Medium Has Given Writers A New Tool
By: Danell Tenyenhuis Black
Tags: Audience Engagement, Followers, Subscribers, Email, Writing

There’s just one catch.

Like many other writers, I have been a little frustrated with all of Medium's recent changes. I’ve been hoping that we would continue to see changes that are writer-friendly. I was pleasantly surprised to see a much-anticipated new feature recently—more details on that in a minute.

I am still relatively new to writing on Medium, and my only other experience is writing on my WordPress blog. So I am not an expert on algorithms and how to gain followers. I measure my success by the number of reads I get and the number of followers I have. The possibility of earning money is nice but not my main incentive. I have no plans to become a full-time writer.

I have seen a slight drop in my stats, although they weren’t all that high before the changes. What I have missed the most is the notifications received when Medium selected one of my stories for curation. I realize that curation is not a guarantee of higher views or earning money, but I liked the feeling of success the emails gave me. I’m not sure why Medium chose to take this away.

I know that Medium is focusing more on relationships and followers, and I’ve recently begun experimenting with Mailchimp to create an email list of subscribers. I wasn’t sure how to do this on Medium without “breaking the rules” regarding calls to action. Now I may not have to.

Last week Abby Aker published an article in 3 Min Read. I didn’t read the article until a few days ago, and I was surprised that I hadn’t seen more of a buzz about it. Medium has given writers a tool to increase audience engagement by emailing your followers links to your articles. The article below explains the steps for setting this up.

I enjoy finding out when my favorite writers have published a story. I may not always read them right away, but I can save the emails or bookmark the stories to read later.

The only catch to this new feature is it only works on self-published articles. However, if you read Abby’s responses to comments on the article, she assures writers that Medium is looking into improving this by adding it to stories in publications and notifying readers if a writer publishes a piece in a publication. So we can look forward to improvements in our ability to engage with our followers.

Several commenters talked about the difference between followers and subscribers. Abby noted that there are separate sign-up options for followers and email subscribers. Medium is looking to improve the sign-up process in the future.

UPDATE: Abby clarified that any Medium user can sign up for your mailing list. Existing followers will need to opt in to receive the notifications. This is great news! Here are summaries of a few other questions and answers.

Question: Can email list subscribers reply to the emails?

Answer: Not at this time but being considered for a future update.

Question: Is this option available for publications?

Answer: Currently, publications can capture email addresses to send newsletters. This new option of automatically notifying subscribers will not be available to publications at this time.

Question: Can we import external lists of subscribers?

Answer: Medium is looking into creating this option.

I’m excited about this new feature, and I wanted to help spread the word. If you follow me and want to subscribe to my email list, you can find a link at the bottom of this self-published article.