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Starting a Tech Blog on Medium
A look back at my first two months of writing tech articles on Medium and lessons learned.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced a global lockdown, I was fortunate to have a job as a software engineer with the flexibility of remote work. My previous long commutes around the Capital Beltway spent listening to podcasts were replaced with newfound time at home. After a few months of adjusting to the new normal, I decided to start my own tech blog and write for a few hours on weekends. Although I had a very minimal personal website and looked into other platforms such as substack and ghost, I chose Medium to grow my audience initially, since I had a low profile online as a tech blogger. I also had some existing followers on Medium from four years ago as the Editor of IoT For All before we moved to an independent publication.
This post is a reflection on my first two months writing (again) on Medium and starting my tech blogging journey. I made a lot of mistakes and took a while to find my core audience. If you are looking to start blogging, especially around tech, here are some takeaways from my experience.
Breaking in & Finding an Initial Audience
Publications play a huge role in driving traffic to Medium articles. They help promote your articles via various social channels, but also make it easier for your articles to be noticed by Medium curators, which leads to internal distribution and thus more views. But as a new writer on Medium, I had to leverage my existing social channels to break in and get noticed.
For me, my primary social channel was LinkedIn, and as a Cloud Architect, writing about certifications was the easiest way for me to draw in an initial audience. I wrote study guides for AWS Big Data Specialty and Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exams, and submitted them to popular Medium publications.
