Should I Put My Blog Posts on Medium?

Medium, if you don't know, is an open, easy-to-use platform where anyone can create an account to start writing and to share that writing with the world. Awesome, well known people like Barack Obama and Gary Vaynerchuk have used the platform to publish content, as well as plenty of not-so-awesome, not-so-well known folks. One strategy that many writers and marketers employ is publishing content first on their blog or website and then publishing it again on Medium a bit later with a link back to the original piece (or no link sometimes). Medium has incredible reach, and allows bloggers and writers to upload their own, previous published content with no consequences. So, I wonder, should I put my blog posts on Medium?

I Have More Than 500 Published Posts On This Blog

With more than 500 posts over the course of four or five years, it would seem like I shouldn't need the reach or any additional help. Anyone who has been writing that much for that long ought to have plenty of followers and ought to have quite a niche built out for them.

Unfortunately, that's not the case.

All the blogging was in a whole lot of fits and starts, and is also an archive of several different blogs, since many of the posts were from my freelancing blog and my two business blogs as well as anything that I decided to write for personal purposes. There's not a whole lot of cohesion to the content or to the process of writing all of the 500 posts. I somehow just happened to write all of it over the span of a few years.

However, many of these posts are just getting dusty. They were great, on point blog posts when I wrote them and they got a lot of traffic when they were originally on the business blog. But, the posts aren't doing much for me now. Yes, I do need to go back and update the information, make sure the links still work, pick a new photo and clean up the SEO portion of it. It's very possible the fact that I haven't done all that yet is hurting. With all this in mind, post my content on Medium may be a good thing to do with old content.

I'm Hesitant Because of the Decentralization

I'm concerned about doing this because I don't own Medium, and therefore I give up control of my content when I put in on Medium. If Medium shuts down, then all that content is gone. If Medium decides it's great, then they'll feature the post and promote it. If not, then they aren't going to do anything to help my content reach the people I want it to reach. If a post does really well on Medium, then I can't guarantee that those people will associate the work with me and the brand that I'm trying to build. It may increase my audience for a day, but I won't know for sure how many of those people will stick around and will read my next post or be interested in anything else that I might have to offer. At least when you promote and share your content on social media, you have a little bit more control then on platforms like Medium and LinkedIn.

Overall, it might be worth trying Medium with a couple of posts, just to see how it works and to see if I like it. Everyone talks about how great the platform is and the potential and exposure it gives people. As I said in a previous blog post, I just need to start talking and stop worrying about all sorts of little things that don't matter in the long run.

I Want to Talk About All the Things

When most beginners start blogging, all them blogging and social media gurus tell you that you gotta pick something. Nobody likes jacks- and janes-of-all-trades, so you need to pick something and specialize in it and build a community around that one topic you picked. It's easier that way. It's easier to attract a community. It's easier to position and present yourself. Besides, you can't be everything to everybody and you can't possibly do everything anyway. All those gurus forget to mention HOW HARD it is to pick. People are complicated and often have a variety of interests and passions, sometimes competing interests and passions. Other people just don't know what their passions are, or aren't sure among several different choices so they don't want to commit to one topic. Although clarity comes from engagement, not thought, as the great Marie Forleo says, at times it can take quite a bit of "engagement" for folks to figure out which passions and interests to spend their time on.

Therefore, I'm Going to Do All the Things

I'm just going to do all the things cause I want to do all the things and I'm going to be my own blogging and social media guru and make it work. I'm going to make it work because I think it's awesome and I think just about everything is awesome (except cockroaches, as they are not awesome). There's probably going to be a lot of app marketing, inbound marketing and content marketing in here as well because I know a lot about that stuff and I do it for a living so it's kind of hard not to have it seep into the rest of my life. After all, I have plenty of categories in my sidebar, which illustrate that I certainly love all the things and have already made previous attempts at doing all the things, even though I wouldn't have called any of those posts or categories attempts when I first created them. Never mind some of the stuff that I wrote about previously. Some of it I will iterate and bring it back and others I will not.

