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Small Biz Tests: Medium.com as Referral

Wendy-Lynn

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.

References