In 2024, everyone on Medium is chasing two things:
- Virality
- Boost
Oftentimes, those two go hand in hand.
Going viral means getting tons of reads, followers, and subscribers. It kickstarts your growth and increases views on other posts too. Essentially, it means you’re being read, which is important for any writer.
Virality might give false hope though, since it can disappear as quickly as it began. But that’s a topic for another day.
Getting an official boost from Medium can help tremendously with views and reads and create viral content.
Of course, getting boosted isn’t easy.
What is…
But here are a few things that help.
Defining Virality in 2024
In my experience on Medium over the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to have over 30 viral posts.
But there’s no clear definition of what “viral” means.
Is it 1,000 views? 10,000? 100,000? It’s up to you.
Of my viral posts, 10 came from one top publication. This is more than any other publication except one I’ll mention later.
The Best Publication for Going Viral
So what’s been the best publication for me to go viral?
It’s Better Marketing.
Better Marketing is one of the largest Medium pubs, and one of my favorites. I’ve published many stories there over the years.
In fact, my first viral pieces were in Better Marketing, which kickstarted my Medium growth.
Of my 10 viral stories in Better Marketing, the top post has over 190K views. Another has over 60K.
Based on my experience, Better Marketing is the place to publish if you want to go viral on Medium.
That said, it may be better to go viral on a self-published post. Then all the benefits go straight to you.
The Second Place Pub
There’s one other publication where I’ve had great viral success. My fourth-highest viewed post, with over 30K views, was published there.
This pub is The Shortform.
7 of my 30 viral posts were in The Shortform.
So why is it only second place? A couple reasons:
- The Shortform is for short content, 150 words or less. So reading time and earnings are usually lower than longform. Since Medium introduced the new 30-second rule, it’s really hard to monetize shortform.
- Most of my Shortform content is Medium-related. These posts tend to die off quicker than other topics. My Better Marketing posts have more staying power.
The Bottom Line
There’s no secret formula to going viral. You can’t hack your way up, as far as I know.
This article just shows my experience with publications and virality. For me, Better Marketing and The Shortform are the clear winners.
What’s been your experience chasing virality in 2024?
Let me know in the responses!