I'm Also Probably Going to Promote Apps Here as Well

I know! It makes me such a shrill to promote products or whatever on the blog or on the sidebar. But, first of all, it's part of my job. I love my job and I do love the apps that we create. Our apps cover all sorts of topics, and some of those topics I'm probably never going to talk about in depth on this blog. For example, our latest app is Inside Drones, which is about hobby drones, quadcopters, and how they're used in various industries. It features drones news and only drones news. so it won't ever have celebrity news or sports news or even topics more closely related like gadgets or tech news. I'm probably never ever going to talk about drones in a blog post. But, people are doing some pretty awesome things with drones, like this Drones Racing Championship that's happening next month. That just sounds darn cool. How do you not promote that and talk about that?

On a side note, I need to create my reading list for this website. I like to all sorts of books and I have plenty of favorites and recommendations, spanning all sorts of topics. You know what, if I like it I'm gonna promote it. Plain and simple. Marie Forleo does that with some of the guests she has on her show, and I've certainly bought the books and other products from some of her guests. One of my particular favorites is Sally Hogshead. Her research and ideas on fascination is just amazing.

All The Things I’ve Stopped (Part 3 of 9)

For the third part in this series, I'm going to evaluate my 50 blog post topics list. I wrote this list so I wouldn't get stuck with writer's block and stop blogging. I didn't like the blog post ideas that I was coming up with just so I could get a post up, so I decided to ensure I wasn't wasting time coming up with a good idea. The list of topics took me a few hours to put together, and in the end I only did 15 of those topics. I also ended up doing the 15 easiest topics first, leaving the tougher topics for, well, perhaps never.

The Tougher Topics Would Have Taken More Time than I Had

Many of the tougher topics (particularly the questions about current affairs) would have required a ton of preliminary research, and once I sat down to write the post, it would've taken me about two hours to write it. Add that to the research time, and tackling one of these tougher topics would've taken between four and six hours of my time. That's time that I could've made room for if I made the blog post a priority, but I couldn't make it that kind of a priority over paying clients.

I wasn't going to do a sloppy job of tackling these topics either. Here's a David Cameron article that I wrote in September 2013, an example of what I would like to do when answering one of these questions. Sure, I could answer a similar question with only two reasons instead of three, or I could include three reasons but cite fewer sources throughout the article, but the David Cameron article is a great article. Not to toot my own horn, but I did a great job in answering the question. If I'm not going to commit to that level of quality, then I'm not going to start the blog post or find an easier way to do the blog post. The David Cameron article is simply how those current affairs questions should be tackled.

Going Back to Making It a Priority

In the first two parts of this series, I've discussed stopping ventures because I lost interest or because I found a better option. This time, I stopped completing this list because I felt I had more important priorities besides taking the time to write on the tougher topics. This blog (for now) is simply for fun and I can't let it get in the way of paying work. Well, I could let it get in the way of paying work, but I wouldn't be earning enough to pay my bills. I also didn't want to spend so much time on just one blog post, because if I did commit four to six hours to write one post, then I would've had to reduce the number of times I published in a week. Back when I was doing those posts, I was publishing about every other day (and I'm currently working to come back to that frequency). Tackling these tougher topics would've meant publishing only about once or twice a week, perhaps even less frequently. That's just no good for blog. At least I don't think that's good for a blog.

Perhaps I'll be able to tackle some of the tougher topics in the future if I plan accordingly. I would probably need to give myself about a month's leeway, and if I do that, then I would need to choose topic that would still be timely in a month or two. That's not too hard, considering that some current issues can go on for months.

Differences Between Blogging in 2008 and Blogging in 2014

As Well as a Few Critiques

I admit I wasn't blogging in 2008. I considered the idea as a junior in college, and a friend even recommended that I call the blog, "Frog Blog." I didn't start blogging (for myself and for other sites) until 2010 and I've been blogging just about every day ever since.. Even with nearly four years of blogging experience, I learned a few great tips from "Blogging Heroes." But, there are a few changes between then and now, changes that weren't applicable even between 2008 and 2010. Here are X of the major differences between 2008 and 2014, as analyzed from "Blogging Heroes."

