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Using a Medium publication as your author website
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Hi Kent,For about an hour effort - looks pretty decent. And even without the proviso - still very decent -:)
And thanks a lot for such an elaborate analysis. I'm sure whoever plans to set up an author site, myself including, would find the above info very helpful..
Thanks, Kent. Never heard of Medium. I thought this was a spiritual post. :)I have proper web sites, that is, not riding on some service's back, and a wordpress blog. They can be a pain in the neck but the results are very flexible with many possibilities.
:)
Bob
Thanks, Nik. :)Agreed, Bob. If you have the time, Wordpress is the logical choice because of the flexibility.
It's a trade-off: if content is your focus, Medium could definitely work. If your website is used mainly for book promotion, then Medium is probably not the right approach.
A couple of other advantages I neglected to mention:
1. It's completely free.
2. You get connected to the ever-expanding Medium network, so your posts can appear in the feeds of random users. This can make it easier to build a following, especially if your content is good.
for me, the main advantage of Medium is blog/audience reach. wouldn't use it as an author website
For those interested, there are a couple of options for newsletter signups:1. Link to mailchimp signup form - you can customize the design of your MC signup form. It's also a trusted service, so people know where their email is going. You can put the link at the end of every post and/or on its own separate post that you link to in the nav bar.
2. Google Forms embed - you can embed a Google Forms form directly into your posts, i.e. users can enter their email directly without having to go to another page (see more here.
For anyone interested, I decided to move my author site to Medium.Here's the result: https://kentbabin.com/
Happy to answer any questions about the process that people might have.
Kent wrote: "For anyone interested, I decided to move my author site to Medium.Here's the result: https://kentbabin.com/
Happy to answer any questions about the process that people might have."
A clean design . WordPress plugins get hacked regularly so w/a proprietary system that risk is reduced and you're not selling on your site so it's not like you have to be too concerned about security and uptime.
There are a plethora of worthwhile options for website design these days.
Indeed. And Medium itself relies on uptime and security for its own success, so you're well taken care of there. They even provision a SHA-2 SSL/TLS certificate specifically for your domain.
I'm not a big expert, but I like the site, Kent. Neatly done, in my opinion
I'm thinking about using Medium as a place to write my blog posts and articles. However I already write them on my website so should I also write them to Medium as a way for more discoverability? Does Medium have an audience? I know it's an easy way to post to Twitter but I want to know I should use it to help when it comes to blog writing.
Hi Justin,Medium is a community (25-30 million monthly visitors as of January this year), so your posts can be made available to those who follow the tags that you use for your posts. It doesn't happen all at once, though. Medium shows posts based on how often they get recommended (and how influential the users are that recommend the post). So it may take a while to get your posts in front of users.
That said, you can connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts to increase your followers (anyone who follows you on those two social networks will also follow on Medium by default). It can be a good way to get started because followers see your posts regardless of how many times the posts have been recommended.
My own theory is that you stand a better chance of reaching random people on Medium than your own website. Not sure how many people read your website blog posts (other than people you know), but my guess is that you can do a lot better in that regard on Medium.
One thing you could do is have your website focused on book sales and then I think WordPress probably has a plugin that will take an RSS feed and display it nicely on a page. That way, you could write your posts on Medium and then they would automatically syndicate to your website.
One thing I would recommend is going to Medium and taking a look at the tags you would be using for your posts. You can see what articles are there and whether they are getting recommends. Could help you understand if your posts will gain traction.
Hope that answers your questions. Let me know if you need any clarification.
The above sounds on par with quantum physics to me, but I guess I'll need to tackle running an author site and blogging one day -:).I have everything here to start with, thanks!
Kent wrote: "Hi Justin,Medium is a community (25-30 million monthly visitors as of January this year), so your posts can be made available to those who follow the tags that you use for your posts. It doesn't ..."
Hi Kent,
Thanks for that thorough explanation and yes you definitely answered my questions. It sounds like it is definitely worth investing in as I don't get much traffic as I would like on my website for anything nevermind blog posts. I don't use WordPress as I find it complicated to use but I do have my blog post synced to Goodreads so anytime I write a post it shows up here. I think investing in medium is a good idea as it will help me connect with way more people than my site does currently. I am a big user of Twitter(bit of a Twitterholic) and I'm looking to make the most of getting my posts out there so I'll definitely look this over.
