Why all bloggers should be on Medium – Thomas Kuegler

Today’s post and podcast interview is potentially a game-changer for many of you. Thomas Kuegler is a Medium master who stops by to dive into the potentially HUGE benefits of publishing original content on Medium, as well as simply re-publishing your EXISTING blog posts! Enjoy šŸ™‚

Most bloggers know what Medium is, but don’t really know how to use it.

Whenever I used to think about writing on BOTH Medium and my own blog…I’d shudder.

  • Who has that time?
  • What’s the purpose anyways?
  • Why should I

Well, Tom Kuegler is here to save the day and show us why and how we could all benefit from using Medium.

Keep scrolling for the blog post…but in the podcast interview, we also chat about:

  • When Thomas learned interning at Disney
  • Building a freelance client base through Upwork
  • How to “package your content” better for each platform
  • How to utilize Medium, of course
  • and more.

NOTE: Before we dive in, I want to promote a few things:

  1. Thomas also has an entire course on using Medium to grow a following and monetize it. Check out Medium Mastery.
  2. That’s actually it šŸ˜‰

Ok let’s dive in.

Listen to my episode exploring Medium with Thomas Kuegler

or listen on Apple Podcasts \\ Google Podcasts

Show notes and referenced links

Why all bloggers might want to get on Medium today:

Tom said it right away:

ā€œIf you have your own WordPress blog, definitely get on Medium right away.ā€

Tom was adamant about this, and after spending about 2 weeks researching everything he said on this episode, I gotta say…

I agree with him.

There is literally no downside in my eyes.

First, you can republish existing content.

  1. Medium makes this so dang easy.
  2. It takes all of like, 90 seconds (plus a few more minutes to reformat if necessary)
  3. You can reach a whole new audience with surprisingly little effort.
  4. It doesn’t hurt SEO (you gotta use the import feature though)
  5. It doesn’t cost you a THING.

Why not?

(Honestly, I couldn’t find an answer to that question)

Here’s how to import stories on Medium

  1. Get a Medium account if you don’t have one already
  2. Click ā€œstoriesā€ under your profile image.
  3. Click ā€œImport a storyā€
  4. Enter the URL of the original blog post
  5. Update the formatting a bit to look better.
how to import stories on medium
Use the import feature to avoid screwing up SEO

More than likely, the line breaks, subtitles, and images may not look the best right when you import them…so you’ll want to play around with them.

Second, writing original content on Medium is easy, fun, and potentially great exposure…

…for not a lot of work.

Again, there’s no need to SLAM SEO, Pinterest marketing, or hustle to get eyeballs on your content early on.

(Though it’s important to note: You WON’T be getting a ton of views right off the bat by default. You’ll still have to publish regularly before you see ANY traction.)

It’s an odd platform when it comes to marketing…

You will have to show up consistently with great content and get on a few publications (which is extremely easy by the way)…but for those of us constantly obsessed with driving traffic from XYZ platform…Medium is a breath of fresh air.

It forces us to focus on the content.

Use Smedian to quickly and easily apply for publications

This is surprisingly simple.

  1. Head to Smedian and sign up (it’s free)
  2. Your main dashboard will be smedian.com/pubs
  3. Heck, just start click the green buttons to app lol, or search up in the top right for publications.
smedian dashboard
Smedian makes it SUPER EASY to get on big publications

Note: Some of the more established publications will make you answer a question or two to make sure you understand the rules, etc. It’s worth it šŸ™‚

The bottom line:

It’s totally weird that you could sign up on Medium, write a few small but heart-felt posts over a week or two, get on a few publications with 10 minutes of work, and potentially publish a post to thousands of eyeballs.

It still requires good content, but it’s still weird. šŸ™‚

What type of content works best on Medium?

Read the next sentence twice:

NOT HUGE HOW-TO POSTS.

I.e. my upcoming blog monetization post (which is already around 4k words and is halfway done) probably wouldn’t be a home run on Medium.

However, my The hardest part about writing every day post did quite well, and it’s a 2 minute read.

According to Tom:

  • Lessons learned posts can do well
  • 750-1,000 words tends to be a sweet spot for him personally.
  • Emotional, vulnerability, or opinion based posts tend to perform well.
  • Lots of line breaks (Follow the 1-3-5 rule of blog post formatting. 1 main idea in roughly 3 sentences spread over 5 lines on the page).
  • Great looking images (btw, you can insert pics directly from Unsplash IN your Medium post. Really cool).
Allow you to search Unsplash and add pics right from here!