Monetization Through Advertising is On Its Way Out

Many of the blogs featured in the book made money through advertising, using programs such as Google Adsense. In 2008, advertising using Google Adsense was the primary and profitable way to make money with your blog. In 2014, it's simply not the case anymore. Adsense and other advertising networks pay by the click, and quite frankly, people don't click on advertising anymore. Readers find display advertising intrusive and distracting, and often don't find any benefit in the advertising. Today, to generate the number of clicks that you need to make your Adsense revenue worthwhile, you either have to publish tons and tons of posts each day (essentially becoming a slave to your blog) or write about things that salacious and juicy (or slap on such a headline for click bait). Neither tactic makes a blogger great or profitable in blogging.

Adsense and other advertising networks can still bring in some money, yes, but many bloggers today are monetizing their blogs by using a variety of methods. These methods include affiliate marketing programs like Amazon Associates, selling products directly on the site, creating a membership program, hosting paid online and in-person events, offering consulting services, and many more. Bloggers today often use more than one method since using only one method (like advertising} makes it incredibly difficult for a blogger to make enough money to live solely through blogging.

Networking Through the Blog Comments is Also Out

The spammers ruined this one. In 2008, the comment section was still a great place to start conversations, to add to conversations, and to share a link back to your blog. However, spammers have ruined the comment section by using it as a way to stuff keywords and to place links to sites that are irrelevant to the website. In 2014, major blogs and publications like Popular Science and Six Pixels of Separation are shutting down their comment sections because of the spam and the trolls. Also consider that when sites like Huffington Post and Salon post something controversial, it's nearly impossible to get your comment noticed because everyone has a comment to make. Besides, a comment section that's devolved into ad hominem and vitriolic nonsense isn't the place you want to be to network your blog.

Those blogging today shouldn't emphasize comments as a sign of popularity or as a way to build backlinks either. Only one percent of blog readers take the time to comment on posts, while many sites mark comment links as "no follow", so they don't add any SEO benefit.

Instead, bloggers today are networking through social media and in-person events. Conferences like New Media Expo and The Blog Workshop are two of the biggest national events, but smaller events such as local meetups or professional networking events can also be great ways to promote the blog. Only a few well established blogs such as Problogger and Inbound Hub manage to keep their comment sections accessible without getting overwhelmed by the spammers and trolls.

Is Technorati As Powerful as It Once Was?

I used to write for Technorati, and still can if I really want to. I started writing for Technorati in 2010, and back then writing for the site was a great thing to do. There were plenty of good writers contributing good content, and the section editors would work with you personally to ensure that you made edits to the articles when requested and to give you article ideas. Technorati's listings were used several times throughout the book as a way to demonstrate how popular or well-known a blog is, such as the Top 100 Favorited Blogs and the Top 100 Linked To Blogs (do either of those lists still exist, and if so, who is one them?)

Technorati may have been great several years ago, but is it still great now? I wonder if bloggers today care about their Technorati rankings or authority numbers. It could be that bloggers don't care anymore, as those listings have been saturated by the same 150 or 200 blogs that just switch spots among themselves. It's unlikely any of the blogs currently listed on the Top 100 are going to fall of the wagon so horribly that they won't be able to recover, making room for someone new to make the list.

Plenty of Emphasis on Tech Blogs

I understand that the 30 bloggers interviewed in the book weren't the author's first 30 choices, or were necessarily the bloggers that reflected the 30 most popular bloggers of the time. But, I would have liked to see a little more variety in the blogs that were featured. Over one-third of the blogs featured had something to do with business or tech. There weren't any political, fashion, green, celebrity, entertainment, sports, or current events blogs featured. Only one parenting blog (ParentDish) made the list and only one DIY blog (DIY Life) made the list. It would have been great to see one more blog from both of those categories since they are crowded categories like tech and business.

