Medium review. Now also on iOS

The team at Buffer, a service for publishing content on social networks, described in their blog how to use the Medium blogging platform for marketing purposes. What is Medium, why is it worth using this resource and what are the main metrics of the service - the number of visitors, the optimal title length, and so on.

The CPU publishes a translation of the note made by the Interweb Pro team.

Let's say you want to create a blog with zero budget. Imagine an online service where you can publish your thoughts, advice, acquired knowledge, share them with regular readers and receive viral traffic. Imagine a really good blogging app.

  • Ctrl + Alt + 0 = Start new paragraph;
  • Ctrl + Alt + 1 = Transform text block: Apply Heading 1 style;
  • Ctrl + Alt + 2 = Text block transformation: Apply Heading 2 style;
  • Ctrl + Alt + 5 = Transform text block: Select quote;
  • Ctrl + Alt + 6 = Text block conversion: Formatting in HTML code;
  • Ctrl + Alt + 3 = Transform text block: Apply Heading 3 style;
  • Ctrl + b = Make text bold Ctrl + k = Add a new link;
  • Ctrl + i = Italicize text;
  • Ctrl + e = Align text center (this shortcut appears to replace the removed Ctrl + 7 shortcut);
  • Ctrl + := loads a menu with most shortcuts (but not all).

Having expanded its network, Medium has done a great job of sharing tips and tricks with bloggers on how to succeed on their site (we refer to their piece on optimal article length frequently).

  1. While Medium doesn't have a word limit for any story, articles of 400 words or more tend to be the most popular.
  2. Write a headline that best conveys the essence of your story.
  3. At the beginning of your story, post high-quality photos (minimum 900 pixels or 900×900 in size). Horizontal images work better than vertical ones.
  4. If necessary, use text formatting: two levels of headings, footnotes for notes, hyperlinks, highlighting sections.
  5. Get feedback on your story draft, check the text for grammar, punctuation and formatting.
  6. Publish material to Medium collections (now called “Publications”).

Should you use Medium for writing?

If we take a closer look at the Medium statistics, we will see the following: the Medium audience has more than 650 thousand users.

(All users by default become subscribers of Editors Picks, which has about 651 thousand readers. Therefore, we can assume that the number of Medium users reaches this figure.)

For those just starting out with blogs, Medium can provide a huge number of loyal readers. This is a big plus. There is no need to waste energy on creating and maintaining a blog. An already built readership makes it easy to achieve viral traffic.

Medium is a great choice for those new to blogging. For those who already use blogs, you should pay attention to this service as a new option.

One of the most interesting discussions I've heard about sharing resources is sharecropping (Julie Neidlinger's term). Sharecropping is posting notes in a place that you do not control.

The question of using owned media (a blog on your personal server) or earned media is always an issue.

I am impressed by the way Ann Friedman answers the question of where she publishes her “free” work.

I try to publish work that no one will pay me for, only on platforms that I personally own. I'd rather publish something on my blog than post it for free on some Huffington Post or Medium. After all, I want people to see my name at the top of the site and then look at my additional work. This is a plus that is not there when I publish an article for free on some other resource.

Should you use Medium if you have a separate personal channel for writing? I would definitely use two options. And as you will read below, there are advantages to this approach.

A Guide to Medium for Marketers

The amount of traffic you can expect from new material

How much traffic can you get from Medium?

The actual number is quite difficult to determine. I looked at the statistics of the posts that Buffer published on Medium. It will help you get an idea of ​​what Medium can do.

Some of the articles we posted got more traffic than others. Their success is well presented in the table below. Take a look.

Is your content doing well on Medium? Should you publish your material on Medium? The answer likely depends on what you can get on your personal blog as opposed to Medium.

Platform user and marketer Mike Essex checked the results of his published article on Medium and concluded that publishing on it was worth his time.

Within six hours, my Medium post had surpassed the number of views I would have gotten in my entire life on my personal website. Within 24 hours the numbers quadrupled.

How to Write a Title on Medium

Another unique feature of Medium is headers. The SEO title is not common on Medium compared to other blogs. Due to the fact that content is searched by users online, it is important to come up with a title that will resonate with the reader.

For this reason, the list of the top 100 posts on Medium has a wide variety of titles:

  • headlines containing advice;
  • full sentence headings;
  • very short titles;
  • very long titles.

I counted the number of characters in January's top 100 stories and found that the average headline length was 42 characters. For reference, the title below has 41 characters:

I Almost Let My Failed Startup Destroy Me

And of course, one of our best tips for writing headlines (anywhere - blogs, Twitter, etc.) is that the first three and last three words of a headline will always stand out the most. Please take note.

