Updated 12/9/20. Content updates in Italics to reflect updated thoughts on Medium.
I recognize that I’ve been absent in my blog maintenance, so for the 3 people who have checked in (well, a random 52 person spike in May, despite no posts), my apologies. I won’t bore you with 52-55 hour work weeks (with many exciting components that are fleshing out my professional development), moving tribulations and general dog maintenance that I now find myself participating in.
While I haven’t had much to say, I’ve certainly read a lot. At some point, I started noticing that my Twitter feed was cluing into a bunch of articles from Medium, which I’ve honestly really enjoyed. At least, until I hit the limit of monthly members-only posts, which was irritating because I didn’t even notice the designation half the time.
What is Medium?
As a content platform, I find the nature of Medium fascinating; anyone can publish on Medium, and most of the content is created by communicators who are passionate about their subject matter. As I dove deeper, I noticed a theme: much of the communicators’ expertise is actually Medium itself. One of the hardest ways to break into the habit of reading on Medium is getting past the level of self-reference and digital landscape knowledge many of the writers assume the audience possesses. Much of the platform is dedicated to succeeding on online platforms, rather than traditional Subject Matter Expert (SME) blogs that focus on traditional non-web learning. It feels like home, but that might also just be the content that’s been curated for me.
Read enough of these articles, or scroll through enough of them, and suddenly every other headline is “How to Get 1,000 unique Followers on Medium in a Month,” and I’m wondering…can I? But…I already have a blog, so why would I? The immediate argument is exposure for consistent content creators.
What are the Benefits?
Tallie Gabriel does a fantastic job breaking down The Pros and Cons of Publishing on Medium, and ultimately, it’s a choice an author makes to build audience, but at the sacrifice of brand loss. I’m glad Tallie brought up SEO in the article as well: it’s a given that a personal blog will fall to a platform with massive readership and more Google authority- it’s something my 9-5 gig sees daily with our business partners. What it boils down to is a question of audience versus brand: do you have a brand big enough (or with growing potential) to stand alone and dominate rankings, or are you willing to sacrifice that brand for massive readership?
The question isn’t set in stone; I think it depends on what the goal of your writing is. Are you a journalist who churns content with frequency? Or are you a professional in your given field using your writing to expand your online portfolio/resume (Mine is here by the way)? There’s multitudes in between, and it’s not an either or question, but given the scope of Medium’s readership and platform, it’s definitely a viable option to building an online presence.
December 2020 Updates
Since writing this, I’ve noticed that more than anything, Medium is less of a knowledge dump, but rather, an external portfolio host, which, if you can, can generate a small passive income and boost external SEO links.