How to Become a Top Writer on Medium
Guidance to new writers to gain top writer status in first three months
This article was written by the founder and chief editor of Illumination (Dr Mehmet Yildiz).
Photo by Belle Co from Pexels
1 — Increase the chance of virality.
I shared my findings in this story titled “This Is My Simple Formula To Creating Viral Stories”.
I categorized them under seven points in my previous article. Here is a summary of the key points:
1 — Your story needs an enticing title, a subtitle, and a cover photo. Your first and second paragraphs are critical to creating visibility for your stories.
2 — You need to have a first paragraph to hook your reader.
3 — Your last paragraph must be conclusive and entice readers to read the full story if they only check your conclusion. Yes, many readers only check the conclusion for quick tips about their interest areas.
4 — Your reading times come from the main body of the story. So your first and last paragraphs entice the readers to spend time on your main content.
5 — Readers prefer credible writers in their topics. You must find smart and subtle ways to depict your expertise in a chosen field.
6 — Engagement is an essential factor for gaining visibility. Not only engaging in other writers’ stories but also engaging in comments left on your stories. Responding to comments encourages your readers to read your future articles.
7 — Sharing your stories on multiple social media platforms may not bring you desired reading times, but they help your stories to be discovered by search engines. The more backlinks your stories create, the more chance they get indexed by search engines.
Here is an article depicting my experience and observation of viral stories in 2021.
What I Learned by Reviewing 100+ Viral Articles in 2021
I introduce distinctive patterns of viral content gaining mass attraction, increasing your chance in 2022.medium.com
2 — Write consistently.
You need to write almost every day. If you write a story daily, you generate around 30 stories a month. Suppose you post two stories, and the amount doubles. Sixty stories make more impact on the visibility of your profile. I know some prolific writers post three stories a day.
Writing every day has two key benefits to achieving top writer status.
Firstly each story you write notifies your readers and keeps your readers engaged with your stories.
Secondly, the more engagement in your stories, the higher your stories get on the tag pages.
3 — Increase your followers.
Even though followers do not make a huge difference, you still need some followers because you cannot have regular readers without having followers.
Increasing your followers is a good start but not the primary goal. The critical point is to convert your followers to your regular readers. Your engagement with your readers can increase your chance of influencing them to be your regular readers.
You can ask a few questions like: Does my story solve a problem for my readers? Does it entertain them? Does it inform them?
Here is an article to guide on how to increase followers
6 Easy & Proven Tips to Increase Followers
Followers matter to new writers. Here’s how to gain more followers meaningfully without stressing too much.medium.com
This article provides insights on building your reading audience.
8 Proven Tips to Build a Rock-Solid Reading Audience
A game-changing strategy for freelance writers to turn loyal readers into advocates for sustainable business outcomesmedium.com
And subscribers are critical to increasing reading times.
Subscribers Can Produce 50 Times Better Results Than Followers for Freelance Writers
How I gained 100K subscribers in a decade. 12 powerful strategies, tactics, and techniques to create a solid mailing…medium.com
4 — Amplify your stories using short-form stories frequently.
Short-form stories are easy and effective. Many readers prefer short forms. The purpose of short-form stories is not to earn income. They hardly bring any reading times.
However, the goal is to create a hook for your new readers. The short-form story should entice your new reader to read your long-form stories by giving teasers.
They can include questions and key points from your long-form stories. You can learn more about short-form stories in this article.
To prevent duplication, always handcraft your short-form stories refraining from copying and paste of your long-form stories.
Medium does not allow duplicate content. It is against the policy, so your account can have the risk of suspension if the monitoring algorithm detects duplication. Unfortunately, it has happened to many writers.
Always remember to add a link to your long-form story in the short form. It is obvious, but sometimes writers forget to add links.
Without a link, it can be challenging for your readers to find your stories. Readers don’t have much time. There are thousands of writers and millions of stories. You need to make it easy for your readers to find your content.
5 — Join writing prompts and challenges.
Even better, you might create prompts and challenges. You can invite writers with whom you collaborate on specific topics and genres.
I noticed that many poets use prompts, and they build a good network using this technique. It is also fun. It can motivate and help you overcome writer’s block.
Here are four common writing challenges many writers participated in and enjoyed.
100 Day Challenge For New Writers
For the last one, you can copy and paste questions from the story to your draft and answer each question. Readers enjoy knowing more about the writers they follow. This is an excellent opportunity for you to provide more information about yourself.
No one gets anywhere by being shy. Introduce yourself with confidence.
If you are a new writer, you need to create a writer bio introducing yourself and your writing practice to your readers. “About me” stories get lots of readers. Such a story is an excellent opportunity for you to gain new readers.
Besides, you can give a taste of your stories by introducing a few links to your important stories. You can find sample writer bios in this collection. I always share this story with new contributors joining my publications.
6 — Write for publications following specific rules.
These rules aim to increase the quality and readability of your stories. I don’t know about other publications, but it is my goal to contribute to our publications.
I want them to gain more readers and more reading times. Therefore, I created a simple checklist to help them meet the quality requirements. You can also check the guidelines for my publications if you are just joining them.
More information about my publications is in this process and procedures article.
7 — Share links to your stories on multiple social media sites and Slack workspace.
They don’t bring immediate income, but they may get more traffic to your content and account in the long term.
I know we are busy and don’t have much time for social media. However, my recommendation is to use social media intelligently.
Using practical techniques, my social media posts now get over three million impressions per month and bring substantial traffic to Medium.
I shared practical ways to use social media in this story. Based on feedback, many writers use this approach, and they gain benefits.
Illumination Slack workspace has several channels to share your stories with members. You can request access via our writer application platform.
Invitation to New Writers
To join our vibrant publications, please send a request via this link. We will help you gain visibility and succeed as a writer on Medium. Please mention the publication name with your Medium account ID in the request. If you are new to Medium, you can join via this link. Readers can read thousands of stories, and writers can monetize self-published content.
Illumination Integrated Publications include ILLUMINATION,
ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters, Technology Hits, SYNERGY, Readers Hope, Illumination on YouTube, Illumination Gaming, the Lampshade of Illumination, ILLUMINATION’s Blog, and the personal publication of our chief editor EUPHORIA.
 | A guest post by
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Thank you for sharing my story. I feel honored. I believe this story will help new writers on Medium. Please feel free to contact me on our Slack workspace if you have questions related this article.