The Purpose
What is it that Zulie Rane, Tim Denning, Ayodeji Awosika, and Jessica Wildfire have in common? They are instantly recognizable. The name alone and you know what kinds of topics they write about.
Perhaps you, like me, have such a variety of topics that even after 1K articles, your work is so watered down by too many tags and topics, that people aren’t finding your work — consistently.
Example: Today you write about pets. Tags are PETS, LOVE, OUTDOORS, LIFE, and PET CARE. You publish on Medium to Petness and promo your piece to your social media.
The way the algorithm is set up, the story will appear on the home pages for all who are following those topics, and you, or both. The Petness readers will see it.
If your next 15 stories cover varying sets of topics, then you get promoted to new spaces each time—which sounds good if you are trying to get a wide audience, but essentially this is watering down your image. It makes it hard for people to instantly relate to your work and want to see more.
It means that your work isn’t consistently seen by a target audience that can connect to you, get to know your work, and remember who you are and what you write about. So, you get readers, sporadically, but not enough FANS. Or, someone follows you because they love that pet article…then see 15 other pieces they don’t want to see and they unfollow, or worse…they begin to ignore you.
Now, after working with international companies for going on 3 years, I have seen how they keep this watering down thing from happening. And I think we can apply this to our Medium and blog work. Today, we’re talking about how you can re-vamp and revise your work to define yourself as a Medium writer or blogger. So you can find your fans.
The Process
As a freelancer, you might be surprised that I get paid to not only write blogs but to revise them as well. Sometimes, I get paid just as much to revamp an old piece (usually only a few months old!) as I do to write one myself. The work is tedious but necessary.
Media and links may be broken — these need to be checked or updated to more applicable sources. What if you quoted a source that was later controversial or debunked? This needs checking periodically.
CTAs need updating. Those old email lists or a now-defunct blog site don’t need to be in your CTAs. This can be corrected to the more updated information while you revamp your story.
Perhaps you’ve learned a little about writing, organizing your work, and adding in some SEO keywords — you can update the quality of your post, as well.
Perhaps the post needs a new title, new tags, and a good SEO description?
You can also re-promo this piece once it’s polished and ready for a new wave of attention.
So, this grueling process has been on my to-do list for over a year now. I’ve learned a LOT since I first started blogging. I have my personal Fiddleheads & Floss blog that’s kina all over the place. It’s been converted to my author site now so any blogs that don’t fit that overall purpose should be revamped or removed.
The same goes with my over 1200 stories on Medium. Man, will this be an undertaking or what!
Here’s my checklist/process for working through these posts (the Medium ones, specifically), in case it may help you:
The purpose: Update all posts & comments to reflect the more well-defined scope and purpose and target topics and audience of your blog presence.
Download the Zip file. You can do this in your settings. It will send you a zip file of tons of useless stuff, plus one file folder for “posts.” Yes, this will be all your posts — and also all of your comments. They may need checking as well.
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 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. These Topic Cards will help you to make decisions about how to handle an older post — Delete? Revamp? Re-tag and title? Add SEO keywords to bring the post into a well-defined topic? Etc.
SAMPLE TOPIC CARDS:
* Main Topic: Freelancing
* Supportive topics/tags: writing, SEO, money, work, productivity, work life balance, editing
* Main Topic: Inspiration
* Supportive topics/tags: life, self, aging, mental health, nature, dating, relationships, travel, beauty, outdoors, pets, TV, music
* Main Topic: Health
* Supportive topics/tags: psychology, CBD, women’s health, nutrition, food, wellness, DIY, neuroscience, fitness, weight loss
* Main Topic: Poetry
* Supportive topics/tags:poetry writing, creativity, prompt, writing, inspiration, editing (Depending on the theme of the poem, I can take topics/tags from other cards, as well.)Now, go through the posts on your downloaded file, oldest to newest — one by one.
This is when the real work begins.
For each post:
Check the title & topics. If it fits in with your overall Topic Cards and goals, then the article may have the potential for a re-vamp and re-promo.
How did the article perform? Is it worth keeping — at all? Outliers and personal rants, for example, may need to be deleted to tighten the scope of your blog.
Does the title need reworking? Don’t forget to change the title/subtitle in settings also.
Can you change the tags to fit the topics on the relatable Topics Card?
Did you set the SEO description? If not, do that. It’s on the “More Settings” tab for the article.
Proofread, check grammar, restructure.
Check through all of the media, pics, and links to be sure all are still working and updated.
Update your CTA.
Research a few relatable keywords and work them into your headings and content.
Where is the article published? Do you want to move it to your own page or publication? Tip: On a pub’s page type [ /followers ] after the URL [ hit enter ] and you can see how many followers that pub has.
Make a plan to promo the newly worked piece.
As I’m going through this process, I’ll find some hidden gems to share with you. Like (what I think is) the first poem I shared on Medium. I hope you’ll check it out! (It’s been revamped with a better title, subtitle, tags, and CTA.
This one was NOT revised because it is in Better Marketing — but since it applies to our conversation today — Here are: 8 Easy Tips for Reviving Your Sleepy Blog.
Thanks for reading today. If you have tips on this topic, I welcome you to leave them in the comments!
~ Christina M. Ward
Author | Poet | Professional Blogger