Literally 3 hours after I sent my email out to you all yesterday about how you can revise your blog, your posts, and generally overhaul your Medium presence…
I got an email from an influencer on Medium telling his audience how to
— revise your blog, your posts, and generally overhaul your Medium presence…
Sigh.
It was introduced as “I’d like to share this information again and why this is getting me a gazillion tons of traffic.” Loosely, ok not at all quoted, but I’ve summarized this with a little snark.
Clearly, they decided on a whim to reshare a topic I’d covered hours earlier.
Are they following me (probably not)?
That’s weird—I mean , I JUST wrote that stuff.
Do great minds think alike? Because THEY are making a fortune and are followed by gazillions.
In my defense – his list was full of things that made no sense to the non-technical blogger who doesn’t know all of the IT jargon. So, to each audience his or her own. (Or they.)
So, do I think the idea really was stolen…of course not. I don’t think for a minute the idea was stolen—and it sounds like they could say the same about me!
It happens.
This is ok—there are lots of different types of writers, and we can all present the same general topics and ideas with originality and our own spin on the idea. His ideas and mine on how to accomplish the same goal were actually very different. Sometimes, our ideas converge with others and get released to our audiences at the same time. It’s just really awkward timing.
Which brings me to this: ideas.
Let’s be clear on one thing—writers are people with curiosity that can never be quenched (like an unquenchable thirst) and we are people with IDEAS.
But, we are often quite distractable. We need help keeping our ideas organized.
Organizing Your Ideas
How in the world can you keep track of them all? If you’re like me, the ideas come so fast you have to keep a huge list. And yesterday I talked with you about how to create “Topic Cards” to help you organize these thoughts into categories that fit your overall purpose, goals, reputation, image, and presence—on Medium or any other content writing site.
To recap:
Create Topic Cards. I did this for the MAIN topics and tags I want to have as the core of my Medium blog. Make sure these Topic Cards have a few over-lapping tags that are LOW COMPETITION.
You can check this by going to the page per tag and looking to see how many articles and writers there are for that tag. Outliers [articles and posts] can be removed from the blog to keep the “niche” clear to readers who want to follow.
For each Topic Card: Have one BIG tag that has a huge following and a list of related low-competition tags.
I know you’ve heard me go on and on about how much I looooove my Artful Agenda. Well, I thought I’d integrate my ideas list into something more advanced, with more advanced features. (Artful Agenda—we’re not breaking up, I just need you for different things…you understand…)
Today, I am using Smartsheets (this is the organization tool I use to manage dozens of orders each month and twice that many content projects. I created a separate sheet to handle ideas.
Check out what this type of organization looks like:
As you can see, I have them categorized by the larger Medium Tag which will be used and a sub-category. I’ll choose the rest of the tags in this manner:
Research applicable tags
Choose tags with low competition
Choose tags with articles at the “top” of the list which I feel I can compete with
And, to be deliberate in which tags I am working with to “rank” my work for on Medium
This Smartsheets list helps me to group the ideas, and choose something from the subject whose “turn” it is to appear on the blog.
In this way, I can cycle my topics regularly and keep all those balls in the air.
Example of spreading out the topics:
July week One
Wellness / food
Inspiration / Trauma
Freelancing / work life balance
July Week Two
Wellness / fitness
Life / advice
Inspiration / dating & relationships
July Week Three
Wellness / outdoors
Writing / Poetry
Life / productivity hacks
and so on…
This means—keeping all of my sub-audiences entertained and my name/face/work refreshed in their memory.
I thought I’d share this with you today as it may be a technique you can use. You can use a plain Excel sheet if you don’t want to pay for Smartsheet. Or use a prettier version of organizer like the List feature on Artful Agenda, which has served me well for the past 6 months. But because I cannot save my materials there and I am concerned about losing work if the app crashes, I went with a larger organizer tool with lots of features; Smartsheet.
Before you go…check out my latest: Would You Recognize Your Writer’s Voice in Your Earliest Works?
That’s all for today, dear humans!
Love to you all,
Christina