How I Reached a 100% Curation Rate on Medium
By: Stark Raving
Tags: Writing, Ｍedium, Work, Advice, Freelance

How I Reached a 100% Curation Rate on Medium

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

For the past few months, I have been happy to notice that almost all of my Medium articles have been curated, or “distributed” as it is now called.

Although this isn’t as important now as it was in the old Medium, it still allows for more eyes on your articles, and so I wanted to share my tips to help you get a better distribution rate.

What is “distribution”?

For interests as varied as Sports, Food, Feminism or Travel, Medium selects the best articles from all its writers and curates them onto pages dedicated to each topic. When you sign up for Medium as a reader, you may recall, you selected the topics that interest you. Articles selected for these topics then appear on your home page, and you can read more when you click on the “Topics you follow” buttons.

Screenshot from the author’s Medium homepage

On the old medium, these pages were a lot more important, and articles from your selected topics were usually top on your home page. Nowadays, publications are given a larger place, particularly Medium’s own publication. Still, getting curated is still very helpful, because it means your articles appear higher up in searches by topic, they get more views from people searching by theme, and they are more likely to be chosen for Medium’s personalised daily digests.

How to get distributed?

Write about any topic

The topics offered by Medium are so varied that any theme can be curated. It’s not so much the theme as the form that should be tweaked if you want your articles to be distributed.

Make yourself clear

Your article should have a clear point that is of interest to the reader. The message you are conveying should be apparent in the title. Stream of consciousness pieces, where you can’t make head nor tail of the point, don’t make the cut.

Be yourself

While I am extremely grateful for my high curation rate, it isn’t what I am focused on. When I write a story, my mind is on how to make a piece accessible for the reader, how to put the right words on my thoughts and feelings and convey a message. All my pieces are things that matter to me. Don’t try and copy others, but instead think about what you love and care about, and what you have experienced. This will define what you can bring to the platform.

Find original story ideas

We all have them, because we all come from different walks of life and no two people have exactly the same life experiences. Original story ideas are more likely to be noticed by Medium’s curators, plus they often lie at the intersection of several different subject matters, making them more likely to be picked up in several tags. One exercise I use for finding original story ideas is the Mix-and-Match technique. I use flashcards with different themes written on them — random words of all kinds: deforestation, body hair, body positivity, degrowth philosophy… and then draw out two cards. Then look for a story at the intersection of the two. It doesn’t always work, but it often does, and it can lead to some interesting discoveries, and original articles.

Credit your images

All images should be credited. Whether you are using creative commons photos or your own images, make sure you write the source in the caption.

Keep it clean

Swearing in titles will prevent your article from being curated.

Articles about Medium rarely get distributed

It makes sense, as curating an article would give it a certain legitimacy, and it makes more sense for the platform to control its message. Our articles about Medium are based on personal experience and speculation, while the official articles by the platform specify their current policy. Either way, as writers try to make the best of the platform, articles about Medium tend to find their audience whether or not they are curated, so it doesn’t matter too much.

Pimp your title and subtitle

I’m really bad at headlines, but they are really important. Curators review so many pieces every day so you need to grab their attention from the outset. This doesn’t mean click-bait headlines, but articulate titles that spark interest and are true to the content of the piece. Spend some time thinking up several possible headlines and subtitles, and working out which one sounds best.

If you have any questions, drop me a comment!