Ask yourself: What is Medium’s plan for you
By: Walid Ao
Tags: Analytics, Writing, Marketing, Digital Marketing, Social Media

The journey, analysis, and findings

As I mentioned before, in my early days on Medium, I was writing on multiple topics with a focus on Arabic culture, money, and finance. My stories were never curated.

In mid-July 2020, I submitted a story to a relatively small publication on Medium. My story was accepted, published, and immediately curated. The curation happened 1–2 minutes after the story was published, which made me believe that this small publication's editors could curate stories independently.

After my first curation, I submitted further stories to this small publication. All of my submissions to this publication got curated immediately, and after three posts, I got my first top writer status. I asked the editors of the publication if they can curate on their own. They confirmed my previous suspicions — Some publications, big or small, can curate stories independently.

My fourth submission to this publication got rejected. I went on and self-published the story anyway, and it got curated after hours from publishing.

I started thinking to myself — Does the top writer status affect my curation rate? I went on and tested this hypothesis, and the results surprised me. My self-published posts in this niche were always curated, which made me think that Medium now considers me a reliable source in this niche. Its algorithm will curate me as long as my posts are in-line with Medium’s curation guidelines.

I continued writing on multiple topics, and I got curated in relationship, parenting, energy, future, tech, finance, money, among others. However, not all of my stories on these topics are curated; actually, most are not curated.

I went to my 100% curation niche and took a look at my tags. Among the tags were social media and technology. I thought to myself: Let’s focus on these two topics for now and see what will happen.

After nine posts on technology or social media, I can confirm that my curation rate is 89%. Only one story in these topics was not curated. I wrote one sentence in Arabic in this uncurated story. I believe that the curation algorithm rejected the story because, in Medium’s curation guidelines, only stories in English can be curated. And yes, now I have earned top writer status in both of these topics.

So far, the Medium Gods trust me in three topics; gaming, technology, and social media. Since I had two curated stories with money and technology in the tags, I thought to myself; maybe it's time to start recycling my older posts on money and finance. And surprise surprise, the re-written stories are getting curated now.

Actually, when I publish a story directly to my own publication about money, it doesn’t get curated. Still, if I self-published a story, it gets curated — Maybe Medium does not think my publication is a reliable source yet. For now, I self-publish my stories on finance and once curated, I add them to my publication — I believe doing this will increase the algorithm’s trust in my publication.

Disclaimer: I completely rewrite my recycled posts about finance and money. The quality of my writings is better than how it was three months ago. This might be the reason for the increased curation rate. However, The curation happens within 1–3 hours (Previous curations in finance or money happened after a day or two), making me believe that I’m currently graded as a more reliable writer.

From the previous analytics, Now it's time to give you, in a clear manner, the 5 takeaways from my analytics and findings.