Showing posts with label Internet. Show all posts
Medium has become an incredible platform for writers
to get their voices heard, or rather their words read. Yet as Medium
has grown since its launch in 2012, it becomes harder for new writers
with a small or non-existing network to obtain readers on the site.
Additionally, Medium, unfortunately, eliminated several features that
once provided an easy way for new writers to grow quickly.
Still, Medium offers great opportunities for writers. There are
features built into the platform that can help you spread the word. In
addition to those, you can take your own steps on Medium as well to
ensure you build a loyal audience. Don’t necessarily expect overnight,
viral success — just a slow and steady improvement.
First, type out your entire blog post on Medium. Do this by logging into your account and clicking Write a story at the top of the page. Make sure it has a central theme, which in itself is great for obtaining an audience as opposed to typing out sporadic thoughts. When you’re ready to publish, click Publish and note that the pop-up has an area to type in tags.
You can add up to three tags per post. If you start typing, Medium will provide a list of suggested tags as well as how many posts have that tag already. Try to pick tags that aren’t too unpopular, but also aren’t too popular. If a tag is rare, people probably aren’t looking for it, yet if a tag has thousands of posts yours might get lost in the crowd.
View publications on Medium by clicking your avatar at the top of the page and choosing Publications. You’ll see any publications you’re a member of and which ones you’re following. You can also search for publications at any time at the top. For the purposes of building an audience relatively quickly, creating your own publication is not recommended.
When you find one you want to join, your best bet is to click the About link at the top of the page while viewing that publication. Here is where you’ll see the editors and likely a brief description about the publication. If you’re lucky, this will include instructions on how to submit to that publication, which are completely up to the editors.
Otherwise, check out the editors list and click one of their profiles to see if they’ve listed any social media or contact information where you could submit a personal request.
Read other posts that are relevant to the content you write and be sure to follow the authors. Click author names at the top and then click Follow on their profiles.
Then, on the posts themselves, be sure to leave comments or annotations that are pertinent and insightful, potentially referring back to something you may have written as well. Click the Recommend button at the end of their posts as well to show some love for the quality content. This increases the likeliness that the author may check out your content, follow you back and recommend your posts.
These tips on Medium are ultimately good for your content and even better for your own personal brand, so keep at them until you see results. Good luck.
A good publishing platform plus a solid game plan often amount to a successful blog | Shutterstock
1. Tag Your Posts
Tags are relatively new to Medium, but they’ll help out significantly with increasing your potential audience. They’re basically categories that people can either search for or manually click on Medium to see new and popular posts within them. When you add specific tags to your blog posts, you are essentially categorizing it so that it shows up to readers with similar interests.First, type out your entire blog post on Medium. Do this by logging into your account and clicking Write a story at the top of the page. Make sure it has a central theme, which in itself is great for obtaining an audience as opposed to typing out sporadic thoughts. When you’re ready to publish, click Publish and note that the pop-up has an area to type in tags.
You can add up to three tags per post. If you start typing, Medium will provide a list of suggested tags as well as how many posts have that tag already. Try to pick tags that aren’t too unpopular, but also aren’t too popular. If a tag is rare, people probably aren’t looking for it, yet if a tag has thousands of posts yours might get lost in the crowd.
Tip: If you have published posts already that you want to tag, you can view the story and click Edit at the top at any time. Then click Publish and add your tags the way you normally would, to update it.
2. Submit to Publications
Publications are collections of stories that anyone can create or follow. Previously, anyone could also submit a story to one but Medium took that feature away. If you want to submit your story to a large publication, you’ll have to request from one of the editors to become a contributor.View publications on Medium by clicking your avatar at the top of the page and choosing Publications. You’ll see any publications you’re a member of and which ones you’re following. You can also search for publications at any time at the top. For the purposes of building an audience relatively quickly, creating your own publication is not recommended.
When you find one you want to join, your best bet is to click the About link at the top of the page while viewing that publication. Here is where you’ll see the editors and likely a brief description about the publication. If you’re lucky, this will include instructions on how to submit to that publication, which are completely up to the editors.
Otherwise, check out the editors list and click one of their profiles to see if they’ve listed any social media or contact information where you could submit a personal request.
Tip: Not all editors are open to
accepting new contributors. If you find this is the case for a
publication you’re after, try finding a different one.
