What's New with Medium?

We all know that Medium is continuing to get bigger and better. The platform has just recently announced a number of changes to its platform, with Founder Ev Williams stating that the reasoning behind the “revamp” was to “make it more powerful, more fun, more democratic, and more essential.” So what are exactly are these “bigger and better” changes and how do they impact us as PR pros?

1.    Updated mobile apps

Spoiler alert: people aren’t reading the daily newspapers anymore to get the latest headlines; they’re turning to their mobile phones, tablets and even their smartwatches to get breaking stories. According to Medium, the amount of time consumers spent reading articles and posts on their native mobile app has tripled in the last six months. It’s also now added “mentions” to its content, where contributors can now invite other voices into the conversation through “Twitter-like” handles. Not only does this mean that the channel is more interactive, but it also means that more eyeballs are being directed to your content, improving your visibility to your audience.

2.    New publishing API

To make content easier to publish and to broaden the types of content that can be produced, Medium has now opened up a publishing API that lets its contributors write in a desktop or mobile editor and then publish directly to Medium’s channel. Contributors can also now have their Medium post feed syndicated to outside publishing tools like Blogger and WordPress to help their content get even more clicks.

3.    Custom domains to enhance lead generation

While there is value in having thought leadership pieces on third party sites, we all know that end game is still about driving prospects to your website to increase the visibility of your products and services. Another big upgrade to Medium is that users can now easily upload their content to custom domains, making it quick and painless to transfer content from an outside blog to their corporate site. How easy you ask? All you have to do is acquire a domain under any registrar, create a Medium publication, send an email to customdomains@medium.com with your websites link, and open the email that they send you to add all records to your home page. Done.

It’s our job as public relations professionals to make sure that the content we produce is thought-provoking, consistent and has a call to action. If you are already posting - or plan to post - on Medium, these new updates will certainly help drive more eyeballs to your content.