Is your blog not getting the traffic you want? Use the power of Medium!

Monday August 28, 2017 , 4 min Read

Launched in 2012, Medium is a social content-sharing platform. It has more than 60 million readers each month, and the year 2015-16 saw a 140 percent increase in its visitors. Medium is valued at $600 mil; in 2016, it had a weekly story count of 1,40,000. Many of the world’s beloved companies like Slack, GE, Intel, BMW, etc. use Medium extensively.

Image: Shutterstock

Here’s an interesting fact – Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Medium, is also Twitter’s co-founder. In fact, as a testament to its popularity, in 2015, the White House used Medium to release the full text of the State of the Union Address to the public before former US President Obama entered the Capitol building as they wanted “everyone to read along, but the public remains in the dark. This year we change that.”

Any blogger worth his salt knows that the Holy Grail for blogging is all about getting visitors to the website. Your current subscribers are a tiny part of the potential traffic that you could rake in by targeting other platforms and not just your email list. But hey, don’t forget about the importance of collecting an email list. You can choose to write on Medium, making the most of its advantages. For example, if you write about fintech startups on Medium, it will go directly to people who are interested in reading the same. Not only is the audience highly targeted, the interface is impeccable too, making it almost impossible to shut off from the platform without reading a few more articles.

You can use the following fixes to get traffic from Medium using content that you have already published elsewhere.

Convert your Medium readers into email subscribers

Divert traffic from your Medium posts to your blog using links on the post. If you are already using links in your article, they automatically get transferred when you import your post to Medium. One of the best ways to drive traffic is to get readers to sign up to be a part of your email list. There is no way to embed a sign-up form on Medium, so direct them to a landing page where you give them the option to sign up. Use an incentive like a free e-book or a giveaway to entice the reader to sign up.

Repost content on Medium

A very obvious growth hack when it comes to Medium is reposting content, thereby giving yourself a chance to find a new audience and followers. Use Medium to republish content that you have not been compensated for on being published in other portals and for which you own the full rights.

Use certain types of articles to find max exposure

Who doesn’t love stories? Share stories about how you achieved something or how something you started became a colossal failure. Talk about incidents that touch the sensitivities of other people. Write high-quality content pieces that people will love sharing. Don’t mind being vulnerable and opening up to your audience – the more you share, the better they will be able to relate to you. It is perfectly all right to take a controversial stand on something that you believe in which is completely different from the status quo. You will have people hooked to you if your content is valuable to them, and if you can stoke emotions of any kind in them with the power of your words.

Share your content with publications

Topics curated around a particular topic are called “publication”. Find publications that revolve around your expertise and get your write-ups included in them. These publications usually have a bigger follower count than you, which can be leveraged. Use Medium’s search bar to find the most relevant topics for you.

With all being said, you will notice that on Medium, the stories that get the highest attention of readers are the ones where the headline grabs a lot of attention. You need to take steps to make it happen, as is the case with anything in life. Good luck with your goal!