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8 simple tricks I used to become a Top Writer of 7 categories in less than a month.

by HackerNoon ArchivesSeptember 25th, 2017

Too Long; Didn't Read

With the advent of the Medium “Top Writer” status, everyone wants to get their hands on one. Or in some cases 5. Or maybe even more. It’s possible. There are a few tricks that you must master before reaching this elusive status. Once you do, your follower growth will accelerate like never before! These are 8 simple tricks I used to accelerate my own growth on Medium.

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(WARNING — Not for the faint-hearted.)

1. I increased my writing time.

I used the Pomodoro technique to keep my energy levels continuously high. I’ve elaborated further on this in the article below. It outlines the basic cyclic timetable that I used to write my stories and how it helps replenish my ever-depleting energy bank. This is also an unknown remedy to feel continuously inspired to write.

Here’s how I reached my optimal creativity as a writer.

2. I turned my responses into stories.

When your follower count is low, you daily reads will obviously be low. But there’s a way around this.

No matter where you write (a story or response), Medium counts it as a story. The following are all responses I wrote to other writers’ stories, which I turned into a story of my own. They all hauled in over 100+ views each (which doesn’t seem like much — but mind you these were in different reader communities, giving me a wider reach than publishing one story within a single community).

Medium is all about bouncing ideas off different writers. Some ideas are fresh, some aren’t so much. Still, it counts as a story doesn’t it? I made sure to take full advantage of every loophole in the system.

3. I tagged appropriately.

I used my tags appropriately and wisely and made sure I had a healthy output of stories for each tag. I didn’t want to limit myself to a niche. I had my roller-coaster moods as a writer— my stories were bound to fall under widely contrasting tags.

So I published under a wide scope of tags which were different from each other. The results? I’m now a Top Writer of 7 categories.

4. I didn’t publish like a freak.

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Not at all.

I published at least 1 Op-Ed a day for the first month. These were 400–600-word essays that I meticulously edited and re-wrote. I know countless other writers who did the same. It wasn’t a tough task at all.

I made sure I published in publications with at least 5k followers or more. I have my own publications which are steadily growing by the day, but I needed the well-established platforms of certain long standing publications to spread my reach.

It feels a tad bit crazy now that I look back. I might bring this number down to a couple of Op-Eds a week, which doesn’t seem much at all. Other than that, I published shorter stories and responses that are less than 100 words each. These were mostly impulsive and typed fresh right at the computer. Remember, no matter the word count, a story is a story.

Sometimes it’s torture for the keyboard. If my keyboard died, I would’ve gotten a new one and repeated all over again.

Hello, that’s what real writers do. They write and write and write, even after they’ve forgotten why they started writing in the first place.

5. I clapped generously for others’ stories.

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This made sure others would return me the favour whenever I published a story that they liked. People love to be appreciated and nothing makes them happier than the feeling of being noticed by someone else.

(You can do the same for me too if you haven’t cracked yet seeing Preacher Lawson and his clapping stand-up bit.)

6. I used the Co-Schedule “Headline Analyser tool” to trim my headlines.

This was sort of a 50–50. Not all headline scores are perfect. This tool deducts marks for lengthier headlines. But from my experience, Medium readers tend to be more responsive to longer headlines.

The scores I’ve shown are for my best story so far on Medium. You can read it right below. The title has 5 unique words (26 characters total) while the tagline has 8 (35 characters). Buffer recommends 6 words for a headline and 55 characters for a tagline.

Are you a ‘Born Creative’?

7. My drafts list was always full.

I always kept a few drafts ready a few days ahead, scheduled to publish. This kept a steady stream of content flowing out. If I missed a day, I made sure to respond to others’ stories on Medium instead. I then tagged every response with suitable tags.