My recent story on how to promote your stories within medium got me the most claps within 24 hours I’ve ever had. I attribute most of this success to the last point I made in that post: Using Medium’s shortform content to promote your long-form stories. In this article, I’ll follow up on that note with a more in-depth guide on how to use shortform in 4 different ways.

Short recap on shortform

What is shortform content? It is what it sounds like. Short content. A story with around or under 150 words will automatically be classified as shortform by Medium. Now, 150 words are not much. And you can do a lot with 150 words. It’s a double-edged sword. Let’s have a look at 4 ways you can use shortform to your advantage on Medium.

#1 Like Twitter

Basically, shortform is like Twitter for Medium. So, use it as you would Twitter. With short promotional posts about your longer stories. This might seem like a cheap promotion — and to some, it looks like it too — but I quite like this format. A great example of this is Dr Mehmet Yildiz, the owner of Illumination and all its sister publications. He constantly posts Twitter-like shortform posts about his long-form stories, like this one:

The bug fix is the answer to follower loss
But there are more bugs in the system.medium.com

These short 2–3 liners only need to have two things: A catchy “headline” and a dope subheader. That’s all to catch a reader’s interest and direct them to the long-form story. Writing numerous of these let’s call them “Medium tweets” does one main thing: It keeps showing you in the inbox or on the homepage of your followers. That’s a great way to get more exposure.

#2 Recap

In my recent story, I used Kristina God as a perfect example of shortform content. That’s because she’s got this 2nd point down to perfection: Recapping or adding to her long-form stories in a shortform post. Is there a more fitting example than this?

How Fast Can You F*ck?
Hilarious and unfortunately, so true.medium.com

I don’t think so. So, if you want to learn the art of promoting long-form stories with shortform content, take a look at Kristina’s posts.

I use this technique as well. Whenever I write a post that seems to do better than others, I write a quick shortform story recapping that post and publish it on my profile or in the publication The Shortform.

#3 Poems

In my previous post, I got a wonderful comment from Lindsay Soberano-Wilson. She made me aware of another use case for shortform content, because it is, in essence, already shortform: poetry. Since poetry has actually been a trending topic on Medium for quite a while now, it’s a great idea to make the best of this shortform genre.

If you’re someone that’s into poetry and talented with the rhyming word, poetry might be the ideal shortform use case. In addition to writing your “regular” poems, you could try to pick up on the topics of your other stories with poems. To crosslink between your poems and your long-form stories.

#4 Standalone content

The last point is the most obvious one: Use shortform the way it is intended. As a short but valuable standalone article. Long-form content will never get old, but I think many people prefer a short read every once in a while. One that gets to the point quickly without a grand introduction and fluff around it. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I write long-form a lot. Often crossing 1000 words. But lately, I’ve been enjoying the shortform content I read here, like Kristina’s.

It’s also a challenge to get a point across in 150 words or less. Try it! You’ll run of words quickly. At least I did.

Just keep one thing in mind: While shortform stories are eligible to earn via the Medium partner program, they will most likely earn you less money than long-form stories. Medium also does NOT curate shortform content. So distribution is out of the question here. But this doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Quick recap

Use shortform content 4 ways:

1. Like Twitter
2. To recap or sum up long stories
3. As poetry
4. As short, valuable standalone content

I will focus a lot more on shortform over the next few weeks and months. Not to replace my long-form output, but to have it go alongside those more detailed articles.

So far, I’ve seen an increase in views for both, the shortform posts and the long-form stories, when crosslinking between them. It’s not much right now, but it’s a start.