How Even Medium Staff Are Using Shortform for Promotion
It’s a thing, officially
Okay, it’s starting to feel like Groundhog Day, the movie. Love that movie. This is the fourth time, I’m going to talk about shortform content within a couple of days. But this time, it‘s official. Sort of.
A quick recap on how to use shortform
In my last post, I gave some insight on how I would use shortform posts on Medium to promote long-form content. The main use cases I mentioned were:
Like Twitter: 2–3 liners that link to a longer story
To recap posts: Summing up longer posts or adding details
As poetry: Rhyming promotion for your long-form content
As standalone content: Unique condensed value
Now, I’m just a Medium newbie. You don‘t have to take my word for it. So, let me show you that Medium itself is actually using shortform the way I advise to use it here.
How Medium Staff use shortform
In the last few days, I’ve started to notice a few posts on my homepage from Medium Staff. Official Medium, so to speak. And I was very pleased to see that they’re using shortform content exactly the way I have been telling you to in my previous two posts.
They’re using a variation of Tweet-like posts and short recaps. The only difference is that they're not promoting their own stories. Well, not really. Their promoting great reads from the community. From you, from us, from Medium writers. And I think this is both, beautiful and insightful.
Take a look at these two posts and tell me I’m wrong about shortform as a promotion tool on Medium:
Today We Learned... About the Kakeibo System
The Kakeibo system was invented by Japanese journalist Hani Motoko as a way for housewives to budget and track household…link.medium.com
What We're Reading Today
The Medium content team is excited to showcase a selection of stories from across the platform. This is a spot to…link.medium.com
Why this is important
To me, this signals two things:
Shortform content is valuable and welcomed by Medium
Medium really wants to support indie writers more now
I love both of these facts. For one, I think shortform is only going to get more interesting and useful on this platform.
Secondly, I can’t wait to find out what Medium plans to do in the near future. For us. For indie writers. For publications. And for individual success.
Finally, I applaud Medium for promoting stories and writer this way. In addition to the “Editor’s pick” on the homepage and the “Popular on Medium” entries, these shortform promotions by Medium Staff are a great way to shed light on outstanding content on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Thank you, Medium!