he got 200k subscribers out of it, no?!) I haven’t read Kristi’s, but I’ll definitely check it out.
And yes, I’m hoping to make Medium more of a “thing” for myself in 2016 – especially after talking to the few people I interviewed for this article & the success they’ve had there.
Cheers!
Whoa this is very very good! I hope Medium doesn’t see this. lol! You have some REALLY good tips here that I will start doing. Keep up the good work! I’ll be back.
Thanks Aurora! 🙂 Best wishes.
Hi Chelsea,
Thanks for this. Right now, I’m all in for anything that will bring in more traffic. Hahaha.
I really loved the step-by-step nature of the post.
In fact, i opened the page side by side and set up my account immediately.
That’s how much I found it easy to digest.
It’s great knowing one can republish without offending the Google the Great.
I don’t think many people know about this. I’m off to share.
Do have a great rest of the week.
Cheers,
Ruth
“Google the Great” – Lol, I think I’m going to start using that term. 😉
I’m so glad it was useful for you & thanks for the kind words.
You have a great rest of the week too!
Cheers!
Hi Chelsea ,
I like this post with all the information on ‘Medium’.
Maybe one day I will get up the courage to write a story about…?
About anything, Bob!
I think you can find EVERYTHING on Medium!
I’ve been writing on medium for a really long time now and I can’t say enough good things about it. I got a book deal because of writing for medium so needless to say I’m a fan and this is really comprehensive guide.
Whaaatt??? A book deal?
That is AWESOME, Srinivas, congratulations!!!
I don’t know if the rest of us can expect such stellar results, but I’m super happy for you on that one. 😀
Bingo.
This is exactly the kind of post I have been looking for!
I just launched my site on President’s Day and I have been putting tremendous pressure on myself to produce more and more content. Lofty and exhausting goals. This post was awesome in providing a tangible strategy to grow readership and visibility.
My question is would Medium be a good strategy for a brand new blogger/writer? Currently, my site features four posts and I’m wondering if i should get myself more established before sharing on Medium. I’d love feedback on this.
Hey Sharon,
First of all, congrats on your new site!
As far as Medium being a good strategy for a new blogger… my idea is that it certainly wouldn’t hurt to start a profile and republish one of your posts. And even if you don’t republish, you can start interacting with other followers and building up a following that way. Plus, if you integrate your Twitter account (or simply sign up via Twitter), there’s automatic followers right there.
One thing I didn’t mention from Benji’s story (the 1.1k follower guy who got into the top 10 with his first post) was that he had an account on Medium for over a year and was already interacting with other content before he ever made his first post. So I think that’s a valid strategy as well.
Thank you so much for this very helpful feedback. I think establishing an account on Medium and interacting with users is a good approach before sharing content! Helpful insight:) Thank you!
I’m a fan of Medium. I’ve published on it, and I’ve blogged about it.
Janice
Yea, it’s a great platform, isn’t it? 😀
Thanks Chelsea. I took a look at Medium a while back and this article gave me the impetus to go publish my first article on there as I was half way through reading yours. I went back and finished reading of course! Thanks for the great advice. Here’s hoping I get some results. If anyone is keen I’ll publish what traffic comes my way from the source in my monthly income and traffic reports. I won’t expect huge numbers to start with though.
Wow, congrats Lloyd, that’s really cool!
And yea, I definitely wouldn’t expect major numbers to start with, but it takes so little time and it’s a platform that’s easy to build up, so in my eyes, it’s absolutely worth it.
Cheers!
Hi Chelsea. I had not heard of Medium before reading about it here. I like the idea of republishing my content although I had read many times that we need to avoid duplicate content. Thanks for clarifying that. It seems to me that republishing on Medium, or similar places, would be a great way to breathe new life into older evergreen content. I just looked back through the older comments and saw that Bob already had the idea. I might try that too. Thanks.
Yea, I think it can be a great way to breathe new life into older content that’s still evergreen and relevant.
Also, I remembered your picture from earlier today & I saw that you followed me on Twitter earlier & that you’re in Asheville too. How cool!
