The Medium Strategy...Posted On Substack?
It will make sense soon...
Friends,
If you’re a reader or writer, you’ll dig this. If not… I hope you dig it anyway. The medium strategy is simple; it’s designed to amplify the Substack Strategy - start by reading The Substack Strategy.
Substack is our preferred platform for the written word right now. See the Substack Strategy above to understand why. Why would we be messing around with Medium?
Isn’t it extra work?
Doesn’t it add complexity?
Doesn’t it dilute or distract from the substack?
Will that mess with search engine indexing?
Great questions. And depending on how it’s set up the answer to all of those questions could be “yes”. Which is why we didn’t set it up any of those ways.
This newsletter post was copied and pasted onto Medium, right here. Medium has an advanced setting that allows me to indicate that this post already exists on Substack - so it won’t index it the same and cause search engine problems. Substack doesn’t have that feature, which means Substack has to be the primary source for this to work. Well played, Substack.
You’ll notice a few things…
The Medium Post is gated by a paywall. Only paying Medium members can read the whole thing.
Just above the paywall, it says: “If you’re not a member of Medium, you can read the whole thing here for free” and links to this post.
The Medium post is also two substack posts combined into one to make it longer. Medium measures the amount of time people spend reading your stuff.
By gating the medium post this way, a few things can happen. If a reader is a paying medium member, they can read the whole thing. If not, they can get it for free right here. If they come to read it for free, their brain has to assign some value to it since it’s a gated post somewhere else.
Medium has a greater reach and a larger number of readers than Substack does. It takes a few seconds to copy, paste, paywall, and add an extra sentence. Thanks to Medium’s advanced settings, it doesn’t mess with search engine indexing and web crawlers. Low effort, low obligation, potential upside. Most importantly, it’s created from a byproduct of something we’ve already done and fed into the main strategy instead of distracting from it.
It’s a small price to pay for a few extra readers.
And remember… given the way the Substack Strategy is set up, a few extra readers compound into many more.
In a world distracted by video, there is a tremendous amount of opportunity in writing. People still like to read, I promise. I see a lot of Medium authors throwing stones at Substack and Substack writers throwing stones right back.
It’s a shame when people get so stuck on picking sides and being “right” about it that they completely miss the emergent properties hidden in synergies.
One more thing. The same principles can easily be applied to video or any other medium. Video or audio on one platform should be working in harmony with video on another - and everything should be fed into the main, compounding thing.
Far too many people are deploying strategies that are not integrated properly in which case, yes, they are adding complexity, unnecessary effort, and distraction.
Live to learn. Give to Earn.
Nic
PS. If you like to do videos, you should. Video done right is the fastest path to reach, conversations, and ultimately cash right now. very few people know how to do video better or more efficiently than Laurel. Check out the Laurel Corner here.
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