What is Medium?
If you haven’t heard of Medium, the social media platform for readers and writers, I probably wouldn’t blame you. It has definitely flown under the radar of all the big players in the game despite earning over 100 million users since its launch in 2012.
The various interfaces of the Medium app, including the feed, notifications and user profiles.
One of the key features of the app is paid memberships for unlimited content access (there are only a certain number of articles that can be read per month using the free account), as well as being able to support your favourite writers with tips. We can see a similar concept with new social media platform, Sunroom, which has multiple payment options.
There is also the Partner Program which allows users with 100 followers or more the ability apply to be rewarded by their readers financially as above.
The Medium user experience is pretty smooth with a decent level of personalisation with personal profiles. See below for my own Medium page. (Love a cheeky plug!) I have yet to use the Premium level account and am waiting to hit the 100 followers to potentially monetise my work.
It’s great to have another written content platform option available, particularly with the domination of image and video sharing since the inception of Instagram and Tik Tok. Twitter has largely been the only social media app available with a focus on words. I was actually encouraged during my social media course at university to join Twitter as a writer which I had given up on long ago, but have reconsidered it recently. (For help deciding which social media app is for you, see here.)
Medium is great because you are able to filter down your interests and follow/be served content that you would be interested in reading. I’ve noticed an increased SEO focus which is also interesting and shows a clear difference between talented writers and ones simply doing it for views, reads and engagement. There are many publications on the site that are created by users to foster communities and help users. I’ve contributed to New Writers Welcome which helps promote new writers by enhancing their reach.
If you’re a keen writer, it’s a great way to have an easily accessible portfolio of work (you could technically add previous work here and add a link to its original publication location), or use it to enjoy a sense of freedom with your writing. As you can see from my profile, I write about a range of topics that come to mind!
Thinking about joining Medium now? Give me a follow!
Update: Medium has made a decision to “remove story editing features from our native apps” to focus on being more of a reading experience. This means that writers can no longer create, edit and publish work on the go on their phones, which in 2022, seems utterly ridiculous. If Medium is wanting to focus on being a place for readers, doesn’t there need to be content to read? Very odd decision.