I have heard of Medium before and it has a great value towards Google. Will definitely try this. Thanks for introducing republishing.
Thanks Chelsea
My pleasure, Pankaj! Good luck! 🙂
Thank you. I was thinking if Medium is one of the republishing tool, we can use LinkedIn as well for the same purpose, what do you think?
Also, if these two can be used, there has to be more of similar stuff. Are you aware of any other similar?
Hey Pankaj – Yes, I use LinkedIn for republishing as well.
I’m not really sure of other platforms that are worthwhile beyond these two, except for larger, more well-known publications who regularly republish the work of authors they like. (But getting their attention can be near impossible.)
Hi, Chelsea,
This was a very informative article! I had heard of Medium but never considered republishing content there.
I will have to look into it more.
Thanks for sharing this information,
Sue
Hey Sue Anne,
Yes, I think Medium presents a great opportunity for republishing and expanding your reach.
Good luck however you decide to use (or not use) it!
Cheers!
Hi Sue and Chelsea,
Thought I would share my two cents on how I expanded my traffic even more by putting an email subscriptions box in my all my Medium posts
You can also grow your email list by putting an email sign up box in all your Medium post, that way you loose any potential email fans =)
I did it using https://rabbut.com/ to collect emails for me on Medium. Something that I built because Mailchimp doesn’t have the functionality to send my latest Medium post to my subscribers.
Hope it works out for you guys =) I’m happy to give you a personal tour on how to set up Rabbut.
Kate
P.S even Jon Westernbery is using it in his posts now =)
https://medium.com/life-learning/following-your-dreams-is-easy-15432c74fb51#.5zj2lswv6
Very cool, Kate! Thanks for the tool suggestion!
Nice post, Chelsea.
I loved it.
Medium is something new to me. As a readaholic I would find the platform interesting.
When I hear about content syndication I used to worry about duplicate content. Not now.
I would tweak the title so as to avoid Medium articles outranking my original content.
Cheers,
Aks~
Hello Chelsea.
First of all I want to say big thank you for sharing such a valuable information.
I heard about medium but never thought that it can help me to generate traffic. I didn’t start a blog yet, hope so it will happen soon.
I want to ask a one question that how many words we should write or how many words of blog we should write on medium so that it will help us to gain new audience? Please tell me the range.
Thank you very much once again ?☺:).
Hey Shubhankar,
As far as range, you’ll notice if you sign up for Medium and start receiving a Daily Digest email that Medium gives you a “count” for how many minutes they estimate a post will take you to read.
Once you see that, you’ll realize that word count is far less important that readability and relevance. I’ve seen one-minute reads do just as well as 15-minute reads. It all depends.
Cheers!
Thank you Chelsea. 🙂
Hi Chelsea
An awesome piece of work. Thanks for sharing. I am going to look into it now.
Thanks, Rajkaran! 🙂 Best of luck!
It is the first time am hearing about it. Thank you for sharing the Medium process
Excellent post Chelsea, thank you! I’m new to Medium, both as a reader and writer, but so far I’ve found many interesting and well-written posts and highly engaged readers. I find myself in exactly the position you describe – working very hard on crafting content for my blog and wondering how to generate more traffic. Balancing writing with promotion to find more readers is proving difficult. I’m excited about trying the tips you recommend here. I love Twitter by the way – very addictive with so many interesting viewpoints and articles out there – and Medium seems to have similar potential for addiction! As you mention, this is good news for writers!
Definitely agree on the similarities of getting hooked on Twitter and Medium. The good thing is though, they help each other out… if someone’s following you on Twitter and has a Medium account, then they’re following you on Medium as well.
Best of luck in getting new traffic! 🙂
Thanks for the tips. I’m in new blogger and I can use all the help I can get.
Awesome, Moshe – best of luck!
Great post Chelsea. Just signed up to contribute to Medium. 😀 There’s already so many platforms to pay attention to already, right?
Yes, soooooo many!
I like Medium though because of the large potential in exchange for minimal time. But it’s definitely important to pick and choose!
