Small Biz Tests: Medium.com as Referral
As a solopreneur, I test a lot of tools and software, some I write reviews on to help product managers build their product sense. In this series: Small Biz Tests I am going to start documenting what works and doesn’t for my business, particularly for features I can’t find much, if any, data on.
Medium.com
I stopped posting on Medium.com because I didn’t seem to drive traffic to my website and it feels like the equivalent of giving away my content for free. After all, to build my reputation, I need to drive you to this website to build the authority of my business.
In this post, which I will adjust as I learn more, I will walk you through my journey of exploring the use of Medium.com to build my business brand.
Step One: Google Analytics
Let’s see what Google Analytics Tells Us
Go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic Acquisition to explore
I found it wasn’t helpful because medium.com isn’t high on the list of referral sites driving traffic to my website.
So I started researching why that might be. Keep reading to see what I discovered.
Step Two: Add Canonical Links on Medium.com
This article does a great job of walking you step-by-step through Medium.com instructions on how to properly not the article was published elsewhere first.
I have had content for years that is on Medium.com but didn’t know about this advanced setting.
Steps I Took:
I followed the instructions to fix old articles on medium.com
I copied over older articles, setting up one story a day to publish (I can only schedule 2 weeks in advance)
Now I wait to see if:
Increase in Referral Clicks
Increase in Substack Subscriptions
Authority Score Starts to Rise
Now, l need to wait a few weeks to see if it helps.
Step Three: Post old content on LinkedIn
The information on re-posting on LinkedIn isn’t as confident as that on medium.com. As long as I add “originally posted on intrico.io, with link to original, I should be fine but there seems to be less certainty on its effectiveness. Check out: To Republish or Not Republish? for more details.
I am going to wait until I see the impact of the medium.com effort for two reasons:
Testing the authority score impact
It is time-consuming, I lost 3 to 4 hours re-posting my stuff on medium.com. Once I get a cadence going, it will not be so bad.
If this works, I probably need to schedule re-posts twice a week.
