Medium for Business: How to Use the Platform for Content Marketing

02 March 2020 Anne Laing

Medium is seldom mentioned as the top platform for content marketing. However, smart brands are actively using it to reach the audience that is more interested in “what” the author is saying as opposed to “how” or even “who” the author is.

In other words, Medium is less of a social network and more of a free-access farm for high-quality content.

Recent Facebook algorithm changes are prompting us to look closer at alternative venues for business promotion.

Does Your Business Need Medium?

That’s a very good question because if you are spreading your content marketing strategy thin by trying to be present on every social platform, you are most likely to fail. So, how can you be sure that trying Medium is worth it? See if you can relate to any of the below statements.

You are just starting out in content marketing, your brand does not have too many followers yet, BUT you are proficient enough to create valuable content on certain topics.
You want to reach beyond the existing brand audience and have your content appreciated by those who would have never visited your website or followed you on social media.
Your niche has to do with technology, startups, learning, self-improvement, culture, and politics - these are the ever-trending topics on Medium. Or you are selling marketing services and know how to create a KILLER headline (by “killer” I mean fascinating enough to stand out of hundreds upon hundreds of marketing stories).
You think about quitting the blog on your business website for various reasons, BUT you still want to publish articles, draw traffic to your website, and be recognized as an industry influencer.
You are looking for ways to syndicate your popular content.
Your business cannot afford a website, or your website is under construction, but you are ready to start building up your online presence now.
You want to promote your personal brand as part of your marketing strategy.

What You Can Expect From Medium

Basically, Medium is the place where your content can be discovered and appreciated for its true value. What does this mean for your business?

You can amplify your business by creating and maintaining a Medium publication (content collection) dedicated to it. As you will be getting followers on Medium, more and more people will become acquainted with your brand.
By creating popular stories on Medium, you will be driving quality traffic to your website.
With time, your target audience and other authors in your niche will begin to recognize you as an influencer and a go-to source of expertise.

Sounds great? Let’s see what you need to achieve these goals.

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How Does It Work?

Every story on Medium gets viewed by three types of audiences: the readers of this publication, the author’s followers, and those who follow the tag.

First of all, Medium will show your content to the people you are already connected to on other social media. Your followers on Medium will receive email notifications whenever you publish a new story. If a member recommends your story, it will be shown to his\her followers also.

A popular story can become an Editor Stuff Pick or a Top Story and be shown to the entire community.

Medium organizes content in reverse chronological order and into collections (now called publications). Every author can create publications, but you cannot add one post into more than one of them. Authors submit their content to the publications of their choice and wait for it to be approved and accepted by the creators of the particular publication. By the way, on Medium, readers usually roam from one publication to another searching for something to catch their eyes. So, authors are less concerned about how often they publish a story and more about the depth and relevance of their writing.

When most readers spend time flowing from one post to another, the value of a particular author’s identity diminishes. At the same time, the quality of your content will determine whether anyone will stay with it or skip it immediately after opening. People often enter Medium with a particular piece of content they had found elsewhere and stay to see what more there is to read. The philosophy of Medium holds that ten “smaller” contributors will cover a topic better than one great author.

Medium shows reading time for all stories and rates content based on reader engagement. This means that if people have read your content to the end most of the times and added many claps, it will inevitably become trending. The algorithm also takes into account the number of views and recommendations, but the read ratio (the percentage of people who actually read your story to the end) - is the most important metric.

Medium vs. WordPress.com

Both are blogging platforms and, strange as it may seem, many WordPress users are abandoning traditional blogging in favor of Medium.

Its editor has a minimalistic design, just like in WordPress, and offers very smooth writing experience.

At Medium, you can’t use multiple themes and customizations like in WordPress, you only get a chance to add images and change header designs. However, when it comes to sharing content, Medium is ten steps ahead. As you publish something, it will be visible to the entire community, and members will be able to find it by keywords, share, respond, and clap to it.

Along with WordPress, it enables sharing stories to other social networks by adding buttons and links to the text. Moreover, with Medium, you don’t need to install any plugins to have your new posts sent to the mailboxes of your followers.

While on WordPress you cannot monetize your blog on a free plan, Medium does not offer such opportunity at all.

Medium does not seem to have as many security problems as WordPress.com but still, all its content is stored in the same place and can be subjected to large-scale hacking.

And of course, if you don’t own a self-hosted blog and post on Medium or WordPress.com only, you are never in full control of your content.

How To Integrate Medium Into Your Content Marketing Strategy

Unfortunately, you cannot connect your Medium blog to your business profile on Facebook or Twitter and automatically add all followers in. You will need to use a personal account.

Add links to your website and social media accounts to all posts on Medium - you need to give people a chance to read more of your content if they want to.

Do not immediately republish all content from your blog to Medium. Wait for two weeks or more for Google to index your content and then publish a part of it as a Medium story with links to your website. Add canonical links when importing stories, and always check whether your Medium posts have their sources indicated properly.