Average length of most read stories

Additionally, I also counted the reading times of the top 100 stories (medium-length stories) for January. Since time plays an important role on this service, it would be nice to know how many minutes an average length of material should take the reader.

Average length of the top 100 entries: 7.25 minutes.

The materials varied greatly in volume. In the top 10 there were articles both for three minutes and for 28.

Additionally, the best advice on length and timing comes from the Medium team itself. There is a direct correlation between how much time people spend writing notes and how well the post performs. Quality comes first.

1. Repost your content on Medium

One of the most obvious techniques - which we also used at Buffer - is reposting content on Medium. You expose the material to a new readership, which makes it possible to increase momentum again.

2. Add a link to your website or blog

Medium gives you a huge amount of creative freedom in writing notes. One interesting technique that is often used when publishing is to leave a place for a link at the end of the material. Provide a call to action and add a link that takes you to your blog.

5. Track visits to your site using UTM parameters

Another great tip from Chloe Mason Gray of KISSmetrics is to use UTM parameters to see what content on Medium is bringing the most traffic to your site.

With this material we are opening a whole series of publications about interesting devices that can serve as an excellent gift for a person who is in love with photography. After all, today photography is not just a camera or a lens. It's a whole world of tools and accessories that open up new creative possibilities or simply make a photographer's life easier.

Most often, a graphics tablet is perceived as a tool for an artist, illustrator or graphic designer. However, it can also be useful for a photographer. The element of tablets is fine and precise manual work with images.

A desktop graphics tablet is an input tool on par with a mouse and trackpad. Working with a tablet and an electronic pen at a computer is similar to working with a brush or pencil on paper or an easel.

Let's see how a graphics tablet differs from other input tools when working on a PC.

    Using a tablet allows you to have more precise control over your brush and other editing tools.

    When working in graphic editors, the tablet can be configured so that the opacity of the brush and its size change depending on the degree of pressure on the pen.

    You can tilt the Wacom GripPen or ProPen to control the shape of your brush.

    Additional customizable keys are available that allow you to work on pictures without a keyboard.

Any actions related to drawing or highlighting are much more convenient to perform with a pen. In Lightroom, this is painting masks on gradients, Adjustment Brush and Spot Removal. In Photoshop, a tablet is useful when using the Dodge & Burn technique, stacking exposures, gluing layers, drawing masks and retouching.

There is only one caveat. When you first try to work with a tablet, your hands tend to shake and it is very difficult to position the pen correctly. What to do? You need to continue to use it, not only when processing and drawing, but also during your current work on the computer. After a few days, you will notice that the pen is much more comfortable than the mouse.

The size of the tablet should be selected taking into account the tasks and the size of your monitor. The larger the working area of ​​the graphics tablet, the more accurately you can position the pen. However, if it is much larger than the monitor, moving the brush from one corner of the screen to another on the tablet will have to travel a relatively long distance. To avoid this, you can set up a mapping between the tablet and the monitor.

Appearance

Wacom Intuos Pro Medium is a rectangle slightly larger than an A4 sheet: 380 x 250 mm. An area of ​​224 x 140 mm is allocated for the working area. Its borders are highlighted with glowing markers. The tablet is light (0.97 kg) and thin (12 mm).

Connection to a computer is carried out either using a small Wi-Fi module located in a special compartment on the tablet body, or via a mini-USB cable.

Professional Wacom tablets are equipped with a pen stand, at the bottom of which there are replaceable nibs: 5 standard, 1 flexible, 1 brush tip (Stroke), 3 felt-tip pen nibs (Felt).

8 control buttons on the tablet, a four-position Touch Ring and two keys on the pen are available for configuration. The buttons are collected in two groups of 4 pieces - above and below the Touch Ring. They have notches of different shapes that are easily distinguishable by touch, so you can work without taking your eyes off the monitor.

The tablet adapts to the right or left hand.

All controls are customizable for different applications. And the information display allows you to quickly access one or another group of settings.

First, you determine for which application the settings are being made, then you choose what exactly you will configure, and set your own commands for each button.

In addition, the Circular Menu is available here - an on-screen menu that provides access to frequently used application functions. Each button or radial menu item is assigned a hotkey combination. Thus, from the tablet you can access any commands or menu items activated by hot keys. Also, by pressing a button on the tablet, you can call up Adobe Photoshop scripts or scripts and perform batch processing.

Let's move on to setting up the tablet for working in the main photo editors.

From time to time, the Fox (Russia) and Fox Life (Russia) channels show the television series “Medium” in reruns. In 7 seasons of the series, you not only solve crimes together with the main characters, but also follow the life ups and downs of the main character’s family. The husband loses his job and finds a job, the children grow up and you, together with Allison DuBois (played by Patricia Arquette), solve the problems of adolescence of her eldest daughter, rejoice at the successes of the middle daughter and have fun looking at the youngest daughter.

