How To Write a Blog Post on Medium in 10 steps!

his Story is going to be a ten-step checklist for writing a blog post on Medium. Writing on Medium is an art to which you should proficient in, before writing because Medium is not a commonplace but a premium reading platform. Readers on medium pay so they expect quality content to read that is valuable to them. What you write on Medium will be listed in topics or categories only if the content is according to medium writing guidelines.

Let’s jump right into step one, which is for the people who have never heard of this platform or never written an article on medium before. But if you’ve written one and you want to know what else is on the checklist, feel free to skip ahead to the next steps.

Step One: How to Create an Account on Medium

First things first, sign up for a medium account. All you’ll need is a username and a bank account to receive what you earn on medium. Creating an account is mandatory if you want to start getting paid. I like to use a Gmail account to sign up as it makes it a lot easier to sign in later with just a click.

I also would recommend using Grammarly. Medium is big on quality over quantity so having Grammarly is just a little bit of an extra nudge to get some of the wording and the spelling correction. That is going to matter later on finally.

You can set up a Stripe account so that you can connect for payment. This is optional but it is nice to be paid for writing even if it’s just a few pennies at the start, which was the case for me. You can link that to your medium and start earning for writing. That is pretty much it for step one. Just an account, stripe and any proofreading service remove grammatical or spelling mistakes from the content. Now you are ready to fire off your very first post.

Step Two: Ideas for Writing Medium Post

Step two is to get a blog idea. For some people, this is the hardest thing to decide. You will have to find out what is interesting enough for you to write a whole article about it. There are a couple of different places you can find out what is trending or what people want to know about.

For me I get my ideas from reading Twitter, really talking to my friends, digging out for the current trending topics. My cats are an eternal source of inspiration for me as well.

For you it might be a long walk on the beach, baths, watching your favorite soap operas. There is no judgment here. Good ideas come to you when you look around.

Step 3: Medium Post Headline and Image

This is possibly a thing that writers think is pretty easy, but actually, always benefit from spending a little bit more time. Feel free to spend 15 to 20 minutes on this step. You have to come up with a good gripping headline and finding an image that matches it.

If I were you, what I would do is look around on your idea, Google a few keywords and see what comes up. I would see what headlines ranked highly on Google for those keywords. That will be the structure that you will like to use.

Try not to make it to surprising overwhelmingly. This will surprise you but medium doesn’t tend to care for that. Don’t give everything away in the title because if you do, nobody will click what I like to do and what I recommend other people do is. Keep it relatively standard in the title and then on the subtitle. You can get a little interesting a little bit more quirky, something to pick the reader’s interests.

Now the image part comes, it is said that eyes are the windows to the soul and I firmly believe that headline images are the windows into the soul of your article that you will write. Think about that when you are picking out the image and what image will represent your whole article to the world.

Again I recommend spending some time on medium, seeing which images tend to come up quite often. So for example there was one of a woman with like mascara coming down from her eyes, holding like a paper smile on her mouth that people use for depression, mental health, suicide awareness, that’s great. It’s quite overused; there are better images out there.

Step 4: How to Structure Your Medium Article

Now you have all your accounts set up, you have your blog idea; you have got your headline and image. It is time to structure it out according to the medium’s writing standards. The very first thing I want you to do is, think about if you were telling your story idea to a friend. If somebody asks you, what you are writing an article about? Only five sentences. Go and find what they are. Once you’ve written those down, congratulations you have the structure of your article. You’ve got your introduction, your three middle paragraphs, and your final paragraph.

Don’t bother much with the structure you don’t have yet. Just remember, how they taught us in high school intro. Three supporting paragraphs, conclusion. If this is your first article and you want to keep it simple, this is what I would recommend.

Three paragraph approaches are really popular for a reason. It’s long enough to give substance to your article. It’s not so long that it’s going to bore readers. If your story has more content that is beyond the three-paragraph structure, I recommend the five-paragraph approach.

So then you’ve got your structure. Now what I would do is, inside of each of these little paragraphs do the same thing as your introduction. What was your introduction in five sentences?

• I think this issue is important.
• I think it’s important because of this.
• I am going to tell you why it’s important.
• This is why you should trust me.
• This is my conclusion.

That was your introduction. Put all that in the top, you fluff it out a little bit later. Do the exact same thing for the following paragraphs.

In conclusion the most important thing is the concluding sentence because at the end of that people are going to decide if they want to follow you or not. So leave them with a strong takeaway. If you wanted them to take one thing away from your article they’ve just read, what it is. What is that sentence that is your conclusion and that’s where you will draw the line and not write anymore, and then right there hopefully, is your little author profile. Readers could just click follow and then you’ll have a reader for life congratulations.

The hardest part is over, you set up your account, you’ve got your blog idea, you have the headline, you’ve got your image, and you’ve got your structure, your bullet points. The tough part is done; you can have a cup of tea to celebrate like I am.

Step 5: Adding Missing Details to the First Draft Post

The next steps are just kind of polished and bursts of step five. It is to fill it out you’ve got your structure just fill in the extra detail that you missed on the first draft.