Granted, I don't know if there were many people blogging in those categories in 2008. Since blogging was still very new in 2008, it could easily have been that many bloggers were technology and business experts since they are the most likely people to be an early adopter of a new technology platform like blogging. It's possible that great bloggers in those other categories got a later start because they needed to get acclimated with the technology first before they would have felt comfortable in using it to communicate their hobby or passion.

LOVED Seeing the Pics of the Blogs in 2007

While reading the book, it was actually pretty awesome to go through each chapter and see a screenshot of the blog in 2007. It's baby Lifehacker and baby Gizmodo! How cute! It was also pretty swell to see what qualified as slick web design and cutting edge fonts back in 2007 too. If some of these designs and layouts existed as they were in 2014, then many of them would be too busy and not very user-friendly.

Does Anyone Else Follow 200+ Blogs?

Many of the bloggers featured in the book kept up with other blogs through RSS feed. Although Google Reader doesn't exist anymore, keeping up with other great blogs is an excellent thing to do as a blogger. But, to keep up with more than 200 blogs? How is that possible, whether or not you use an RSS feed? If you don't use an RSS feed, then what do you use to keep up without everything, since all those updates would clog your email or take too much time to do manually? I would be surprised if anyone follows this many blogs. I think most bloggers only follow fewer than 100 blogs, or only keep up with their subject areas through tools like Google Alerts.

Well, that's all I have to say about Blogging Heroes: Interview with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. Overall, the book is an excellent read for any blogger, whether you do it professionally or as a hobby. I wouldn't classify it as a must-read since some of the information is outdated and that a few of the blogs featured don't even exist anymore. But, blogging has changed quite a bit since 2008 as well as the top players in the field. It would be neat to try to to find today's top 30 bloggers (or even the 30 bloggers in each category). It would be pretty cool to hear their stories.

3 Timeless Tips from 30 Blogging Heroes

Typically, I'm not interested in how-to books regarding blogging, social media, search engine optimization, and all the different Google tools. Those books become obsolete so quickly since those platforms and how to use them change so much. For example, there's a book about Google Buzz on the shelf at my local library, a Google service that only lasted about a year. I always chuckle when I see because I wonder who would borrow it. But, I did find a book about blogging on my local library shelf called, Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. It was published in 2008, and the premise of interviewing the top 30 bloggers in 2008 and publishing the conversations sounded intriguing and evergreen. It seemed like Blogging Heroes would be one of those few how-to books that wouldn't be too outdated, and would still have a few awesome blogging tips to offer that would still apply in 2014.

I was right.

These Are Some Great Blogs

Of the 30 blogs/bloggers featured, 18 are still going in their current form. By "current form", I mean the same domain name and pretty much the same topic. Another seven still exist, but either have a new domain name, or the content is now found with another site (DIY Life is now part of Style Me Pretty, while Luxist is now part of Stylelist.com). The main reason why that number is high, in my opinion, is that the book featured Weblogs Inc. and several Weblogs properties. AOL acquired Weblogs Inc. in 2005, so some of their properties were added to the Huffington Post or to other AOL sites.

Only five of the 30 blogs featured have stopped entirely, where either the domain name listed doesn't lead to anything, or the blog hasn't posted anything new in several years. I mention this before sharing the tips because the sources of these tips come from the other 25 that are still going in some way, illustrating the timelessness of blogging as an art form and how to do it right.

Great Content Beats SEO

Robert Scoble of Scobleizer made this point best, and I was so glad to hear it because even in 2007/2008, when SEO was still new, the top bloggers of the time still understood the importance of great content. Others echoed the sentiment by emphasizing how quality content is what ultimately builds and keeps an audience, but I loved that the awareness existed back then that gaming the system was a short-term strategy at best.

Of course, many bloggers in the book acknowledged SEO's importance in getting found online, and paid attention to it to some extent. But, none of them obsessed over it to the point that is was more important than the content being written or offering value to the reader. No one even considered SEO more important than actively promoting the blog and its content on your own, either through networking or working with other great bloggers to highlight what they're doing.

Remember: Google doesn't buy from you! Google doesn't read your blog, subscribe to your blog, or comment on your posts. Therefore, worry more about offering something awesome and beneficial to customers, versus trying to please Google for higher search engine rankings.