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Thank you for this wonderful post Chelsea. I would definitely try Medium!
Thanks for the sweet words, Ashutosh! Best of luck! 🙂
Hello and thank you for your great and useful article. I’ve never used the site Medium, but it looks really easy to use and pretty interesting. This will be my next way to help me promoting my content! 🙂
Hey Plamen – yea, I love Medium’s potential. I hope it works for you! Cheers! 🙂
Hi Chelsea,
Excellent post here.
I’m glad you helped clarify Google’s take on duplicate content. That was something I did wonder about when using a site like Medium.
You have laid out such a comprehensive article on Medium, I doubt I’ll need anything else to get started.
Thanks,
Matthew
Thanks for the kind words, Matthew! Best of luck!
Great the given information and after refer that post,i get new energy because of all given information very excellent and real words to implemented for you.Thank you so much shared that valuable information.
No problem, Priya. Wish you all the best 🙂
Hi Chelsea.
You hit the nail on the head.
Getting traffic is so very hard.
Read each and every word of this post
And am so happy to have discovered Medium.
Hope this works.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
Regards.
Best of luck, Vee!
You know what’s hilarious, is the fact that I just republished my blog posts to Medium this past weekend! Ha. I do not have a big audience yet since I just started on my own adventure and was looking for a more social way to share my content that wouldn’t upset Google. Seeing this blog post immediately after the fact gives me confidence in knowing I made a good move! Hurray! On to write more content 🙂
Haha, that is funny. Congrats on getting started on Medium though… I hope it works well for you!
Thx Chelsea,
Two questions.
When you refer to headline I assume this means the same as title.. the ‘Title’ of my blog post?
You say we should save some original content for your blog and dont republish to Medium – 25 – 50%. What about the other way around. Should I be posting some original content ONLY to Medium? Or just concentrate on ‘Responding’ to other posts there??
Thanks, very informative.
Hey Shanny,
Yes, headline and title are the same thing.
As far as the original content thing… that’s totally up to you. Jonas (mentioned in the article) publishes exclusively to Medium, but makes sure he collects email addresses with every post. It depends on your business & your goals.
Hey Chelsea!
Great article! I am taking so much away from it! Was really dicey about being on medium but you’re article gave me the confidence. I started reposting a day back.
There are many publications in my niche over there so we can personally submit our work to them. Some of them expect you to write again and again for them. Do you think that would be helpful for my blog in the end?
Great post by the way! It was so precise and long term planning! Thank you 😉
Thanks Jade!
I don’t know if it would be worth it to write again and again for one publication (especially without pay), but I don’t think it would hurt to see what kind of results you get with a few articles and weigh whether or not it’s worth it to continue.
Cheers!
Amazing post. I will take this advice to heart and begin looking at Medium right away. Thanks for your insight. I learned so much from this article, Looking forward to reading more!
I’m glad it was helpful for you, Rahul! Wish you the best!
Great tips Chelsea! On my way to start my own Medium blog right now. Very excited to reap some results.
Sorry, I’m a little late to this party, but its a GREAT post and I’ve been following your suggestions and playing around. Here are some thins I DON’T understand:
“There are many publications on Medium that have large audiences of people with specific interests,” says Mike Fishbein, who has a 3.8k following and has had his posts picked up to be featured in The Huffington Post and The New York Observer. “Getting your story included there can give you exposure to thousands of readers that you may not have otherwise reached.”
HOW DO I GET ON THESE? For example, I found ghost story one which I write, but how do I submit to it?
Questions about pictures. I notice on the main page and scroll down list, the main pictures are very horizontal. Is there a standard? How are they like that? So far I’ve only done imports, but other imports have had this style. Please advice.
Thanks again for the GREAT post. I’m having fun!
~ Tam Francis ~
http://www.girlinthejitterbugdress.com
Dear Chelsea Baldwin, Thank you for your excellent article on “How to Get More Traffic from Every Post by Republishing on Medium”. By the way, I want to know about social bookmarking. Can you assist me on this topic? Keep the great writing skill up. Thanks again Buddy!
