Why I Link to Medium Posts in Substack Posts
It makes sense, I promise!
Many of my Substack posts have a link to a post that was originally published on Medium. It might seem like a risky strategy to send my loyal Substack subscribers to Medium to read my work, but there’s a good reason for it.
Substack is for relationships
A newsletter is an online ‘space’ where readers can get to know you and your work - to have a relationship with you.
I’m building this newsletter to get to know you and your problems and for you to get to ‘know’ me. My goal is to create an excellent book that solves your problems. And create an audience who will buy that book when it’s finished. If you like my newsletter and learn something each week, you will love my book and (hopefully) buy it.
Your newsletter should also have an element of relationship-building, because the relationship you have with your readers and subscribers is what encourages them to open your emails, stay subscribed and - perhaps - pay to support your work.
Medium is for new eyeballs
I use Medium to get my work in front of new people.
You need new people to discover your work every week if you want your newsletter subscriber numbers to grow. I use Medium posts to get 'discovered'.
My strategy is:
Publish on Medium > Medium and search engines show my work to strangers > Strangers become readers > Encourage Medium readers to subscribe to this newsletter > New subscribers.
My Medium posts are (mostly) aimed at getting new Substack subscribers. But at the same time, I don't want my current subscribers to miss out on helpful advice so I make sure to tell them about each relevant Medium post.
Duplicating content is a bad idea
The internet gods won’t help my subscriber numbers grow if I post the exact same content in Substack and Medium. This is related to canonical linking.
Search engines recognize duplicate content and try to decide which website they will serve up in search results. On many sites, the writer can tell the search engines which site is ‘best’, using canonical links. Medium allows writers to set a canonical link.
Substack does not allow writers to set a canonical link. If I posted the exact same content in both places, I risk reducing the overall reach of the Medium post and this would damage the discovery strategy I shared above.
It might seem crazy at first, but as you can see, there’s a good reason that I so often use Medium links in my Substack posts.
Interesting. Have you considered doing the opposite (changing canonical links from Medium to point to Substack)? Because:
* Substack has improved SEO significantly- and Substack articles now appear first on Google results.
* Medium has silently removed the free story preview for non-members. Now, if you are not a Medium member, you can't read a metered story at all.
* Due to the recent changes on Medium MPP, the earnings of all writers have been reduced significantly.
In other words, with a metered story on Medium, your only hope is to attract only Medium members.
I use Ghost to publish my articles and also for newsletter subscription. I optimise for search engines to receive strangers.
I republish on Medium and now experiment with Substack. The duplicate content is the reason to stop me from going into it. Too much of a commitment and a risk.
I really do like the community features (and general design) of Substack.