You don’t need your own website to start a blog. You can get going on a number of platforms. Here, we take a good look at how to start a blog on Medium.
Medium is a great choice of platform to get started in the world of blogging because it has a very small learning curve and you can be up and running within 10 minutes.
The site has a nice, clean look and all you will have to do is concentrate on your writing. Perfect for a beginner blogger looking to get into their stride creating content.
What is Medium?
Medium.com is a blogging platform, I think we’ve established that. But why does it exist?
To a reader, Medium is somewhere to find some of the best content on any subject imaginable. They charge readers a membership fee of $5 a month to gain access to all of the content.
This fee then helps Medium pay the writers for their work.
So, Medium also offers writers an instant way of earning money.
But the big gains from using Medium are in practising the art of writing online and in growing a following right from the start.
How Do I Start Using Medium?
This is really quite easy.
- Go to Medium.com.
- Click on the ‘Get Started’ button.
- Enter your email address.
- In the email that they send to you, click ‘Create Your Account’.
- Enter your name.
- Done.
You can now write a post (called stories on Medium) if you want (click on the avatar in the top-right, then ‘New Story’).
But it’s best starting off with all your ducks in a row before you publish anything if you want to make a success of your time on Medium. If you just want to use it to practice writing, then go for it, but it’s useful to get people reading your writing for feedback.
The bare minimum you need to do is get a profile picture of you on there (people like to see who they’re being told a story by), write a short description of yourself and what you will write about in your bio and edit your username (the bit after the @) to your own name if it’s available.
Here are a few key tips to make your Medium stories more enticing:
- Make your titles catchy, but not desperate. Use power words to enhance your title’s appeal.
- The most popular articles are over 5 mins read (around 750 words) but less than 10 mins (1000 words). This is just a guide, as shorter or longer stories can still be popular if they’re really useful and well written.
- Add an image to your story. Choose something relevant, eye-catching and unique.
- Choose one, key takeaway you want your reader to get from your story and make sure they know they will get it by reading your story.
- Start with a story within a story. This doesn’t have to be on all of them, but something interesting that introduces your subject matter, such as a personal anecdote, can hook the reader so that they read more.
If you really want to maximise how you perform on Medium from day 1, then there are a few more things to set up and learn before you publish.
Starting with a Bang on Medium!
The key to your success on Medium is the publications that stories can be published under.
These are a bit like online newspapers within Medium and are generally covering a certain topic. They are run by editors that choose whether stories are worthy of being published under their publication.
What you need to do is find the publications that best fit what you want to write about.
Then, read their requirements, find out how to submit your stories and check out some of the stories already on the publication.
On Medium, you can write as many drafts as you like before actually publishing any. This gives you the opportunity to write a few stories and submit them to publications right from the start.
You will get turned down a lot, that is just part and parcel of the process, but eventually you’ll get published on a publication and then, all of a sudden, you are in front of a much bigger audience.
To help you succeed, try smaller publications first and work up to the larger ones. You can submit stories to as many publications as you like, so if you get turned down by one, try another.
Another great way to get more eyes on your stories is to interact with other writers on Medium. This largely means commenting on a story if you have something useful to say. Your comments are published as if they are stories themselves, so they will come up in searches. This means, if you become good at commenting, you can extend your reach even further.
To do this, you would need to get the $5/month membership so that you can read all the articles. But there is so much great content on there that it will become a really useful part of your development as a writer, content creator, blogger and business owner.
Getting featured on an already established publication is ideal, but you can also start your own publication.
With your own publication you can invite other writers to contribute and build up your own platform within Medium to promote your own stories.
The Potential of Medium
Hopefully you can start seeing that using Medium as a blogging platform actually makes a lot of sense.
You can get started ridiculously quickly, you can interact with other bloggers straight away, you can start your own publication, you can even earn money on it when people start reading your stories (you are paid by the amount of time readers spend on your story).
But that is just the beginning. Your Medium blog can become a springboard for your overall blog business. With the right content plan and calls to action, you can send people from Medium to your own website, in future, where you might offer them something that helps them further with whatever they are searching for.
You can include email sign up links at the bottom of your stories to start building subscribers.
You can use it as a test-bed for content, whether that is for the subject matter, titles, images, videos or other aspects.
Medium is one of the best places to get started with blogging. It can even be the place you end up making your blog business hub.
Once you know how to start a blog on Medium, the potential is enormous!