What I Learned About Writing on Medium After One Year and 100 Articles
Experience is always the best teacher
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At the end of October, 2019, I committed myself to posting at least two articles per week — roughly 100 articles — on Medium for an entire year. As I write this, I’ve reached my goal: 52 weeks of publishing, 106 total stories (I published three stories in a week a couple of times). What better way to celebrate than with an article describing some fo the most important lessons learned?
In other words, get ready for yet-another person to write yet-another mostly worthless article about “How to be a successful writer on Medium” article. You’re welcome!
But first, a quick bit of context…
I study and teach about social media at Duke University. Through my studies, I’ve learned a ton, but I’ve always had one huge gap in my knowledge: I personally never created large amounts of social media content. To correct this shortcoming, and to more fully understand and appreciate what social media influencers do every day, I decided I needed to become a social media content creator.
Unfortunately, since I’m a researcher, that dramatically limits my choice of platforms. After all, aside from my mom, who wants to see TikToks of me giving lectures or Instagram posts of me sitting at my computer? That pushed me toward creating longform content like blogs, essays, and articles. The best place to post those is on Medium, so here I am.
In order to successfully build an audience on Medium, I knew I would need to focus my content on a single subject. Since I spent 15 years running venture-backed tech companies, and I also teach entrepreneurship courses at Duke, I decided I’d write articles about startups. Makes sense, right?
So far, I’ve been pleased with the results. I’ve grown my following to 5,000+ people and generated nearly half-a-million views. I’m not exactly a super-influencer, but I’ve got my niche, and, most importantly, I feel like I’ve helped lots of people. I get messages nearly every day thanking me for my articles, and, if I’m being honest, that’s a great feeling. I love teaching entrepreneurs, and I love how Medium has expanded my ability to help more of them, so I plan to keep…
