If you’re a regular user of Medium, the social platform that allows people to post original, long-form content, then you know how varied the content there is.
Articles on fashion.
Economic treatises.
Opinion pieces on the #MeToo movement.
Academic commentary.
The list goes on.
What you may not know, however, is how effective Medium can be for B2B marketing. If you’ve been considering using Medium for your B2B content marketing strategy, here’s what you need to know.
Why Medium content marketing is effective
As you’re likely aware, quality content is becoming more and more important these days. In fact, Google’s algorithm is not only rewarding high-quality content—it’s actually punishing sites with poor or low-quality content. At the same time, research continues to show that the most popular content on the web ranges between 1,600 and 2,500 words, according to a report from CoSchedule.
Because Medium encourages users to write long-form, high-quality content—that’s entirely what the site is designed for—it can be an excellent way to start creating more content like this, in addition to the short and snappy posts that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram encourage.
In addition, Medium is an ideal platform to help you establish your thought leadership, which is crucial for B2B companies. According to LinkedIn’s The State of Sales 2017 report, trust is the “single most influential factor in the buyer/seller relationship,” according to buyers. Thought leadership is one of the most effective ways to build that trust.
The easiest way to get started publishing on Medium
Before you start feeling overwhelmed by the idea of creating content on a regular basis for yet another platform, here’s a great—and easy—way to get started publishing on Medium: cross-post your company blog posts there.
That’s it! Simple, right? Here’s the best way to do it.
Rather than simply copying and pasting your blog posts into Medium, you’ll want to use their Import tool.
Why?
Because when you’re posting duplicate content in multiple places, Google and other search engines want to see that there is a single authoritative source for the content. This authoritative source—in the case of a company blog post, that would be your website—is known as “the canonical link.”
If you post duplicate content in several places without maintaining a canonical link, search engines may penalize you by moving that content lower down on the search results page when people search for relevant keywords.
For full instructions on how to use Medium’s import tool, read our post “6 Ways to Decide Whether Medium is Right for Your Brand.”
As you import your blog posts into Medium, you can begin the process of creating an editorial calendar and original content specifically for the platform.
How to make Medium work for your B2B brand
There are several key tips and marketing tactics that will help your brand succeed on Medium.
1. Identify relevant publications to submit your articles to.
In addition to individuals who post articles on their own profiles, Medium also has publications, which are akin to online magazines. Organized around a theme, like “startups,” or “women’s health,” etc., publications have followers who receive the publication’s content via the site and/or through a newsletter.
Getting your content into a publication can be a great way to increase your reach and get your content in front of a much wider group of people. People who may never have found you on their own might come across one of your pieces in a popular publication, comment on it, and
Each publication has different submission rules, from how long articles should be to the types of topics they cover.
In order to have your content featured in a publication, you first have to be accepted as a writer—you can find out how to do this through each publication’s submissions guidelines.
2. Focus on quality writing.
Medium is a platform for readers—in other words, people who want more than just a tweet or a Facebook post. The people who are on Medium want high-quality articles by people who know what they’re talking about, not soundbites or thoughtless reiteration of current events.
So when you’re creating your original content for Medium, write about the things you actually care about.
Here are a few ideas to help you generate some topics:
- What I’ve learned over the past X years in my industry
- What I think the biggest trend in my industry will be over the next five years
- One thing I tell every employee
- What I wish I could tell my younger self
While these topics by themselves are fairly generic, when you add your own personal stories, they come to life. And that’s what readers—in other words, the B2B buyers who are trying to find trustworthy vendors to purchase from—want from the companies they work with: true, authentic stories.
3. Always include an image.
Images are your best friend on Medium, especially since the content you post there will likely be (and should be!) longer. Start with an eye-catching image, below the title but above the first sentence of the body.
It’s also helpful to add in more images throughout the piece, to help break up the text.
4. Format with lots of white space
Just as images help break up the text and make your content easier to read, breaking up your text with lots of white space will help readers read all the way to the end of your piece, without getting too overwhelmed or tired.
Medium also has its own formatting that can and should be used judiciously. Bullets, numbered lists, quotations, and headings are your friends—use them in every article you post.
5. Consider monetizing your posts.
While Medium offers a certain number of articles for free to each user, after that user accesses that number of articles, they come up against a paywall.
Medium members, on the other hand, pay $5 per month for access to every article on the site. When you publish an article to Medium, you have the option of making it eligible to earn money through their Partner Program. When you do this, members who clap for your story—the Medium equivalent of liking a post—have a certain percentage of their membership fee go toward supporting the author of the story (you).
So if your story receives 2,000 claps, you’ll get a percentage of the membership fee from each of those members who clapped for your story. There’s no real reason not to do it, honestly—while you might not make much money this way, you could bring in some each month, depending on how well your articles do.
Medium can be a highly resource-intensive platform, especially once you get past the point of reposting your blog content and are creating original content on a regular basis. However, considering how important thought leadership is for B2B buyers, Medium is not a platform you can afford to entirely ignore.
For more on establishing yourself as a thought leader, read our post “6 Ways to Gain Credibility as an Industry Thought Leader.”
