Things I Learnt After Interviewing A Successful Medium Writer

If you’re reading this article, chances are that you want to improve your writing. Or, you want to write consistently.

What is more, this is not the first article that you’ve come across, while trying to improve your craft.

I imagine that, like me, you spend quite a lot of time on Medium reading other people’s stuff to learn from it. If all these points sum up your current situation, then I’ve definitely got something to say to you.

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But let me make one thing clear at first. This is not a “copy/paste” type of article. In other words, I’m not picking or copying things from here and there and, quite literally, “pasting “ them here.

Instead, all my words are a direct result of my podcasting and interviewing experience with a successful Medium writer.

Now, as mentioned above, I’m just like you! Yeah! it’s true that every single night, I spend an hour going through all the “popular” articles within my network. The intention is simple. I want to figure out what “special” stuff these articles have, which helps them to succeed on Medium.

Very recently, I came up with an idea to simplify this process. Instead of researching over and over, I asked this very question to Øivind Solheim, who is actually quite popular on Medium. As of yet, he has around 2.5K subscribers, which for a beginner, is pretty impressive.

I didn’t just ask him this one question. Actually, I invited him to my Podcast show, The International Connection, to get a glimpse of his creative mindset. And, as expected, our conversation turned out to be a valuable resource for my creativity.

Now, to help you guys save a ton of research time here’s a quick summary of everything that we discussed.

So, have an open mind. Grab a pen and some paper & let’s jump right in.

Øivind’s Approach to Writing

1. Do You Even Care About What You Write?

Let’s start with a simple question. How often do you write? Yeah, I’m talking about consistency here because to be successful, you need to be consistent. But, we already know that. As a matter of fact, we’ve heard this advice over and over again. It’s printed in every self-help book out there. Yet, some of us aren’t consistent. Why is that?

Here’s the catch. Yes, you’ve got to write every day but you’ve got to write about things that you actually care about.

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If you just write, write & write about anything and everything, you’ll be stuck in a generic loop and will create a generic type of content. However, by writing about something that matters to you, you’ll always be motivated to write, no matter the circumstances.

This is how you build consistency.

Let me give you a personal and relatable example.

This example will clarify the difference between forcing and actually writing. During my early days of writing on Medium, pretty much everyone in my network was writing about “entrepreneurship”. It was the talk of the town. Now, I wanted to ride along with this tide of entrepreneurship without actually caring about the topic.

So, I published an article, where, quite honestly, I forced my words out to look cool. As expected, my engagement on that article was next to nill. You can check this for yourself. Here’s a link to that article. Now, this happens when you literally force your words to talk about something you don’t necessarily like.

I learned it the hard way. After that, I swore to only create content about the stuff that I actually care about. To this day, I haven’t broken that promise and I don’t plan to anytime soon. This is one of the key ways in which I’ve achieved consistency.

So then, I wrote an article called “3 Ways to Tackle Fear”, which received 4 times the engagement. Why? Because the words were coming straight out of my heart.

Øivind & I agreed on this instantly. Had I known about this earlier, I would not have ridden the “entrepreneurship” tide and would have saved a lot of time and energy. But, I had to make my mistakes to learn about this process. However, you guys don’t.

The reason I’m writing this article is that I want you guys to get “good” at what you do. A good place to start is to figure out what it is that you actually care about. Then and only then, write about it every single day. I can’t stress this enough.

Whatever it is, fitness, tea, coffee, shoes, magic tricks, or The Great Wall of China, your words have to come from within your heart. That will make all the difference.

2. Diversify Your Content: Add Different Perspectives on What You Care About

Øivind made an interesting observation. After figuring out what you care about, search for more people, who write on the same or similar topics. If your sample size is large enough, chances are that you’re going to find people with different opinions or perspectives on that very thing that you care about.

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This is how you can diversify your content. See, it’s good that you only write on a topic that you care about but you also don’t want to keep writing the same thing over and over. By adding different perspectives, you’ll make your writing more interesting and well-researched. Also, not to forget, you’ll enjoy the process even more.

Now, let me give you a personal example. I love creativity and also, I love talking to a wide range of people about creativity. As a matter of fact, I love it so much that I’ve created a whole podcast channel around it.

To make sure that my content remains interesting over a long period of time, I play the game of multiple perspectives. For example, along with my “western” take on creativity, I reach out to people from other cultures to grasp their opinions on the same topic. In this way, I learn more about their culture and also, establish a universal understanding of something I love.

So, find out how your “interests” are viewed in other communities and use that content to spice up your writing.

3. Expand Your Reach

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You’re not hearing this for the first time. Almost all Marketing workshops and webinars have this as one of their “featured tricks” to expand your audience. Unfortunately, very few of them actually take the time to explain this concept. So, if you’re unsure about how you can expand YOUR reach, don’t worry. I can confidently say that I got you for this one.

This might sound tricky, but it’s actually quite a simple idea. Expanding your reach basically means creating noise elsewhere so that more people interact with your content. Let’s consider Øivind’s case as an example. He has his own publication called The Blue Insights, which is a hub for outstanding creators. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he spends a lot of time interacting with his community on Medium. However, he doesn’t stop there.

Øivind Solheim

Øivind is also a member of a Facebook group, where he engages and networks with a lot of content creators, who are not necessarily writers. This enables him to share his stories with a wide variety of people, who land on his Medium profile from all sorts of places.

As a matter of fact, he is working on another Facebook group right now to achieve the same thing.

So my advice to you would be to first, search for a good Facebook group and then, interact with that community on a daily basis. Gradually, you’ll be able to expand your reach and create a diverse audience.

With that said, I’d like to end this article because, in my opinion, you’ve got some homework to do.

Also, to summarize everything that I’ve mentioned above, here’s what you need to do:

1 ) Find something that you care about and write about it every single day.

2) Try to find different perspectives & opinions about that very thing that you care about and incorporate that in your story.

3) Expand your reach by becoming a part of Facebook groups. Interact with them on a daily basis and be on their radar. Over the long term, they’ll become your superfans.

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If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for sticking with me. I hope that this article becomes a valuable resource for your creativity.

If you want to hear my conversation with Øivind, here’s a link to it.

Best of luck & keep creating.

Check Out My Podcast

I host The International Connection Podcast, where I connect with creative entrepreneurs from around the world to share inspiring stories.

TIC058: How I Discovered My Creativity - Ashley Peake Wellman - The International Connection

https://theinternationalconnection.com/tic03-writing-that-moves-ft-sinem-gunel/