Exploring Staff Picks: Key Insights from 580 Medium Articles
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When a story gets chosen as a Staff Pick on Medium, it can feel like winning the lottery. While boosts have significantly enhanced writers' visibility, being featured in the Staff Picks section represents the pinnacle of recognition, validating the effort you put into your work and offering an opportunity to engage with a broader audience.
However, the criteria for selection remain elusive. Beyond the editors' expertise and their sense of what deserves attention, what differentiates one story from the multitude of others?
As a writer, I became curious about the elements that lead to a story's selection. This curiosity prompted me to analyze 580 Staff Picked articles in order to uncover potential trends and patterns.
What I found was both surprising and enlightening.
Disclaimer: For this analysis, I merely visited the Medium Staff list pages and scrolled through without using search filters. I excluded any articles written by "Medium Staff" or published in the "Medium Blog." The focus is on individual writers, not the platform's staff. It's important to note that while 580 stories were analyzed, this sample size is still relatively small. Some statistical significance was observed, but we cannot generalize a consistent pattern. Additionally, news and trends can significantly influence stories.
Basic Statistics
Let's delve into some fundamental data.
Most of the selected stories have an estimated reading time of about 7 to 8 minutes.
On average, each story contains approximately 6 images (with a median of 4), while the maximum number recorded was 190, which was an outlier from a photography post by Adam Scotti.
The average story features about 5.72 headings (h1 and h2), with a median of 4.
The authors with the most stories in this sample were Liza Donnelly (57K followers, 9 stories), Allison Wiltz (56K followers, 6 stories), and Robert Roy Britt (238K followers, 6 stories). Other notable authors had 6.4K and 204K followers, respectively.
Does any of this data influence engagement? It appears not. Take a look at the correlation matrix:
There is no correlation between reading time and either votes or comments. Similarly, the number of images and headings shows no connection.
Interestingly, more headings correlate with longer reading times, which is intuitive. Votes and comments are closely linked: the more votes a story receives, the more comments it garners and vice versa.
A slight correlation appears between the "Member only" status of a story and its engagement.
Paywall: To Use or Not to Use
While being behind a paywall isn’t a criterion for selection, the distribution of free versus member-only stories is noteworthy.
Among the analyzed articles, 57.6% were behind Medium’s paywall, while 42.4% were accessible for free. This trend might be worth investigating further for writers looking to boost their engagement.
Does this significantly alter engagement levels? Not really:
Where to Publish
Should you consider submitting your story to a publication? My initial thought was, "Of course! How would you attract attention by solely publishing on your profile?"
Medium does have a curated list of publications that allow for submission and potential boosting. Boosting is already a significant advantage.
However, a deeper dive into the data reveals a surprising distribution of stories published in a publication versus those on the author’s page among the Staff Picks.
Indeed, a greater number of picked stories (56.6% versus 43.4%) were published in a publication. However, it appears that the selection process prioritizes story quality and engagement over the publication source.
Moreover, engagement levels do not seem to be swayed by whether a story was written for a publication or solely on the author’s page.
Bigger Isn't Always Better
I ranked publications based on three criteria: the number of posts, the total votes, and total comments received.
Overall, among the 580 stories, two publications stand out in all respects:
UX Collective (469K followers, 16.4%) and Human Parts (316K followers, 13.2%).
Human Parts accounts for 29.72% of total votes and 25.7% of all comments, while representing "only" 16.26% of total posts, trailing UX Collective (20.33%).
Despite its smaller following (2.6K), Middle-Pause ranks second for both comments (12.03%) and votes (10.56%), with only 3.25% of the total posts.
ZORA rounds out the top five by article count (63K followers, 8.94%). Notably, The Startup (780K followers) doesn’t appear in the top 10 for posts or votes but ranks 9th for comments.
To smoothly transition into the next insights, here are the most common tags within these publications:
Human Parts - Most used: Philosophy, Culture, Personal Essay, Relationships, Mental Health - Most voted & commented on: Fiction, Fiction Friday, Family, Death, Short Story
UX Collective - Most used, voted & commented on: UX, Design, User Experience, Usability, Product Design
Middle-Pause - Most used, voted & commented on: Life Lessons, Aging, Women, Menopause, Personal Essay
Most Popular Tags
Analyzing tags also reveals important insights. The five most commonly used tags in these stories are:
- Technology (52)
- Culture (45)
- Life (45)
- Design (42)
- Life Lessons (34)
While only two technology-focused publications make the top 10, "Technology" is performing well, albeit with less diversity than more “human-centric” themes.
Tags related to personal experiences, such as Culture, Life, and Design (with UX Collective), are also prevalent.
Interestingly, when it comes to engagement, Technology drops to 6th place, averaging 5,370 votes and 88 comments.
In contrast, Life Lessons ranks 1st with an average of 8,878 votes and 127 comments, despite being the 5th most utilized tag.
Overall, tags related to life and writing tend to yield the highest engagement levels.
While results may vary with different datasets, a significant statistical correlation has been noted.
Tips for Writers
Is there a secret formula to success? Unfortunately, I don't think so.
There are intriguing insights and trends, and further analysis could delve into the impact of tag combinations on engagement, NLP analysis for story insights, publication and tag pairings, title types, and story formats.
From this analysis, I would highlight the following points:
- Publication status does not seem to influence engagement. In this sample of 580 stories, there were more published pieces (55.7% vs. 44.3%). However, I believe the Staff tends to balance this difference over time.
- The same applies to paywall status. Although more "member-only" stories were selected (58.7% vs. 41.3%), they did not achieve higher engagement on average.
- If your piece is accepted by a publication, those focused on human experiences often attract more engagement.
- Certain tags, such as Technology, may have numerous stories but rank lower in terms of engagement.
- Publications centered on human experiences and writing tend to draw both attention and engagement.
Conclusion
There's no guaranteed recipe or foolproof method to ensure your story will be selected as a Staff Pick by Medium's team.
Nonetheless, I hope these insights clarify essential factors and alleviate any anxiety you may feel about competing with others.
Prioritize crafting high-quality, engaging stories first, and then experiment with these strategies. Who knows? Your next submission might just earn that coveted 'Staff Pick' label.
Happy writing!
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