Here at Contentworks HQ, we’re thrilled to have been recognised as a top finance writer on Medium! We publish bitesize finance articles and a roundup of market news to the platform on a weekly basis and have made Medium part of our in-house strategy. But why do we give Medium our attention? And Medium for your finance brand – worth it? Sit back and grab a coffee as we take a deeper look into this publishing platform that’s home to a diverse array of stories, ideas and perspectives.
Benefits of Writing on Medium
Let’s firstly address the elephant in the room. With so many social media platforms available, many of which you’ll already be involved with, why should you be interested in yet another channel? We don’t blame you. Content marketing is time consuming, without adding yet another platform that requires its very own strategy. But Medium comes with a surprising list of benefits that you should know. For example:
Medium is Great for Finding new Audiences
As a marketer, one of your main goals will be to find new audiences. A new audience means the chance to grab those all-important leads. The good news is Medium’s algorithmic timeline will present your content to people that may have never heard of your brand before. The key is to write valuable content that’ll be appreciated enough to receive claps. Claps are just like ‘likes’ on Instagram and Facebook. The more claps your content gets, the more it’ll be shown to Medium members. One person can give up to 50 claps per article.
Medium Can Complement Your Other Social Content
Let’s look at another channel you might be on. Twitter is a micro-blogging site. You can’t write much for each post. But if you find that a particular post generated a high number of likes and retweets, then it could be a good starting point for a more detailed post on Medium. Blogging on Medium is simple and hassle-free. The uploading format is simple and with all that white space incorporated in the design, it’s easy to communicate your message clearly, insert images and infographics and yes, link back to your site! What’s also awesome for marketers is that you can take your social media audience with you to Medium. So if your followers have been responding to your Twitter posts, you can now use analytics to create posts of interest on Medium that they’ll also see.
Takeaway: Use the stats from recent social media activity on other platforms to kickstart your Medium strategy. As a blogging platform, this is your chance to go into detail on brand-related topics and to become a thought-leader in your industry.
Great Content Gets More Attention
If you know your audience, have a clear focus and are a talented writer, Medium could indeed be the place for you to excel. Medium’s editorial teams regularly review stories published on the platform, selecting those that meet distribution standards and exhibit a high level of quality for additional distribution in Medium’s emails, apps, homepage and more. To gain this increased level of exposure, your stories should:
- Be well-written, easy-to-follow and free from grammatical/spelling errors
- Share new insights and perspectives/ offer an original take on a familiar idea
- Stir emotions and inspire creative thinking
- Provide meaningful advice or enrich a reader’s understanding of the topic
- Be written with a specific audience in mind. This also means using the right tags. This is an incredibly important step when publishing a story as Medium users naturally get stories from the tags they ‘follow’ on their homepage. The right tags could therefore be the difference between 10 views and 1,000 views.
- Contain relevant and appropriate imagery that’s within the Medium guidelines
Top Tip: When writing your Medium stories, keep a few specific things in mind. Will readers walk away satisfied? Did it answer questions? And perhaps as a marketing agency our main question is Would they share it? And if not, why not? You should also be aware that content which violates specific Medium rules will not be considered for additional distribution. This includes plagiarised content, duplicate content, stories that glorify or trivialise violence and more. Read more about this here.
Medium Offers Good Engagement Metrics
With Medium’s engagement metrics, you can see for yourself if a presence on this platform is worth your time or whether you’re using it to your advantage. Medium will tell you how many people viewed one of your stories, as well as how many people made it to the end. The average reading time is rather impressive ranging from 7-11 minutes as a benchmark.
And how about learning even more about your reader demographics?
Medium Can Confirm Your Talent and Reputation
When it comes to improving your marketing strategy, your head might be stuck in SEO. And for a good reason. Organic search can make or break your brand with 25% of people clicking on the top result in a Google search. But increasing your rankings is more than having a good website with a solid keyword strategy. Google also takes into account the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of your brand as well as the number of links back to your site. So, producing reputable social content that people can, like, link to or visit your site from has got to be a bonus.
High-quality stories will also confirm to new and old followers that you’re an industry thought-leader and encourage them to invest further in your brand. As a leading content marketing agency in the finance space, for instance, we feel it’s important to showcase our financial industry knowledge and writing abilities first-hand via platforms like Medium.
Medium for the Finance Space – What Works and What Doesn’t?
So now you know the benefits of having a Medium presence, let’s take a closer look at what works and what doesn’t on the platform for finance brands.