Thanks again for all your valuable information.
Alexa.com ratings (Alexa is an Amazon subsidiary)Global, US ratings
Medium.com 344,190
WordPress.com 36,35
Reddit.com 24,7
Goodreads.com 340,138
Amazon.com 8,4
Tumblr.com 41,18
Instagram.com 15,12
Facebook.com 3,3
Justin: You're welcome! Good luck!Alex: Thanks for the list! I guess wordpress.com is somewhat misleading in this case because there is no correlation between the number of people visiting wordpress.com and the number of people that visit your own wordpress site.
There is also the community vs. standalone effect. Facebook, instagram, tumblr (i think), goodreads, reddit and medium are all communities where users gather to share content. When you go standalone, you have to link to the community in order to reach people.
Kent wrote: "I guess wordpress.com is somewhat misleading in this case because there is no correlation between the number of people visiting wordpress.com and the number of people that visit your own wordpress site."good point. i was wondering whether to include it or not.
worthy of note is that goodreads is in the same ballpark as medium.com and goodreads is geared to books. so, i'd think that one would be reaching a more targeted audience on goodreads.
That's true. The only points I'd offer to the contrary is that the Goodreads blogging function is simplistic without much in the way of options for making your content look nice, and it doesn't have a post feed organized by tags that everyone can see regardless of who they follow. One thing that Goodreads allows you to do is connect your existing blog so your posts will show up on Goodreads automatically. This means you can get reach in multiple places while only having to write one post.
Kent wrote: "One thing that Goodreads allows you to do is connect your existing blog so your posts will show up on Goodreads automatically. This means you can get reach in multiple places while only having to write one post."cool. i forgot about that feature. it might be effective to blog from instagram or tumblr if your a picture kind of person and then connect it to goodreads.
Definitely. Does instragram do RSS? I think that's the protocol Goodreads needs for blog connections.For what it's worth, Amazon Author Central also allows for the same connection.
Kent wrote: "Definitely. Does instragram do RSS? I think that's the protocol Goodreads needs for blog connections.For what it's worth, Amazon Author Central also allows for the same connection."
not too sure as i'm not in the goodreads author program, so i can't try it and i don't customize my website that much. but instagram seems to have an RSS feed:
https://help.instagram.com/4647008302...
I already use Medium for my blog, so yesterday I decided to try it out as a potential author website solution. It took about an hour to put this together:
https://medium.com/kent-babin-novelist
Forgive the header background image and title...it's just there for demonstration purposes.
Note that this is a Medium publication, not a private Medium blog. It's easy to create once you have a Medium account.
Here are my thoughts:
Advantages
1. Very easy to start - Medium publications can be created with a few clicks and very basic info.
2. Custom domain - You can use your own domain (I haven't done it yet, but it is possible)
3. Medium's SEO power - every time you post, you take advantage of Medium's SEO power to rank better for what you write
4. Social media integration - You can automatically integrate Twitter and Facebook
5. Clean design - You don't have to worry about playing around with code. There is only one basic design, but you can customize how you want your content to appear
6. Easy to create About page, etc. - You can create posts for every page your author website would normally have (About, books, etc., and then put links in the navigation bar to those pages.
7. Mobile friendly - the design is fully responsive and looks great on web, mobile web, and app
8. Constant improvement - Medium continues to add features
9. Decent stats - pretty good stats are available without needing google analytics, although so far Medium does not offer GA support
10. Group posts together using tags - I grouped posts about my First Novel and Second Novel to make navigation easier. This grouping with tags could be used for anything (posts about promotion, writing, etc.)
Disadvantages
1. Fairly restrictive design possibilities - You can't really play with the design that much, save for accent colour and the way your content is displayed
2. Only one external link in nav bar - you can only choose one external link, so you would need to choose carefully (a buy link is probably the best option).
3. Newsletter signup can't be integrated directly - this will be a dealbreaker for many. You would need to provide a link to an external place where the viewer can register for your newsletter. While this is possible (and maybe even has its advantages), it does add extra steps to get people to sign up.
Overall, I like how easy it is to setup, the SEO advantages, and that Medium will continue to improve the service. The design limitations don't really bother me all that much because the whole point of a Medium publication is to promote your content.
Do let me know if you have any questions about this. I'd be happy to answer them.