Monday, September 20, 2021

Introducing Medium #IWSG

You may have noticed this new logo in our sidebar. We're pleased to now be connected with Medium, a publishing platform that will allow our members to write, read, and connect with each other by using #IWSG when they post a story or an article. 



Every day, writers share their words on this platform, which has an audience of more than 170 million monthly viewers. 
We would love to invite you to publish the stories you're proud of.  



How to Publish


1) Join the Medium Partner Program (it’s free!). How it works: Any time you publish a story on Medium, you can choose to earn money by making it part of our member-only content. Or you can keep your story free and accessible to anyone. The choice is yours. 


2) Review your author profile to make sure it looks stellar. You’ll want to optimize your bio, too.   


3) Craft your story. Here’s how to write a story on Medium. (You can also check out this video walkthrough of all of the features in the Medium editor.) Be sure to visit Creators Hub, Medium’s official blog for writers, which features tips and writing advice.


4) Add the tag “IWSG” to your story so your work can be discovered by fellow IWSG writers on Medium.  5) Hit “Publish.” If you’d like your story to be eligible to earn money, make sure to check the “meter my story” box.


6) Connect with your readers, build your audience, and track your earnings in your Partner Program dashboard


Thanks to Juneta Key for some of her first-hand experience with Medium for the following tips about how to format your publication.

Formatting Tips for Medium

  • Use the big T for formatting your Title. Highlight text formatting bar will appear.
  • Your subtitle under your main title should be a sentence with a period. Use the little t in the formatting bar.
  • Use the big T in the Medium formatting bar to format subheading in the body of the post.
  • Use white space for easy reading. Two to three-line paragraphs are suggested because dense paragraphs are hard to read and readers will skim them. They will totally skip harder-to-read posts. Remember most people are reading on phones.
  • Medium likes the title to state what the post is about. In other words, by reading the title the reader should know exactly what type of information is in the post. This gives you a better chance of being picked for distribution by Medium. If you are part of the Medium Partnership Program which pays for read time this will matter to you.
  • All images should be cited. Unsplash is integrated with Medium, and will have the citation there already. When you click in the body of the post there will be a plus sign to the left. It gives you options to upload images from the computer, to search Unsplash, and use other formatting options. If you bring in images from outside the Medium platform, cite the image, even if the image was taken by you, the author.

Medium's Distribution Standards

  • You can use links with a call to action ( CTA), but try not to make it obvious or too much like a sales pitch. For instance, "Follow me" or "Learn more" are appropriate. Be sure to hyperlink your CTA's.
  • You can put a brief bio at the end of the post and use the separator command to set it off. A bio should be simple and not more than 2 or 4 lines at most. You can put a link in your upper bio, but you are limited by characters.
  • You can use linktree which creates one link, but allows you to link to all of your social media if you wish.

Medium basic rules and Medium Help Center.

Titles and Subtitle on Medium Post by Medium https://medium.com/creators-hub/tips-for-formatting-your-title-and-headers-1ff1a016ef75 Medium Rules https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/213477928-Medium-Rules

Juneta Key already has two publilcations on Medium: Writers Gambit and The Art of Short Fiction



11 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Another great option for writers!

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Lee - this has to be a great alternative for authors ... with excellent advice on how to approach the new method. Congratulations to the IWSG team for getting this organised. Cheers Hilary

Natalie Aguirre said...

This sounds like another great resource for writers. Thanks so much.

Juneta key said...

Great post Lee!!

L. Diane Wolfe said...

Another platform - that's a good thing.

cleemckenzie said...

I hope to see a lot of IWSG members represented on Medium soon.

Elizabeth Seckman said...

I'll have to look into this. I'm like the old dog, but should still learn some new tricks.

Michael Di Gesu said...

This sounds like a Great option... I will definitely be checking it out.

Thanks, Lee!

Jemi Fraser said...

Sounds intriguing and the step-by-step guide is helpful!

Diane Burton said...

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Toi Thomas said...

This is cool. I've been reading Medium for a while. I will start looking for IWSG content. Maybe I'll even post some.