The main character's family is simply charming, although from time to time "poor dad" comes to mind - he lives in a house with four blondes and each of them has "cockroaches in their heads." The series develops around the supernatural abilities of the main character to see prophetic dreams and communicate with the dead. According to the plot Medium Alison DuBoisworks as an independent consultant in the prosecutor's office of Phoenix, Arizona and sees dreams about murders and kidnappings, talks with the ghost of her father-in-law and an FBI agent, the dead periodically move into her body to restore justice and take revenge on the killer, and in one of the episodes she stopped hearing, also like a completely deaf girl who was kidnapped. Alison works with friends - prosecutor Devalos (played by Miguel Sandoval)and investigator Lee Scanlon (David Cubitt).
In each episode, Allison wakes up in the middle of the night from a nightmare she saw in a dream, and her faithful loving husband Joe DuBois (played by Jake Weber) consoles her and tries to help her interpret the dream. Joe Dubois is an engineer-inventor, so he tries to explain any dream and any situation simply and logically. As a rule, before Allison and her friends catch the criminals, we have to look through several dreams, and each next one brings us closer to the solution.

By the way, not only Allison has the gift of a medium, her daughters also have it in different forms. From time to time, either the eldest daughter or the middle daughter helped their mother in the investigation of criminal cases. Each of the daughters has a gift with its own characteristics and each of the girls treats it differently - it prevents the eldest from living, just like her mother, while the middle and youngest simply accept life as it is. Allison Dubois's brother, who periodically appears in the series, also has a gift, but he has it in a “lighter form” - it helps him be lucky.

From time to time in the series, Joe DuBois's mother appears, who loves her granddaughters, but nags Allison and Joe. There were episodes where Allison secretly worked for an agency to search for missing people. And somehow I got a job at a very cool company.

In general, a very nice series, in which, if we ignore the mysticism, there is a lot of humor and descriptions of life situations that we all face one way or another.

The site, which is known throughout the world for the quality and completeness of the presentation of thoughts, now allows you to read absolutely all the content without using a browser.
First, it’s worth telling a little about the Medium resource itself. This is a blog platform on which smart and interesting people write about their thoughts, ideas, experiences and achievements, how they solved their problems, and advise how to behave as a novice businessman or programmer. There are a lot of articles, they are constantly updated by writers, but at the same time the main requirement for all content is maintained - it is easy to read, the idea is expressed in a very large number of sentences and at the same time everything is correct, without errors, both grammatical and semantic. For some, the resource will be difficult to master due to the fact that all the content is in English. After the site gained popularity, the creators decided to develop a client for iOS, because it allows you to show much more beautiful graphics and animation than a web page in a mobile browser. Now it's time to try this miracle, to feel all the cool things that the creators added here.

Quality of elements

Probably, many are accustomed to the fact that blog posts on the web pages of a mobile browser are a wall of text, which sometimes is not even formatted into paragraphs and such text is very difficult to perceive. It’s another matter when Medium has excellent headlines in large font, from which it is immediately clear whether the thought has ended or not, what will happen next. In addition, the platform allows you to display quotes in the client in the form of beautiful inserts, images without frames and large indents. We also really liked the fact that the pictures always look high quality and are clearly inserted. Sometimes images on websites are stretched and do not fit into the screen. There is no such thing here. There are also regular links that open immediately in the browser, and there are inserts of unique fonts. By the way, they are always displayed correctly, even if they are exotic. In the browser, unique fonts do not always work correctly.

Posts

It’s not for nothing that the content of the resource is compared in quality to Habrahabr - here only the best, the most interesting, and voluminous. Users who have worked in a certain field for many years write about their experience, what mistakes they made, what literature is best to master for a certain profession, and describe interesting moments from their lives or world news. These are not short entries where nothing is revealed, but large entries of 3 thousand characters. Moreover, not everyone can write here, and in the end the content turns out to be exceptional.

Chips

The application allowed the creators of the product to design their creation very beautifully. For example, here, instead of vertical scrolling to view news, there is horizontal scrolling - you swipe your finger and see new news. Also, in the title of the article there is a full-screen image, but when reading the news further, the image passes through, slowly becoming transparent. The same thing happens when viewing a writer's profile. Each element is drawn to the pixel, each letter looks nice. No one is saying that this is the main thing in this type of product, but still, a nice user interface is better than an ugly web page.

Bottom line

The program began to be used along with other news applications from other resources like iPhones or appleinsider - these applications consume less traffic and work faster. If you are a fan of the Medium project and constantly read articles, then why not make reading more enjoyable and easier? After all, the program is free, does not require any subscriptions - you just read it, send it to your friends on social networks and become a little smarter. The perfect solution.


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