Why I Want to Support Small Publications on Medium
By: Quy Ma
Tags: Ｍedium, Marketing, Publication, Writing, Inclusion

Small Publications

I first started writing on Medium three months ago, but have experienced rapid success in my short time here. Leveraging my years of experience in growing businesses, I was able to grow my personal brand quickly here on the website.

I was told early on to get my stories into big publications if I wanted to see results. So I did. And true, getting published by bigger publications did help boost my followers and reading time in some instances. But all the time? No.

Some of the most talented writers I’ve had the pleasure of knowing on Medium are editors of small publications. They post consistent quality stories in their humble publications, seeking to market their publication and grow their following. Most often, I see higher engagement in smaller publications since their followings are more tight-knit and authentic.

Unfortunately, for a publication to grow its following on Medium, it’s not enough to write quality articles. There’s no way to promote or sponsor content like there is on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And manually marketing publications to a broader audience can be quite the grind for editors.

Sometimes, it involves the laborious process of copying and pasting publication links on different social media platforms over and over again in the hopes of getting more eyes on the publication. Other times, the editors have to be careful about appearing overly self-promotional and take a break from promoting. For people who joined Medium to write, the grind of marketing can sometimes burn them out or demoralize them.

As a business professional, I can’t help but compare Medium to a market. Sometimes, I think of the big publications (10,000 followers or more) as big companies and smaller publications comparable to small or local businesses in the real world.

Just like my need to support local businesses and restaurants, I have a desire to support small publications. Considering that I’ve been able to reach 2,000 followers on Medium in the past three months, I love posting stories into smaller publications in the hopes of driving traffic there.

I can’t support them all, but I do try to find high-quality small publications that are run by talented writers to follow and hopefully contribute to. But I’m not going to lie, it’s also a pain in the rear to find publications through Medium’s search bar. Don’t even get me started on Smedian — I can’t stand their website experience.

Seeing Tony Xu’s email and his commitment to small businesses sparked a fire in me. Since joining Medium, I’ve been on a journey to make the world a more empathetic, equal, and inclusive place. In the process, I’ve developed a huge passion for helping new writers and new publications grow.

It gives me even greater satisfaction to see publications or writers in their infancy stages blossom to success. Who doesn’t love a rags-to-riches story?

There are dozens of articles on Medium, listing out huge publications to submit to. But I barely found any that focused on smaller, new publications. This list will be different.

I’ve identified ten very small, humble, yet amazing publications that cover a variety of different topics. Additionally, each publication is owned by a very diverse group of people from different backgrounds. I realize the irony of posting this article into a bigger publication, but that’s the point, right?— to use the success of others to help out the talented underdogs.

So how about it? Let’s empower and lift each other. Here are the publications!