Choose the articles you are going to republish wisely. It should meet the main criterion:

The article is of high quality, AND it is already generating a lot of traffic to your website, so you are quite sure that the audience likes it.

Use Google UTM tool to see which posts bring the most traffic to your website.

What You Definitely Need to Do on Medium

Create a profile.
Start a publication.
Import your content from other venues using the Import tool.
Track the right numbers: how many times the story was viewed and how many people read the entire article.
Interact with other authors by commenting on their stories. Write responses to materials that impress you, and pay attention to the responses you get for your posts. You can even update your posts to include certain points brought up in the comments.
Leave personal notes on margins to other authors. This is a very cool feature on Medium. As you receive notes yourself, it will also be up to you to decide which of them to make public and not. Request notes from other authors before publishing your content. Medium collaboration is definitely a thing you need to try out because it opens new vistas for networking.
Encourage your readers to respond and start conversations by tagging certain members directly in your stories.
Add smart titles AND subtitles. You can skip making subtitles only if you are 100% sure that the first lines of your post that will be automatically used for a preview will persuade readers to pay attention to the story.
Use original images and image grids for your posts whenever possible to amplify the content.
Write your stories and start publications with SEO in mind. Use keywords that are relevant to your business goals when creating a title and a URL slug for your new publication (medium.com/abc-corp-blog or medium.com/abc-corp-tech-blog is better than medium.com/abc).
For post titles, also use keywords and add as few stop words as looks natural, make them 50-60 characters long. Take care of title tags. Select the tags that are broad and relevant to your topic (here, you should not be guessing, do a research!) and add them amply throughout the story. In the text, use bold and italics to highlight the main points. Format your story title as a title and don’t forget about subtitles. Insert quotations and format them as such. Also, use the @... tool to mention other members.

What You Should Not Do on Medium

Have you been publishing a lot on Medium lately but nobody cares?

Check whether you are making one of these mistakes:

Your Medium blog is more like a public diary than a specialized media. Make sure your posts are relevant to Medium members and speak their language. If no one is responding to your stories, maybe you haven’t researched your target audience AND the audience of Medium as a platform. If your content doesn’t address their pain points and draw on their values, readers will have no reason to care about it.
Your headlines do not stand out, so your stories get lost among similar content. Spend some time to learn how to make headlines that draw clicks.
Your stories lack structure, so they are hard to scan through. Break the text into sections, add titles and dividers. Also, you can cut long sentences into two and reduce the size of huge paragraphs to avoid wordiness.
You ignore other members, do not request reviews from other authors before publishing stories, and do not respond to articles published by them. Medium allows its members to refine their style by leaving and receiving personal notes. If you don't use this opportunity to get and share professional recommendations with other experts in your industry, you are not making the most of this platform.
Your stories are not included in publications. If you do not submit content to collections, chances are that many Medium members can’t see them at all.
You make grammar mistakes. Okay, too many of them. Give your stories an extra proofread before publishing if you want them to be taken seriously.

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Do you have a plan to become an influencer, creative author with ever-trending articles or search for the right way to boost your business? I want to cheer you up because you are in the right place and at a good hour. The Medium platform is perfectly combined with all the ideas above and can be a wonderful solution for marketing content.

Get acquainted with a fresh set to fuel your business ideas and make all the customers going crazy. Meet the Ultimate Digital Marketing Bundle. It consists of 10 categories of multiple templates that are developed for brand-new ways of promotion.

For instance, let’s imagine you have created a blog on the Medium platform and to promote it every day. For such cases, you can appeal to this ultimate bundle and find there something really worthwhile and fascinating.

Marketing Bundle includes:

20 illustrations for your posts, crazy ideas, and backgrounds. Illustrations are a perfect method to catch users' eyes and keep them for a while.
10 unique icons for several topics. You will surely find something for your blog and bring joy to the readers (as you remember the main aim is a reader, as you have to convert him and bring into your business).
8 fonts which will shine you out the other authors. Your ‘loud’ header cannot only be remarkable by its accurate expression but also by its incredible design.
7 animated banners can complement your posts and make them more dynamic. There are no rules, where to use these banners, so you can use them everywhere you want.
15 landing page templates will be true helpers in order to create a new space for your business or convert more and more customers. The responsiveness of these templates guarantees their appropriate look on any devices and stable performance.
7 mockups are at your disposal, create stunning sites and blogs with a preview look.
also if you have an email marketing campaign. this bundle is a perfect choice because of its 15 newsletter templates for any event. They are ready-to-use and have a unique design. You just need to edit your text and apply it to your business.
135 design resources for marketing campaigns and medium posts, they are certainly incomparable and worth it. Believe that you will receive a greater fulfillment and find something exactly yours.
Holidays are every year and this bundle has cared about each of them and special designs. Grab 20 different holidays set and be confident in any case.