Write about What You Are Interested In or Passionate About

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” - Howard Thurman

"Finding your passion" is harder than it sounds, and Marie Forleo does a great explanation of how to find your passion and where you shouldn't look for it. But, a great point made by Scott McNulty from the Unofficial Apple Weblog, and many others in the book, is that successful blogs have a topic or several topics that they want to share with others and simply do that. Successful bloggers write about what they found interesting, or when they have something to add to the conversation. Many people may write about something because it's trending, or because they think people like X or Y so they ought to cover X or Y. But, McNulty and Howard Thurman point out that a blog really comes alive when the blogger is passionate about the subject and has his/her heart in it.

"I Don't Decide to Blog and then Look for Something. I Find Something, and Then I Blog It."

Rebecca Lieb of ClickZ gave life-changing (it changed my perspective on blogging for the rest of my life, that's for sure) advice on how to find blog post topics and how to remain relevant as a blog. I loved this quote because it takes the weight off about creating an editorial calendar and sticking to it. I've created a calendar and filled it in with blog post ideas many times, only to look at it a week later and not feel any excitement for these topics that I spent so much time to think about. I like Lieb's advice because it harnesses the initial creativity and spark of when you see something, and immediately come up with thoughts, ideas and responses to that something. From there, you can write a blog post. The energy is there when you write the blog post, versus scheduling to write about something in three weeks when you saw it and thought about it today.

Overall, Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers is an excellent book with plenty of relevance to blogging in today's world. I would highly recommend the book as it is a chance to learn from some of the original pioneers in the industry and practice. I do have a few criticisms and differences to point out, of which I will cover in a future post.

Blogging and SEO: 3 Places To Include Links to Your Blog Posts

We all know that inbound links are great, and that inbound links are one of the benefits of business blogging. A good way to increase the number of links to your blog posts is with internal links, links to your blog posts from other pages on your site. Of course, you can do this by including links to your blog posts on other posts with related link or links within the text. Or, you can include links to relevant and/or popular blog posts on other pages on your site. Here are three places you can include links to your blog posts:

Product/Service Pages

First of all, every single one of your products and/or services should have their own page (it helps with SEO), so if you don't have that then you should do that. Second, each product and service page can have three relevant blog posts at the bottom. It's a way to give prospects additional resources regarding that specific product/service. It's also one more way to keep prospects engaged with your brand while visiting your site. Third, if you're running short on blog post ideas, come up with two or three that would complement each product or service that you offer, and write those posts just so that you can include them on the page. Placing internal links on your product and/or service pages can increase traffic to those blog posts and give those specific posts additional exposure.

The About Us Page

Although your blog posts shouldn't be strictly about your company, your corporate blog is a crucial part of your brand and who you are as a company. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to include a few blog posts on your About Us page. This can be an RSS feed of your latest posts, or perhaps a list of your most popular or your best posts. It might not seem like something those who visit this page would be interested in seeing, but it doesn't hurt to include the links, and people can't visit your blog from this page if you don't include links to the blog posts.

On Thank You Pages

Once your web visitors download something from you, it's great if you can keep them engaged. An excellent way to do that is to include blog posts on your thank you pages. It adds something to the page (this way it's not just text that says 'thank you' and a link to the download and a link back to your home page) while also offering the newly converted lead additional resources to read and to consider.

Now, if you don't have thank you pages, like this one for our free 30-minute consultation, for every single one of your lead generation offers, then that's something you need to work on first. It's much more snazzy then something that just says, "thank you for your interest" or "thank you for your information."

Having a business blog is great, but if you don't make it easy for visitors to find your blog posts, then it'll be that much tougher to bring traffic to your awesome content. There are many more places to amplify your blog content then through email or through social media. Including them in strategic places throughout your website can make a difference.

Related Links:

Creating Blog Content: Why 'Contact Us' is a Horrible Call to Action

5 Business Blogging Best Practices

AP Style Blogging: What That Even Means