Writing on Medium Has Taught Me a Lot About Content Creation

These lessons apply to YouTube, a blog, and Instagram too.

It’s a strange feeling, really. I never really considered myself a “content creator” until recently, but I suppose the name fits. I’ve been thinking back over the past year and considering the lessons I’ve learned from writing on Medium and what that experience has taught me about content creation as a whole.

I’ve written online in various forms and capacities before getting started with the Medium Partner Program, but nothing has really taught me more about content creation than Medium has.

Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned.

Planning is critical.

Before you ever think about sitting down to write your next hit piece of content for Medium or elsewhere, you need to have some idea of what you’re doing. Some people can just sit down at a keyboard and hammer out a winner of a post, but realistically that’s going to be the minority of people.

Whether you’re creating content for YouTube, your blog, Medium or anywhere else, you absolutely need to do some measure of planning beforehand.

When I was first starting out on Medium, for example, I thought I could just write whatever comes to mind and call it a day. And while you can do that, it’s not the best strategy - and there are times when it may be hard to think of something to write.

If you’re trying to be consistent with your writing, and you should be, you may have times when you struggle to come up with anything to write about on the spot. I’ve been there many times.

And that’s why I now have a long list of article, blog post, and video ideas I can pull from at any time. I’ve planned ahead far enough in advance to be able to sit down at my laptop or iPad and churn out a piece of content at a moment’s notice.

That’s incredibly helpful once you get into the swing of things.

You can’t please everyone.

No matter how awesome your content is, some people won’t like it. That’s the tough truth, but that’s just how it is.

I write quite a bit about Apple products on Medium, for example, and that tends to be a heated topic believe it or not. The Mac vs PC debate can be very polarizing.

And, occasionally, I get some pretty hateful comments.

Of course this is the Internet, and you can’t expect everyone to be your friend. That’s a given. But creating content on Medium and growing in reach there, I’ve seen more and more first hand just how nasty some people can be.

It happens. It’s human nature. But it’s still not cool.

I’ve learned to not let it affect me as much as it once did. Fortunately, Medium does give us some good tools to enable us to deal with trolls and people who leave hateful responses.

No matter where you create content, be prepared to deal with people who are just jerks, and try not to let it get to you - which is admittedly easier said than done sometimes.

Consistency is key.

Wherever you create content and in whatever format, it’s important to be consistent and regular. This does two things:

1. It gives people a general idea of when they can expect to see more from you.

2. It encourages you get in the habit of creating on a regular basis instead of procrastinating here and there. (And that’s a big one for me.)

The important thing is to set a goal and pace that is reasonable for you. Don’t plan to post once a day if that isn’t going to be doable for you on a consistent basis. But on the other hand, don’t let too much time lapse before posting because you don’t want people to think you’re inactive.

What that right balance is for you will look different based on your available time, the platform and how much work you want to put in.

But I do encourage you to find a consistent pace and try to stick with it - whether you’re writing for Medium, blogging, creating YouTube videos, podcasting, or anything else.

And on the flip side, take stock of everything you’re working on or want to do. If there’s anything that is keeping you from being consistent, consider scaling back.

When it comes to content creation, there are a million different places and ways we can spend our time, money and energy.

I would love to explore them all, but I know that’s not realistic because I can’t reasonably expect to be able to generate content of sufficient quality on a regular basis for them all right now. In the future? Possibly. Right now? No.

It’s far better to be consistent on one or a few platforms than sporadic on twenty.

You have to niche down.

As much as you might like to write about anything and everything under the sun, that’s really not practical if you’re ever going to develop an audience. People follow people because they fall into a category. Mark Ellis of

Solo Club by Mark Ellis

for example writes about technology topics on Medium. When people follow him, they know what they’re getting. The same is true with

Jakub Jirák

as well. They both have well defined subject areas.

But if Mark or Jakub were to write about Apple news one week and then the finer points of baking the next, how would their audiences have any clue what to expect? They wouldn’t. People follow them for tech focused content - not for baking tips. And someone who would follow someone for baking tips probably wouldn’t care about his or her opinions regarding the next iPhone or Google Pixel.

This was always the hardest part of content creation for me in the past - and the reason that I failed to get much traction back then. I wanted to talk about anything and everything, and therefore I failed to build an audience.

No one knew what to expect. And even if they loved one or two things I wrote, they probably didn’t care about 95% of the other bits of content.

No matter what sort of content you’re creating, it’s critical that you niche down until it hurts. Find a specific topic or area of expertise that you could go on and on about.

If you need help picking a niche, here’s a list of 37 niche ideas for Medium to help you get started.

You have to love it.

Content creation isn’t all fun and games. Don’t believe anyone who says otherwise. You’ll have some big wins and some frustrating times too. There will be times you’re fired up and ready to go, and there will be times you’re five seconds from giving up.

If you don’t love content creation and the freedom of being able to build something that’s yours, you’re probably going to quit.

I’m just being real with you here.

If you don’t love the idea of being able to create something new and unique - that’s uniquely yours - you’re not going to get past all the setbacks that you’ll inevitably face.

So before you start, ask yourself: Is this really what I want to do? Am I willing to put in the time and effort? Even if growth is slow? Even if some people hate what I make? Even if nobody notices me for months or even years? Because if the answer is no, you might as well not even start.

But if the answer is yes, then I think you can have a lot of fun with it - no matter what setbacks come your way.