Ultimate Marketing Bundle is an exceptional solution for your Medium platform and business development, as it’s obvious that customers love with eyes. So your purpose is to draw them with your marvelous designs and tasty-looking heading.

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Good luck!

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5 Future-proof Content Marketing Ideas You Should Know

For a business, the biggest challenge is to stay ahead with their marketing strategy and it is not possible to a future-focused content strategy. When you jump on the bandwagon of a new type of content marketing, you need to figure out the possibilities for the respective content in the time to come. With competition mounting with every passing day, no longer just delivering new content and coming up with a new content strategy is enough. You need to make your content future proof.

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How can you do future-proofing of contents?

Let us start with the basics. What does this future proofing mean in the context of the digital contents or content marketing? Future proof contents basically refer to a type of content that remains valuable irrespective of the change in industry, marketplace, customer appreciation and market trends. Future proofing is done so that the contents do not lose value following changes in the market or in user appreciation level. Both over the web and in the real world outside you can see an array of brands that offer products and contents coming as fully shielded from the negative impact of changes in the market.

As a digital marketer, how can you ensure future proofing of your contents? Well, here below we provide a few future proof content marketing ideas.

1. Listen to your audience

We all know that marketing involves a broader dialogue with customers. So, it is your customer's voice that should be clearly heard through your marketing campaigns. Your contents should boast off all the elements that your target audience prefer. For content marketers, it is always advisable to listen to their loyal customers first. Only when you listen to your customers attentively you can create contents that drive interaction and engagement from them. There are various ways to listen to your audience and stay tuned to their needs.

First of all, encourage your audience to share their opinions and feedback.
Secondly, encourage them to comment and encourage them for customer generated contents.
Engage with your customers frequently through live chat or similar communication tools. Engage with your audience as frequently as possible.
Remain proactive and responsive to each and every of their reactions including feedbacks, comments and other types of gestures.
Always focus on customer problems when communicating with your customers.
Give your loyal customers priority when it comes to feedback drive.

2. Go with the strong wind

Yes, you guessed it right. By strong wind, we are referring to era-defining trends in the digital universe. There are countless examples of such trends that we can name in the recent past like flat web design, hamburger menu, lazy loading, infinite scrolling, etc. Many of these trends help to initiate a new era of design and development and most of these trends survived and became a harbinger of change in the design and development. The significance of these design trends has been huge for content marketing. Naturally, whoever first adapted to these trends have proved their design to be future proof.

Some of the key content types and trends that are enjoying more popularity and traction simply because of their usability include structured byte sized text content offering easy discoverability, short and interesting video, high definition images, infographics, illustrations, etc.
In recent times we have seen an increasing emphasis on engaging headlines that grab attention quickly and with a quantitative element set the expectation for the audience.
A visually appealing typeface that helps readability is another major trend in present day web contents.
Lastly, it is the expertise and depth of explanation that now enjoys more traction than contents lacking any unique point of view.
The low attention span of today's audience demands contents to be brief, visually structured and easily scannable for the users.

3. Add some evergreen value

There is a category called ‘evergreen content’ that invariably stays on top of content strategy as they always drive traffic and get an audience. Every business website and web app consider such contents as the most valuable resource since such contents never fail to generate traffic and user engagement. Even when you cannot produce evergreen contents, you should focus on creating contents that remain valuable for the users for a considerable time. Such contents that drive traffic for months to come together will help your content strategy to become future proof. Now, let us see which type of contents can help you being future proof.

Expert contents with every important aspect concerning the topic are given a place within the write-up can remain valuable irrespective of the time of creation.
Contents with a unique set of information or insights can have lasting value.
Contents with a unique tone, explanatory technique and elucidation can also have lasting value.

4. Striking a balance between data-driven insights and instinct

Getting help from the measuring tools that are ready to show you user engagement metrics is an invaluable way to deliver contents that are likely to remain popular and enjoyable over time. But while such metric and analytics can prove to be valuable to come up with a more future-ready content strategy, your creative instinct equally proves important.

Not all decisions related to your marketing should be backed by data and data-driven insights. Creative freedom to develop engaging contents is important to allow unthought-of creative spurt guiding your content strategy. If you consider data-driven content strategy as the science, instinctive creation of contents will bring the emotional and apathetic human touch to it.

5. Be open to user generated content

Finally, in the way Internet is brimming with customer generated contents, it should be a crucial and unmistakable element in your content strategy. Customer generated contents in the form of reviews, comments and social posts already drive a high volume of traffic and huge user engagement. Already, a majority of buying decisions are directly influenced by customer reviews and user feedbacks. We can easily say that the future of web to a great extent belongs to user generated contents. So, to make your content strategy future proof you need to encourage user generated contents.

Let’s wrap up!

Did we miss anything? Yes, for a future-proof content strategy deciding on content length as per the available space within a specific layout or design block will be important. Already, a vast array of websites and apps to create contents for the general service pages, prefer creating contents that fit in the layout and design blocks.