Top tips for nailing your finance Medium strategy:
#1 Look to the Future
One of the most popular ways to hook a Medium audience in the finance space is to keep looking forward and feeding back the latest news. People don’t want to read the same information that’s been circling for weeks on end. They want fresh, innovative and inspiring content that’ll keep them on their toes and provoke debate. One of our top performing articles as an agency was entitled ‘10 New Cryptos Coming Soon.’ Language like ‘new’ and ‘coming soon’ let people know that this is information they might not have seen before and will give you a good chance of getting additional distribution through Medium as discussed previously.
Top Tip: Make sure all ‘new’ or ‘breaking news’ content is fact-checked and accurate in order to maintain your credibility.
#2 Use Tags
Medium users can follow specific writers to find the content they’re interested in. But they can also follow tags in order to access topic-specific stories. Some of the most popular, finance-related Medium tags in 2021 include Blockchain and Cryptocurrency, each racking up hundreds of thousands of followers. By using these tags, your content will appeal directly to your target audience.
Top Tip: Medium only lets you use up to 5 tags. So, choose them carefully to avoid wasting a marketing opportunity. Remember that it’s ok to choose variations of a word such as Crypto and Cryptocurrency as you might find that some Medium users follow one or the other but not both and therefore you’ll want to widen your content exposure.
#3 Create a Gripping Bio
Medium is an effective way to boost brand awareness. But in order to capitalise on this, it’s important to create a gripping bio that sets you apart from competitors. Briefly state who you are, what you do and include any relevant USPs.
#5 Write Engaging Headlines
The headlines and sub-headers for your Medium stories should give the reader a good idea about what your content is about. Keep them short, descriptive and include a relevant keyword or Medium tag in the heading to make your content even more searchable. Take a look at the example below which clearly introduces a 10-step Day Trading guide. Check out the sub-header too. This clearly explains that this article is for day trading beginners rather than experts. It also suggests the information will be presented in an uncomplicated way.
#4 Focus on Platform Interactions
When it comes to marketing, it’s important to form industry connections. You’ve probably spent time fostering relationships on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but you can also do the same on Medium. There are many ways to interact with Medium content. For example you can recommend, share and bookmark content you find to be particularly useful or valuable. When you recommend a story, the writer, by default, will receive an email notification. And this is a great way to get more eyes on your brand and what you have to say.
You can also write story responses. Unlike traditional blog comments, Medium responses are treated as individual stories. This means that the responses you write will be documented on your profile page and have the potential to get highly circulated just like traditional stories. For this reason, make sure your responses are intelligent, thought-provoking and reflective of your brand.
When you’re writing your own finance-related stories, try to use language that encourages a response. You could ask a direct question about a particular event or news topic, or even pop in a brand teaser, breaking news or something a little controversial to prompt engagement and exposure.
#5 Aim for a 7-Minute Read
Medium found that the ideal story should take roughly seven minutes to read. For most people, this will come to around 1,600 words, so use this as a benchmark. This is roughly three pages of a Word document which might seem excessive, but let’s think about this a bit more. As previously mentioned, Medium expects content to be thought-leading, thought-provoking, innovative, creative and answer audience queries. It’s hard to do all of this with a shorter wordcount and therefore it’s OK to embrace long-form content. That said, if you’re making an announcement or covering a breaking news story, it’s OK to shorten the content length as your content will need to be short and punchy. This can always be followed up by a more detailed post.
Things to Avoid:
- Posting articles irrelevant to your brand. You want to draw in the right audience, so make sure your articles focus on a specific topic or niche. The more niche your content is, the smaller your following might be. But your lead generation could be higher as a result because you’re tapping into an audience with a genuine interest in what you do.
- Not posting regularly. How do you expect to build a strong brand presence on Medium if you don’t post on a regular basis? Similarly, if you don’t engage on the platform with like-minded posters, then it will be harder to stand out and get noticed.
- Copying and Pasting from your Blog. There’s a content import option on Medium which allows you to import content with a link to the original source. This is great, but it’s worth editing the blog to avoid duplicate content and to ensure it’s tailored specifically to your Medium audience. Medium should be seen as a separate channel with its very own followers.
- Ignoring Compliance. Remember, the finance sector is heavily governed by regulators such as the FCA or CySEC. So always remember to pass content by your compliance team if you have any doubts. Remember, content should be clear and not misleading and you must never give unbalanced trading information.
Medium for your Finance Brand – Worth It? We say yes! Want to get on Medium, grow your social media presence, increase followers and boost your brand awareness? Let’s get started. Complete the form to book a call back with our team.
Loading...