Today, I made a first post on Medium as part of my research into the places that writers are gravitating with the (pending) demise of Twitter and changes happening at other social media platforms. So far, it’s not getting a lot of traction, which isn’t terribly surprising. With no prior posts, I only have 1 follower. One other person found it, probably from a cross-post on Twitter or Facebook. When I search on my post in Medium, I don’t find it, so I’m curious about settings and whether I need a paid subscription to be discovered. All of that is part of my research. Follow the link above if you’re curious what I had to say. Check back here to see what I learn about Medium and other options in the coming days.
Whither Social Media for Writers?
Posted byKendall DunkelbergPosted inTechnology, WritingTags:Facebook, Instagram, Medium, social media, Twitter
Published by Kendall Dunkelberg
I am a poet, translator, and professor of literature and creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, where I direct the Low-Res MFA in Creative Writing, the undergraduate concentration in creative writing, and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. I have published three books of poetry, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus. I live in Columbus with my wife, Kim Whitehead; son, Aidan; and dog, Aleida. View more posts
Kendall Dunkelberg 
Hi Kendall, I have always wondered about Medium. I will be interested to hearing what you find out. And you just reminded me that I now have to manually cross-post my latest work on Twitter since WordPress and Twitter are no longer linked.
So far I’ve learned that to show up on their search, you need to reach a certain level of engagement, though they don’t say what that is. The advice seems to be to keep writing stories in order to build an audience, which does make sense. I do like that in their Help system, Medium explains pretty clearly how distribution of stories works, both to your personal network and to the wider distribution across Medium depending on their algorithm (with no info on how that works, understandably). They also boost some posts manually, though I’m not counting on that. Cross-posting to places where you have a following can also help, which is how my stats have begun to rise. They’re still very tiny, but that’s not a huge surprise given that I had only one follower on Medium when I posted. (I had nothing to follow, so that wasn’t a surprise either.
Starting over on a new platform does really mean starting over. I often forget what it was like in my early days on Twitter or Facebook.
By the way, so far I’m using a free Medium account. This means that I can post, but I can’t create a publication or charge for subscriptions to that publication. A Medium membership is $5/month or $50/year. If I wanted to start a subscription service, which I don’t, then paying for a membership could easily make financial sense.