Let’s discuss how to write for Medium. My goal is to give you a fast guide that’ll get you from 0–60 in five minutes.

Along with how to write for Medium, here’s a few other things we’ll cover in this article:

• How to write a Medium article properly
• How to create a Medium account
• How to use Medium
• How does Medium work?

How To Write For Medium In 2 Steps

The first step is to answer the question of how to create a Medium account.

We got to start there.

How To Create A Medium Account

To learn how to create a Medium account, simply visit Medium.com and select the “Get Started” button in the top right.

Next, you should see a pop-up appear asking you to either “Sign up with Google” or “Sign up with Facebook.” 

If you don’t have Facebook, you’ll have to create a Google account to keep this process moving. After that, you’ll see a bunch of screens over the next few seconds, where you’ll get to decide which topics and writers to “follow.”

After that, you’ll have finished the actual creation process of your Medium account. If you want to learn how to customize your profile image, your page, or anything else, read this 24-minute Medium guide from me. 

That’s how to create a Medium account.

How To Write A Medium Article

Learning how to write a Medium article is the second part of this process. Luckily it’s pretty simple. First, click your profile image in the top right from any page on Medium.

Great, now click “New story.”

After you click on “New story” brace yourselves, because you’re about to see the most beautiful CMS (Content Management System) known to man. 

It’s a beautiful blank white page full of endless possibilities. Write your title first (pictured below).

Great, now you add a cover photo.

To do that, simply press “Enter,” click on the “+” button on the left hand side, and select the magnifying glass logo.

Now type in a keyword that you feel represents your article, press enter, and a selection of images will pop up for you to choose from. Select any of them. The cool thing about this is they’re all properly sourced for you. All you have to do is select an image and the attribution will get taken care of.

Now all you do is simply write your article out as usual. For tips on formatting, visit the “How to customize a medium blog” section of this mega-post I wrote. 

When you’re done writing your article out, press the green “Publish” button at the top right of your screen.

A pop-up will then appear (pictured above). This is where you add Medium tags. After you’ve added five, hit the “Publish Now” button. 

Wa-La. That’s how to write a Medium article.

This should’ve answered all your questions about how to write for Medium. 

How Does Medium Work?

Now that you know how to write for Medium on a basic level, maybe we should discuss how Medium even works.

In short, Medium is basically Instagram for bloggers. Instead of posting pictures, though, you post full-scale blog posts. 

When you publish your articles, your followers can find them on their homepage (pictured below), in their Medium Daily Digest emails, or beneath existing articles in the recommended reading section.

Since Medium is an extremely popular website that gets tens of millions of views every month, it’s easy to use the network effects of the platform to generate views on your articles, too.

There’s a variety of other important factors behind understand how does Medium work. I go over all of them in my mega-post.

How To Use Medium For Blogging

Now we’re getting into strategy. If you want to know how to use Medium for blogging, you came to the right place.

I’ve been blogging on Medium for the last five years, and have garnered some 50,000 followers there in that span. There’s a few tricks to the trade that I’ll share with you right now that can help you see success on this platform, too.

I’ll list a bunch of them below in bullet point format.

• Get into top Medium publications — Publications command size-able audiences of readers. The Startup has over 500,000 followers. If you get published with them, you’ll get in front of a much wider audience.
• Target popular tags — When you add tags to your story, like I showed you above, target ones that have a lot of followers. I have a list of the most popular Medium tags right here for you to check out.
• Publish on your site first, then publish on Medium — I am a huge fan of publishing your blog posts on a personal site and then re-publishing them on Medium. I go over how to do that in this post. Make sure to use the canonical link so Google knows which post to show in search results. I show you how to do that in the post I just linked.
• Grow your email list — You’d be missing a huge opportunity if you weren’t using Medium to grow your own email list. When learning how to use Medium for blogging, this is essential to keep in mind and build your strategy around. In the post I just linked, I teach you how to add call-to-actions to your posts. 
• Use Medium as a portfolio — Medium’s CMS is beautiful. If you get into big Medium publications, you can use your own Medium profile as a portfolio for future freelance clients. I think this is a great way to use Medium, too.

When learning how to use Medium for blogging, there’s a plethora of ways to do it correctly. The bullets I just listed should take care of 80% of that.

In Summary

We just learned how to write for Medium, how to use Medium for blogging, and how does Medium work.

For a gigantic 5,000-word guide on how to use and grow on Medium, consult this mega-post I wrote.

I hope you enjoyed learning how to write for Medium.