Final thought: Don’t abandon your own blog

This should hopefully be a ā€œduhā€ moment, but I am in NO WAY suggesting you ā€œstart overā€ on Medium and abandon your own domain, WordPress, etc.

Please don’t do that.

  1. Instead, sign up on Medium today (it’s free and takes 60 seconds?), and try republishing your next blog post.
  2. Make sure to use the built-in import feature so as not to screw up Google juice (in other words, don’t copy and paste your entire article).
  3. Then, if you feel so inclined, produce an original piece of content or two. It’s fun, and you are free from sticking to your main blog’s niche as well.
  4. Make sure to add a Call to Action (with a link back to your site, landing page, etc) at the end of each post!
medium cta
Be sure to add CTAs back to your own blog

(Personal finance blogger and want to talk about marketing? Or your dogs? Or a movie? Medium is your go-to if you don’t want to cross-pollinate on your own site!)

One more takeaway from my chat with Thomas

ā€œPackage your content for the platform.ā€

I love this idea.

Tom was talking about how some of the GIANTS on Medium, who regularly reach massive amounts of people…were reusing their Medium content on LinkedIn.

And bombing.

LinkedIn requires a totally different type of content than Medium, your own Blog, Twitter, or Facebook…even if that content essentially SAYS the same thing.

It’s important to ā€œpackageā€ your content to best suit the needs of each platform.

For LinkedIn, I’d probably avoid using the term ā€œbloggingā€ and instead use ā€œcontent marketing.ā€

It’s more business-y, legitimate sounding, etc.

The same holds true for republishing on Medium.

When I take my already-snarky content and republish on Medium, I have to do a bit of formatting and language work to make it fit in a bit better.

Also, if one were to add a ā€œhow-toā€ style post to Medium, one should probably attempt to make it more of a personal-style read.

This could include removing some of the hard-tactics and replacing with personal stories or opinions.

Mold your content for the platform.

Drop me a comment below. Are you on Medium? Want to be? What do you think?

Keep Reading

16 Responses

  1. Interesting, I’ve never heard of medium for referral traffic. How is it going for you in terms of stats?

    Fri, signed up for that cool blogging conference. Awesome that you’re presenting on day 4!

    1. “Presenting” is a bit of a stretch. More like rambling about blogging šŸ™‚

      It should be noted: Medium isn’t specifically built to drive traffic back to your own site, though it can eventually. More of a platform itself…

      But with proper use of CTAs and bio paragraphs at the end of the post, all that exposure should hopefully get “collected” back into your community (email list, etc). šŸ™‚

    2. Hey Olivia!

      It’s Tom. šŸ™‚

      Medium is going GREAT for me as far as stats. It all depends on if you can get into publications. With the help of resources like smedian.com, it’s really really easy for writers to get into publications. Most times all you have to do is click a button that says “request to contribute” and you’ll be added within 3 days.

      I average around 70k page views per month there!!

  2. Nice!! I always heard about it. I did one post …a long ago…but I copied and pasted šŸ™ I’ve been wanting to get on some publications, so totally gonna try this out. Thanks Pete!!

    1. Javi,

      Go for it!! Medium is still in its infancy which is crazy to say because it has been around for years.

      It’s still super easy to get into publications. Use smedian.com to easily request to contribute to publications! Most times they just have a button to click beside the publication. Aim for big pubs like The Ascent + The Writing Cooperative. They both have 30k + followers!

  3. I’m already on three medium sites (by invite), two of them are in the medium top 100 sites

    would you suggest creating my own medium blog in addition to those, or concentrate on the three I already feature in? I’ve put stuff on medium independently at random, but the response has been very mediocre, whereas the established sites pull in a high readership

    1. I’d keep focusing on what’s working, especially if you’ve already tried the alternative šŸ™‚

      Which ones btw? Curious what you mean by Medium “sites?”

  4. This is interesting but I have a concern. From what I understand, you own copyright for what you publish on Medium – whether you repurpose from your own blog or post on Medium originally. However, Medium can use your copyrighted material to sell, republish, or repost in any form, including selling it.

    So if you have a post from your own blog that goes viral but that you also post on Medium, couldn’t Medium possibly “scoop you” by selling it to major outlets, and not give you the proceeds?

  5. Thank you! You guys are great! This is such an easy-to-follow guide and helped me import all my blog posts on medium and also answered my question regarding SEO issues for my site.

  6. Finally did it! Set up a Medium account and imported a post! We’ll see how this plays out šŸ˜€

    1. No prob! It’s definitely not a one-time “oh look extra traffic!” opportunity, but could add up nicely over time šŸ™‚

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