Just go through the content and find what else can be added to support the concepts explained in the article.

Add any additional examples, analogies, any citations, anything else that you think makes your story stronger. If anything that comes missing in the flow, it may confuse the reader which compels them not to come back to your content in the future. Explain every aspect of the subject/ concept and it should be brief and precise, not overwhelming.

Step 6: Reading Your Story Loud

Read your story aloud. Do not skip this step. You might think oh I can read with my eyes. No! Read it aloud. Force yourself to walk through the entire thing. It might take you ten minutes or if it’s a long piece, it might take you 20.

Trust me; no matter how long it is it’s worth it, because when you’re writing a story you’re not just writing to your readers, you’re talking to them. You’re telling them this is what I think about a subject and this is why I think you should think about it too.

It will help with a couple of things. First and most basic it’s going to pick up a lot of grammar and spelling issues that our eyes just skip over it. Eyes only see what they want to see. Our voice is a little slower so it is going pick up errors and typos.

The second thing it will help with structure. A lot of times when I read something aloud I realized, oh this is great but this paragraph needs to be higher up or this paragraph doesn’t add anything or this paragraph repeats itself.

Finally reading it aloud you have a much better idea of what your readers will think of you as an author and that’s a very valuable thing to have.

Step 7: Finding Out Images for Medium Blog Post

This is the part to shop around on pixels or pixabay for some royalty-free images. To bolster your peace they don’t have to be super special. They can just be a little pop of color. As you find yourself reading aloud in the previous step, you might think, oh this made me think of a confrontation or a woman sitting on her own or a beach. These images will really boost your story as reading is a visual experience. Give them something to look at.

Step 8: Understanding Medium Post Editor and Formatting

The medium text editor is powerful in its simplicity. Make sure you understand it well get formatted everything the same. Look around on popular stories on medium and see how they formatted theirs. See if that is a style you like or if you want to try something else.

There is enough empty space like white spaces. If you’re noticing giant paragraphs and chunks, cut them up. If you’re noticing that it is just a line here line there, think about combining them.

If paragraphs are very short under your headings, think about extending those paragraphs or combining your headings. Make sure if it is easier to read your article. It should be looking nice beyond the images.

Step 9: Finding Publications on Medium

Finally, you’re going to do a two-pronged finish. Pick the publication you want. Publications on the medium matter a lot. They will be a home for your homeless story. You can self publish so you don’t need to put it in a publication, but having a publication means the story will reach beyond just your audience.

If you are a new author, this is really important. Take the time to find a publication that meets your story. Well for example my story named “Digital Marketing” absolutely may company “hey bay” publication. Seriously consider which publication will accept your story. Now if you’re already accepted as a writer, that’s perfect. You just click that story to submit it and basically that’s it.

If you haven’t been accepted yet as an author, what I would do is to Google the publication name like “the ascent publication guidelines for accepting writers”. Find some more good big publications that you want your stories to be getting into, and each will have submissions guidelines.

So that was part A. For Part B, pick out tags. Tags I think are more important than some people realize. Let’s quickly recap curation. Curation is when distributor on the medium back-end, looks at your story and they’re like: this story is really good I will share this, not only with this author’s followers but also with the followers of any topic that I think the story fits into.

For example if I write one about how much I love my cats, a distributor might put it into the ‘pets’ tag. Anyone who follows pets, even if they don’t follow me might see my story. In the end, tagging your story will help curators find the relevant topics.

What I would do is go to http://www.medium.com/topics and see all the topics that story can be created, or fits in. From there pick the five topics/tags that you think are most relevant to your story. That will help your stories kind of get into the right eyeballs of the curators. Curators will look at your story and hopefully decide that they think it should be curated finally.

Step 10: Finally Publishing Medium Story

The last and hardest step is to hit publish quickly. Caveat! Your story won’t be perfect and they might flop.

Heaven knows, enough of mine have flopped and I know this, to be very painful. True stories never finish. That is the beautiful thing about writing.

You can always add more, you can always trim, you can always edit more, you can always improve, but your job here is to put all of that aside and just hit publish.

You might stumble, you might hesitate, you might publish it and find out that you have a huge glaring typo in the headline. I’ve done that before. Don’t feel bad, it happens. You have to hit publish because that’s the only way that your story will get out there to your readers.

Every other step is more or less optional. This is the one that matters the most, “hitting publish”. Submit your story into the publication or your own blog and let readers find you.

Yes! You Have To Cheer UP (Not In The Checklist)

We know its cumbersome to write your first blog post on medium after planning, structuring, formatting, and a lot more. When you finally publish the post, you have to cheer up for what you have done.

For me this is a great source of inspiration, instead of getting worried, what is going happen to the article.

Always encourage yourself to push forward your inner for the next phase. This is how in the next few days, you will start enjoying writing on medium and everything will be on fingertips of yours.

It was my ten-step checklist for writing a blog post on Medium. If you’ve got any questions drop them in the comment box. If you like what you see in this story, feel free to follow me. I look forward to seeing you in a week.