New to Medium? Start doing this one thing
Getting started with Medium can be a little bit intimidating. There is no question about the value of the audience and the community that it offers to get your voice heard, but where do you begin?
Write Responses
I joined Medium one month ago and I set myself this challenge:
Write one Medium response every day for the next month before starting to write full length posts.
I didn’t manage to do this every day, but on days where I missed a response, I tried to make up by writing two responses the next day. In the end, I am really happy that I chose this approach and I wanted to share my learnings in my first full length post.
So why should you be writing responses?
1. Improve your writing
Writing is a skill like any other, whether it is on Medium or anywhere else. It takes time and practice to refine and get better over time. It is unrealistic to expect that you will go from writing nothing to cranking out high quality full length posts.
When you start writing responses, you see that your thoughts are not as well structured as you think they are in your head. Even if you are trying to communicate a very short point, it takes some thinking to structure it well and to get your thoughts down on paper.
Writing responses is like taking a few minutes to do a few push-ups for your writing.
2. Make writing a habit
Building a following on any platform takes time and discipline. You have to consistently post high quality content that keeps people coming back to hear what you have to say.
There are countless examples of people that have started blogging but are not able to continually produce the new content that is required to be a success. (myself included as I’ve had quite a few starts and stops with blogging over the years)
I’m a big believer in starting with small steps that you can easily incorporate into your daily routine and writing Medium responses is an easy way to make sure you produce at least a few words every day.
Day by day the responses come easier and get longer and it doesn’t feel like a very big stretch to turn one into a full length post. Once you have that initial discipline in place, you can then look to expand it over time and produce more and more content.
3. Get over your fear
For me and the few times in the past that I had made attempts at blogging, there was always a little bit of fear holding me back:
What if nobody ever finds my blog to read it? What if the people who actually do read my blog don’t like it and respond negatively?
Getting started by writing responses on Medium is a great way to confront these fears and just get on with it. You’re not investing that much time, so what does it matter if no one ever reads your post?
In fact, some of my responses have still not been viewed a single time even a couple of weeks after being posted:
On the other hand, some responses that I’ve written have gotten over 100 views along with many claps and responses. This makes you realize that there is some amount of luck and timing when it comes to Medium posts — sometimes you’re going to get a lot of traction with a post and others you may get none.
But that’s OK and it comes with the territory. Keep plugging away consistently and you will find an audience.
And as far as negative responses are concerned, taking the time to engage and write responses has shown me that Medium is an overwhelmingly positive environment where disagreements are thoughtful and civilized.
Writing responses goes a long way towards taking the anxiety out of pushing that Publish button!
4. Generate ideas for future posts
Another thing that I always worried about before getting started with Medium was how will I come up with ideas to write about? In fact, it is one of the reasons I decided to write responses in the first place, because I didn’t have any ideas I really wanted to post about!
But after writing responses for the last month, I realized that in nearly every one of my responses there was some material that I found interesting enough to engage with along with something that I wanted to add to the discussion. In fact, in most cases there was enough for me to expand my addition into an entire post.
Take, for example, this response I wrote a few days ago:
This could easily be fleshed out into a full length post detailing my experiences and tips to build good habits into your daily routine.
Once you have responded to a lot of posts you have a ready-made list of potential topics to write about or at the very least give you some inspiration!
5. Pay it forward
This may be the most important learning of all — after one month of engaging on Medium you develop an appreciation and respect for the community. You realize that it is much harder than it looks to produce high quality writing that resonates with people.
You also learn the value of a few claps or of a thoughtful response along with how good it can someone feel. By engaging in the community and responding to content that resonates with you, not only are you doing all of the things for yourself that I mentioned above, but you are also providing encouragement for writers.
Especially for those who are just starting out on Medium, this little bit of encouragement can go a long way and it will likely come back to reward you anyway with more followers and engagement with your content.
There is no downside, so be generous to the community!
Start Responding
After a month on Medium, I feel like writing responses was the perfect way to get settled in and to find my voice. There really is no catch: it doesn’t take much time, it helps you, and it helps others.
So what are you waiting for, get out there and start responding!
