Listen to this post on the Business By Intuition Podcast

Should you publish your content with Medium?

I had the pleasure of interviewing Bingz Huang, Gentleness Ambassador, Author, Human Design practitioner, Intuitive healer and Medium writer & coach, to share her best tips for getting started with Medium for business for solopreneurs who want to get their work and writing seen by a wider audience.

I've summarized her responses from the podcast (Ep. 24) below to make it easier to read, but if you prefer to listen to the full interview, click here or follow along with the transcript here.

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The Interview

1. What's Medium?

Medium is an online publishing platform with publications. Publications are like online newspapers with themes where you can share more about specific topics within a publication.

It was founded by one of the co-founders of Twitter. So there's an intimate connection there and it's a pleasant, wonderful community for writers.

There's also a culture of writers supporting one another through sharing their articles and I appreciate that. You're not a loner on Medium and I find that I thrive.

2. Why did you start writing on Medium for business?

I wanted to lose weight so I joined an online exercise program that's about manifesting. It was by Erin Stutland, so it had lots of movements, mantras and exercises to help you be clear about the goals that you want. That's what started me writing on Medium. It was a desire to share my thoughts, to know what I'm actually thinking other than taking care of my kids. I just wanted space and an avenue to share and get to know who I am.

3. When do you recommend writing on Medium versus your blog/website domain?

If your blog doesn't get much traffic or website visitors which tends to be the case for many online solopreneurs. It takes a while to get a following of people who visit your blog regularly. I love that you can also clap fifty times for an article and leave responses for writers. It's an encouraging platform and nice to see that someone has clapped for you. The other thing is that you're able to monetize your articles once you reach 100 followers.

4. What are some of the other advantages of using Medium as your blogging platform?

It's searchable so use tags for each article. You can also build an archive of content that you can keep refining over the years. It's different from having a website.

It's a good idea to publish in a few relevant publications to gather momentum and start benefiting from their reach. Many of these publications publish weekly or monthly writing prompts and have newsletters so it's a great way to build readership and community with fellow writers.

You get a lot more publicity and often for free. This is incredibly generous of publication owners because most of them aren't paid to do this work and they'll gladly help promote your articles through their newsletters and social media channels as well.

5. Should you publish your articles to Medium and your blog? And if so, which order to post?

If your website doesn't have a lot of visitors, then I recommend following George Kao's recommendation of first posting on Medium and then waiting a week before posting it to your blog where you can then link back to Medium because Medium has a high domain authority.

Meaning, if you Google some of your keywords, Medium articles have a much higher ranking and will appear first—most likely before your blog post shows up in search results.

When you know that people are actually reading your content and it's getting views from folks in your audience, it adds depth to the experience. It's motivating for solopreneurs who can sometimes feel like they're writing and no one's listening.

6. What type of business is best suited for the platform?

I've seen strong growth in technology-based articles like UX design, cryptocurrency, personal development, etc. You can also find your community in other topics, such as spirituality. So it depends. Anyone can write on Medium.

If you're not sure what to write, use Medium as your playground and submit to a wide variety of publications. For example, I write topics on marketing, dance, spirituality, and parenting and it's good to bounce ideas around and see what kind of response I get. That's the beauty of Medium. There's a variety of audiences.

7. What type of content works best?

It used to be listicles and how-to articles, but people are getting tired of them. It's best to share your personal experiences, failures, successes, etc. There's a trend towards personal essays, like micro-memoirs where the lesson is not that obvious and you just need to read through and vicariously experience what the writer experienced, then just have your own takeaways from the essay. I think that's very honest and authentic and I love that this is the direction they're moving toward.

8. What are your top 2-5 steps for getting started on Medium?

First, become a reader on Medium. Read articles that interest you, and as you read them, pay attention to formatting because it's important to have breathing space in your paragraphs instead of one huge chunk of sentences. It helps your article be much more readable.

And when you know what you enjoy reading, then you can check out the publications of your favourite writers and start applying to get in because the owner needs to manually add your profile to their publication so you can send your drafts to them. Build a relationship with the editors of publications you love because it's valuable to have their help. One high-profile Medium writer said he was a reader for six months before he published anything on Medium.

9. How do you find publications to write for?

When you've been consistently reading on Medium, you start to see which publications your favourite writers are writing for. Then you can hone in and support the editors. Read articles that the editors write. And when you submit your request to be a writer for them, always read their submission guidelines. Do your homework by reading this carefully because the editors are editing your work for free.

10. Why is Medium such an excellent content marketing platform for sensitive solopreneurs?

There are two extremes in marketing your work. One is social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and you feel like you need to constantly engage with other people and post X many times per week, etc.

The other extreme is having your own blog. When you publish content to your own website there's a lot more focus. For instance, when people visit your website, they can read your articles and scroll around getting a much clearer picture of who you are and what you represent. They're not distracted by others.

With Medium, you have the advantage of publishing with a publication that gives your articles greater credibility. Plus, your articles are searchable. People can type questions in the search box or look up specific tags and your articles can get recommended by Medium if you fulfil their basic formatting and distribution guidelines. It's like a search engine within Medium and on Google as well.

If you communicate and engage with other writers, editors are going to be curious about who you are and will likely check out your articles and that's how you get more support because Medium writers tend to engage better with other writers instead of regular readers. It's social proof that your article is popular.

11. How does Medium's monetization program work and what are the advantages of having some articles not behind the paywall?

Anyone can enrol in a Medium Partner Program and get paid each month based on the reading time earned by readers with a paid membership of $5 per month to $50 per year to read unlimited articles behind the paywall.

As the writer, you control whether you want your articles behind the paywall or whether they'll be made free for everyone to read. The best way to decide this is by checking the statistics of your articles and if any are getting 90% external views (which means that it's highly searchable on Google but not so much within the paid Medium community), then it makes sense to have it a free for all to read so they can find out more about you.

12. How do you find out where your readership is coming from?

Within Medium you can check the story stats for each article and they'll tell you where your views are coming from, whether it's internal views or external, and the percentage for each. So you can see who's reading your articles.

13. Any final thoughts on being paid for your articles on Medium?

I think it's empowering to be paid for your articles because you're providing value that makes people want to read. And you can see which articles you've written that have the most reads and are the highest paid so you can write more on that particular topic. It helps you have a deeper connection with your audience, too.

Also, certain publications will require your articles to be behind the paywall so it's convenient to have them behind the paywall, but not an important factor.

For solopreneurs, you have existing offerings that you want to sell. So writing on Medium is more about knowing what kind of reach you're getting with specific topics and subtopics within your business and that's how you can do market research as well.

Thank you, Bingz for sharing your wisdom with us. To find out more about her work and where to find her, please check out her bio and links below.

About Bingz Huang

Bingz Huang is a gentleness ambassador, human design practitioner, intuitive healer and writer. She's passionate about inspiring fellow sensitive solopreneurs to manage and honour their sensitivity as a superpower. She manages a publication on Medium called Gentleness Ambassadors, which welcomes fellow writers to contribute their insights and experiences on practising gentleness in any aspect of their life.

She also runs a personal Human Design publication to educate both total beginners and her clients on how to use Human Design as a tool for self-awareness, healing and personal growth.

Where to find her online:

She's most active on Facebook, Instagram, and Medium.

Books she's authored:

Publications on Medium by Bingz: