Medium is making its way into the mainstream as a simple and easy-to-use platform for writers, marketers and other creatives wanting to publish their own content. If you’re unfamiliar with the website, Medium is a self-publishing platform that allows users to write and publish their own content and promote it to Medium’s wide audience of readers. You might be wondering — If you already have a blog, why would you use Medium? The benefits of using Medium exist in how well it lets your brand reach new audiences, and the way it garners real-life engagement from its users.
It’s unique way of tagging articles, and the prevalence of individual publications on the platform maximizes the reach of your content to anyone who is searching for it, has shown interest in similar reading material, or is a fan of any of the publications that publish your content.
When it comes to content marketing, there are a few ways marketers are utilizing the platform to maximize their content marketing strategy. Businesses are finding success on the platform by creating new content specific for Medium, as well as resharing their old content to potentially achieve a higher reach through Medium’s audience.
Using Medium publications to gain more exposure
Medium has it’s it’s own publications, built directly into the site, where writers can submit their content to be published and promoted among that publication’s niche audience. Publishing your content to Medium publications can increase exposure exponentially and expose your content to entirely new audiences. The publications vary in industry and size, and there are quite a few with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Publications not only come with a built-in audience but built in marketing as well. Individual publications regularly highlight unique articles on their social media pages and can make favorite posts a feature at the top of their homepage. And since there are a variety of publications catering to different niche’s and audiences, it’s easy to find a publication that meets the needs of whatever type of content you have. For example, The Startup has upwards of 400,000 subscribers, as well as a strong social media presence and an active email newsletter. They publish contributed articles daily and cater to a wide range of readers including business owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers and anyone looking to learn more about business development and personal/professional growth. Writers can also use Smedian, a site that gives you easy access to the publications accepting new writers, to quickly apply to become a contributor to multiple publications at once.
Republishing existing content to the platform
As an easy way to increase the exposure of their current content, many corporate blogs repost their content to Medium in attempt to maximize the reach of their content. This strategy is beneficial especially if your blog isn’t getting as much traffic as you would like. If you use WordPress to host your blog, this process becomes even easier when you use the Medium plugin. The tool lets you republish old blog posts on Medium almost instantly, and gives you the option to immediately publish new content straight to Medium right from your WordPress site or blog.
Content roundups and summaries
If you don’t want to repost content to Medium, one interesting strategy that’s popping up all over the platform is to create link roundups of content hosted back on your site. By creating an article on Medium that features a quick blurb or summary about content you’ve already written, you’re driving traffic directly back to your website and curating valuable content for Medium readers. The key to this strategy is to give the reader just enough information to want to learn more. This method can also be applied to lead magnets, or other offers. By using Medium’s exposure to reach new audiences and capturing their information, you’re exposing your brand to audiences that may have otherwise not known about you. Since Medium segments articles into specific categories, your content almost always ends up in front of people who are interested in your industry or nice.
Creating original content with backlinks
It’s never a bad idea to create original content. Every time you create original content, whether it’s on your site or third-party sites like Medium, there is an opportunity to generate traffic back to a sales page, landing page, or another piece of content to build SEO and establish higher domain authority. Medium has a very high domain authority itself, which means that Google ranks content published on Medium higher than content on sites with lower authority. Domain authority is based on many things, but a significant driving factor for achieving high domain authority is how many links back to your site exist on the internet, and on other sites with high domain authority. Medium allows you to self-publish content, making it a simple way to create content that links back to content or pages on your website.
Start a publication
Many companies like Kickstarter, Udacity and Slack use Medium exclusively to host their content in place of a traditional blog. Medium is home to millions of tech enthusiasts, and a lot of tech companies recognize the value and benefit of catering to Medium’s built-in audience by creating all of their content on the platform. When creating your own publication on Medium, you can use a Medium domain, but you can also host on Medium using your own domain. That way your blog can be branded and customized to your standards but still and reap the benefits of the platform. Medium publications also have the bonus of working with other Medium writers as their contributors. Through sites like Smedian, publications can invite medium writers to contribute content to their publication. The publication then gets a steady stream of content, and the writers get exposure to the publication’s audience, making it a mutually beneficial partnership.
When looking at new ways to implement and maximize your content strategy, keep in mind that some tools and platforms are better than others. It’s essential to conduct an audit of your existing content to see what your audience engages with the most. Medium’s diverse audience of creatives, entrepreneurs, professional writers and those just getting started makes it a great device to both promote your content as well as build your content marketing strategy.
Read more: Marketing Mediums That Need Written Content