I like this article. Very usefull! Thx
I used to shy away from rehashing old content at the fear of being penalized but now I know better. I’m glad you wrote this article, Chelsea!
Medium seems like a solid way to get a good boost in traffic. Will definitely give it a try.
Nice update Chelsea, To be frank with you, am scared to this. reasons being that my blog is still new and if i republish in medium, i might end up outranking the original one on my blog.
What do you have to say about the post outranking the original one.
Right now, Medium gives you the perfect opportunity to share your blog content with the 800K+ visitors they get everyday (Credit source: http://nativeadvertising.com/part-publisher-part-social-network-medium-is-building-the-future-of-brand-storytelling/).
What Chelsea has written will probably save your blog from rotting in the dust. There is another effective way to direct more traffic to your blog from Medium (which I have personally done), and it’s commenting on other people’s Medium post: https://rabbut.com/how-commenting-on-medium-blogs-got-me-traffic-to-my-blog/
Simple right? But you’d be surprised how much engagement Medium can bring to your blog. Best of luck!
This is a very informative post. I never thought of medium as a traffic source. Now am going to work on it. Thanks for this wonderful post.
Hello Chelsea,
Amazing thought you’ve shared with us! Medium is really a great concept to me. We’ll be really benefited from the method you described. Thanks once again.
This is really good blog..
Now I am thinking of using this to get more traffic by republishing my blogs on medium.
Steps that you mentioned in this blog will help me a lot.
Thank You…
Indeed! Medium is wonderful! 🙂
Medium is wonderful! We’ve been using it for a few months now and it has such an easy-to-use interface, plus we can make our posts look almost exactly the same as they do on WordPress… no serious altering of formatting. I appreciate that they allow duplicate content since it seems there are very few big sites out there now that do.
I am still very scared to re-publish my content. But we need it. It’s impossible to create new content every day, especially when you’re handling many blogs.
Moreover, one must promote content properly and I think re-publishing is a great way to promote that content. Thank you for such a well explained post. I really liked how you not only described about Medium but also gave certain to tips to make the most out of this platform. 🙂
I hadn’t heard of Medium before reading this post.
I’m launching my blog next week. So I’m just getting started. One thing that has been frustrating me is that I really like Tumblr but it doesn’t seem to be a good tool for serious bloggers. Though Medium seems to be significantly different, it may be able to fill that “Tumblr void”.
I’ll have to check it out.
If you guys want to republish your Wordpress blog content onto Medium, there’s a simple Wordpress plugin for it. I wrote a guide on it: https://rabbut.com/how-to-republish-your-wordpress-blog-posts-onto-medium/
Should take you no longer than 5 minutes to set it up. 🙂
Informative post indeed!
Medium is completely new to me. Giving it a shot right away!
Thanks for sharing this amazing tool! 😀
Hello. Pro guide for newbie. Thank a lot.
Thanks a lot for this helpful post…
I just want to confirm.
which option is better, pasting or importing story?
Hey Pawan – I’d say just choose which one you feel most comfortable with. The end result is the same!
I’m a feature writer coming back from a hiatus, plus I don’t have a blog. I’ve been getting Medium everyday for a while now and love the variety, but I didn’t know I
could submit posts. I’m fairly active on Twitter with over 600 followers, so that seems to be a plus. But, aw, I guess I’m going to have to break down and create a
website. I write about and am fascinated by an eclectic array of stuff, so I can’t decide what I’d call my blog or how I’d niche it down. I suppose my 5 or 6 areas of
interest on Medium would give me a wide choice of subjects to write about. As an
experienced magazine and newspaper feature writer, I have a low threshold for boredom and don’t want to be limited to a one-topic niche or blog. Thanks for your unexpected help with this, Chelsea. Oh, and I like Disqus much more than Quora. IMHO, Quora’s format is confusing and not very user-friendly.
Such a nice write up…
I’ve been using the medium to republishing existing content for 1 year. But still, I’m not unable to drive traffic.
But after reading this guide, I think I could generate traffic to my blog.
Thanks for sharing…