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 š
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:
- Thomas also has an entire course on using Medium to grow a following and monetize it. Check out Medium Mastery.
- That’s actually it š
Ok let’s dive in.
Listen to my episode exploring Medium with Thomas Kuegler
or listen on Apple Podcasts \\ Google PodcastsShow notes and referenced links
- Finding Tom ā A Millennial Travel Blog
- Tom Kuegler ā His Medium channel
- Medium Mastery – Tom’s AMAZINGLY thorough Medium course. Use “oriels” for $100 off š
- Adventurous Kate – travel blog
- Smedian | 300 Publications
- SEO and duplicate content ā Medium Support – This is important if you want to republish existing content on Medium.
- Tiffany Sun on medium – misstiffanysun.com
Why all bloggers might want to get on Medium today:
Tom said it right away:
āIf 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 sayā¦
I agree with him.
There is literally no downside in my eyes.
First, you can republish existing content.
- Medium makes this so dang easy.
- It takes all of like, 90 seconds (plus a few more minutes to reformat if necessary)
- You can reach a whole new audience with surprisingly little effort.
- It doesnāt hurt SEO (you gotta use the import feature though)
- It doesnāt cost you a THING.
Why not?
(Honestly, I couldnāt find an answer to that question)
Hereās how to import stories on Medium
- Get a Medium account if you donāt have one already
- Click āstoriesā under your profile image.
- Click āImport a storyā
- Enter the URL of the original blog post
- Update the formatting a bit to look better.
More than likely, the line breaks, subtitles, and images may not look the best right when you import themā¦so youāll want to play around with them.
Second, writing original content on Medium is easy, fun, and potentially great exposureā¦
ā¦for not a lot of work.
Again, thereās no need to SLAM SEO, Pinterest marketing, or hustle to get eyeballs on your content early on.
(Though itās important to note: You WONāT be getting a ton of views right off the bat by default. Youāll still have to publish regularly before you see ANY traction.)
Itās an odd platform when it comes to marketingā¦
You will have to show up consistently with great content and get on a few publications (which is extremely easy by the way)ā¦but for those of us constantly obsessed with driving traffic from XYZ platformā¦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.
- Head to Smedian and sign up (itās free)
- Your main dashboard will be smedian.com/pubs
- Heck, just start click the green buttons to app lol, or search up in the top right for publications.
Note: Some of the more established publications will make you answer a question or two to make sure you understand the rules, etc. Itās worth it š
The bottom line:
Itās 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 itās still weird. š
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 wouldnāt be a home run on Medium.
However, my The hardest part about writing every day post did quite well, and itās 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).
Final thought: Donāt abandon your own blog
This should hopefully be a āduhā moment, but I am in NO WAY suggesting you āstart overā on Medium and abandon your own domain, WordPress, etc.
Please donāt do that.
- Instead, sign up on Medium today (itās free and takes 60 seconds?), and try republishing your next blog post.
- Make sure to use the built-in import feature so as not to screw up Google juice (in other words, donāt copy and paste your entire article).
- Then, if you feel so inclined, produce an original piece of content or two. Itās fun, and you are free from sticking to your main blogās niche as well.
- Make sure to add a Call to Action (with a link back to your site, landing page, etc) at the end of each post!
(Personal finance blogger and want to talk about marketing? Or your dogs? Or a movie? Medium is your go-to if you donāt want to cross-pollinate on your own site!)
One more takeaway from my chat with Thomas
āPackage 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 peopleā¦were reusing their Medium content on LinkedIn.
And bombing.
LinkedIn requires a totally different type of content than Medium, your own Blog, Twitter, or Facebookā¦even if that content essentially SAYS the same thing.
Itās important to āpackageā your content to best suit the needs of each platform.
For LinkedIn, Iād probably avoid using the term ābloggingā and instead use ācontent marketing.ā
Itās 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 āhow-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.
16 Responses
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!
“Presenting” is a bit of a stretch. More like rambling about blogging š
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). š
Hey Olivia!
It’s Tom. š
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!!
Nice!! I always heard about it. I did one post …a long ago…but I copied and pasted š Iāve been wanting to get on some publications, so totally gonna try this out. Thanks Pete!!
Hey no prob Javi! Happy to put those resources in front of you š
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!
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
I’d keep focusing on what’s working, especially if you’ve already tried the alternative š
Which ones btw? Curious what you mean by Medium “sites?”
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?
I’mm email Thomas and ask lol
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.
You are more than welcome Bia! Thank yoi being here, I mean it š
Finally did it! Set up a Medium account and imported a post! We’ll see how this plays out š
Ummm, wow Pete, that was really easy to import a story and it looks great. I think I’ll be playing with this more.
Thanks for the tip as I hadn’t even heard of it.
No prob! It’s definitely not a one-time “oh look extra traffic!” opportunity, but could add up nicely over time š
Loved this episode and these notes are extremely helpful. I’ve loved reading articles on Medium, it’s about time I try out publishing on there. Thanks for the inspiration!