What Kind of Writing Works Best on Medium?

Every writer needs to pay attention to what the audience wants

I have hot and dry spells when it comes to Medium’s Boost program. This applies both to my work as a writer and the stories I nominate. For November, I had 9 stories receive a Boost, which is a personal record for me. Two of them came on the last two days of the month.

So far in December, I haven’t had any stories get selected for a Boost, and my nominations are only hitting at about 50%. Every now and then I nominate a story which I think is a slam dunk only to have it be rejected. In cases like that, I would really like to get some feedback as to the reason.

I believe I was in the first two or three waves to be selected as a nominator for the program, so I’ve been doing this for a while. That’s why it’s a little disconcerting for me to have a nomination I feel represents the expectations of the program get rejected. It makes me wonder if I don’t understand the program as well as I think I do.

The good news is that I have found that sometimes when one of my stories does not receive a Boost, it still goes on to earn very well. Generally, a Boost means that you’re going to see a surge of earnings over two or three days, but then the article is going to level off. If it’s not boosted, you might see consistently high earnings for a couple weeks.

My article “Why You Should Never Exchange Your Old Phone” was one that I submitted without an expectation that it would receive a Boost. I think it’s a quality story, but doesn’t quite align with what the program is looking for as I understand it. That article has done very well earning $141 so far. It has consistently been getting about 150 views a day.

I believe the single biggest metric that will determine whether your story soars or languishes is the read ratio. Medium changed how that number was calculated a few months ago, and since then my top performing articles are all in the 70-80% range.

Not receiving a Boost might actually help some articles because it keeps your read ratio higher for a longer time. I assume that Boost exposes your work to a larger audience. That can lead to new followers and subscribers (which is great), but it also can cut down the read ratio. Obviously, if only people who are already your followers and subscribers are seeing your story, most of them are going to read it long enough to fulfill the read ratio requirements.

Actually, that’s another interesting topic of debate. I wonder how many of my readers get all the way to the end of all my articles, and how many of them skim for 30 seconds? From my perspective, Medium seems pretty clever about identifying legitimate reads, so I hope I can conclude that I’m providing work that people perceive to be of value.

Any information that would help me be a more effective writer is always welcome.

It’s my hypothesis that readers on Medium enjoy articles that have a storytelling element. I understand a “Boost worthy” story to be one that combines a personal anecdote with an area of expertise and a actionable takeaway.

It’s really that simple:

• Engaging personal story

• Academic/professional element

• Clear, concise, actionable and impactful takeaway

When I’m evaluating stories for Boost, it’s like a little play clock starts ticking in my mind. I want to see a nice hook that draws the reader in and keeps them engaged, but that needs to transition to the professional element within a set time.

When I receive stories to edit, I often recommend cutting out passages that create too much of a delay in getting to the next element. This is where the 6 minute target length comes into effect. It’s a good guideline to give yourself about 2 minutes per segment. Actually, the takeaway section can be a little shorter and the personal story can be a little longer. You could go 3, 3, 1 and be in great shape.

That being said, I often nominate stories that break this rule. For example, I nominated this one and it ended up on Medium’s “Staff Picks” page:

How Starting an Investment Firm Almost Landed Me in a Federal Prison

That’s the only article I’ve ever nominated that got there. A couple years ago, an article I wrote also made that list. The “Investment” article clocks in at 21 minutes, so it’s an outlier from what the Boost program prefers as I understand it.

I wish to emphasize that Boost is for a wide variety of stories. You can write long stories and get accepted, and you can write short stories and get accepted. I would love to see the complete data of all the stories that have received a Boost, but that’s not available as far as I know. What’s the average read ratio? What’s the average length? How many comments do they get? How many claps?

Then again, I assume all of those data points are influenced by how many followers and subscribers the author has. I like to be on the lookout for new stories, so make sure to tag your work with “Racism,” or “Black Lives Matter” or “Culture” to ensure I take a look at it.

Personally, I’ve had the most success with stories that push the narrative side of “Walter’s Boost equation model” as much as possible. Somebody threw out some data about how Medium users are very well educated. I believe that because of the quality of the comments I receive. I think there’s an expectation that this audience would be most interested in reading articles that meet a certain academic standard.

But how many people subscribe to Scientific American these days? I’m guessing that whenever there was an article written by Isaac Asimov in that magazine, that was the first one that got read (did he write for them?).

I feel that educated people would prefer to absorb fact-based and well-researched commentary on the world in a way that is also entertaining. I expect even brain surgeons sometimes want to sit down and watch an episode of “The Simpsons,” just to wind down.

I’m using my own preferences to draw this conclusion. I’m not a brain surgeon, but I prefer when there is intellectual value in reading something. I also like to absorb information on 70% brain power when I’m tired. Give me a philosophical concept, but wrap it in an engaging story with interesting characters and a lot of dialogue! Maybe even a bit of a love story…

I’ve never believed that educating yourself has to be miserable, in fact, I think it should be joyous.

My best earning stories are the ones where I followed more of a 6, 1, 1 format. 6 minutes of narrative followed by 1 minute of professional background and 1 minute of takeaway. To be honest, I have enough respect for the Medium audience that I expect they’ll get my takeaway even if I don’t spell it out for them. I feel I’m more likely to get a Boost if I spell it out, so I usually do.

I find that the more I push towards a narrative format, the more successful the story is. The problem is that sometimes they don’t get selected for Boost, like this one for example:

A Nation Devoted to Ignorance Teaches Its Children to Fail

Even without being Boosted, that one is sitting at around 80% read radio and it’s earning well. The comments are also good, so it will be interesting to see how it earns over the next month or so. I would love to hear the argument as to why that one wasn’t selected because I think it’s exactly the type of thing Medium readers come to the platform to find.

My work tends to perform very well on Medium and I’m grateful for that. I haven’t made any major adjustments in the last few months, so maybe I need to go and read through the submission requirements again (though I think I’m up to date with them).

In a way, it’s good to have a dry period where you don’t receive any distribution advantages. That tends to add to my focus and inspires me to take some hard swings. I do hope at least one of the articles I have waiting as a draft for a publication to review is going to get a Boost. It’s always a load off my mind when I see that notification in my inbox.

Let me know how your writing month is going in the comment section!