3. Interact with Other Medium Writers
The last way to build your audience on Medium (and expand your network overall) is by interacting with Medium writers. This can be done in three ways: following, commenting and recommending.Read other posts that are relevant to the content you write and be sure to follow the authors. Click author names at the top and then click Follow on their profiles.
Then, on the posts themselves, be sure to leave comments or annotations that are pertinent and insightful, potentially referring back to something you may have written as well. Click the Recommend button at the end of their posts as well to show some love for the quality content. This increases the likeliness that the author may check out your content, follow you back and recommend your posts.
These tips on Medium are ultimately good for your content and even better for your own personal brand, so keep at them until you see results. Good luck.
Whether you are tethering your phone or you’re lucky enough to have LTE built into your Chromebook, you probably have a data cap. Some careful planning will make your Chromebook useful without blowing through your data plan.
Don’t be sad just because you have a data cap | kjarrett
Begin With the End in Mind – Use Offline Apps
Whenever possible, search for an offline alternative for your apps. Both Gmail and Google Docs have offline equivalents. When you are on a free Wi-Fi connection, launch these apps and load your data into them. Pocket is a great resource for this. Add long web pages you want to read to Pocket. Then launch the Pocket app on your Chromebook and it will download the pages.
For content that doesn’t work in Pocket, try putting it in Evernote. Evernote works offline if you install the Android version along with Android Runtime for Chrome (ARC). Clip the pages or resources you want and then sync it with your Chromebook. You’ll have that content offline again.
Want more Android Apps? ARC Welder lets you run most Android apps on your Chromebook.
Use an Extension Manager and Create an “Optimized Bandwidth” Group
Chrome extensions customize your Chrome and Chromebook experience. Some of them also use bandwidth. For example, I have a grammar check that sends everything I type back to the servers. When I was tethering off my iPhone, I saw a huge spike in traffic even though all I was doing was typing a letter.
It’s not always easy to know which extensions uses extra data, so I use the minimal necessary to get the job done on a metered connection. The bonus is minimal extensions save my battery. My preferred extension manager is Simple Extension Manager. I right click, pick my Optimized Bandwidth Group and I’m ready to go.
Need A Chrome Extension Manager? Check out our list of other extension managers.
Turn Off Automatic Flash, PDFs, and Other Content
Chrome has its own Flash player and PDF viewer. Clicking on a link could download a huge file or animation you don’t need. From the Omnibox type chrome://settings/content and scroll down to Plugins. Select Let me choose when to run plugin content.
When a webpage has a plugin like Flash, you can control+click and run the player just on the content you want. That prevents it from loading automatically. Some sites don’t like this extra step. For those sites use the Manage exceptions option. Click the box for Manage exceptions and put in the website you want to load automatically and the pick Allow on the right-hand side. I keep this setting on all the time because pages load faster for me.
Chrome lets you turn off images in that same area by scrolling down to Images and Do not show any images. The web doesn’t quite look the same without images, but it will save you data.
Use the Data Saver (Beta) Extension
Google developed a Data Saver extension just for these situations. We covered this extension before. With a Chromebook on a metered connection, this is one of the best ways you can keep your browsing fast and lean. Since you can’t switch to an optimized browser like Opera, this is the next best thing.
Internet Slow on Chromebook? Test it with Google’s Chrome Connectivity Diagnostics.
Suspend Unused Tabs
If you keep multiple tabs open on your Chromebook, those tabs could be updating in the background. That’s costing you bandwidth. Two extensions I use are The Great Suspenderand Tab Wrangler. Either of these extensions (don’t use both at once) will suspend an inactive tab. This prevents it from updating and wasting both bandwidth and battery.
It seems like every time Facebook introduces a new feature, people are polarized in all kinds of ways. I still remember when The Wall was taken down and something known as Timeline was introduced. It took me a while to get used to it, but I used to grumble about these changes every day.
Ready to sign out because of auto-playing videos on Facebook? | Shutterstock
Another such change lately is the ability to let user uploaded videos to play automatically. Oh, this not only is an annoyance (especially if you’re at work) but also a bandwidth hog. On a computer, it won’t make such a difference, but on a limited data plan, it’s a pain in the wrong places.
Thankfully, there is an easy to turn it off and carry on Facebook-ing peacefully. Let’s see how to do that.
On Computers/Laptops
Once you are logged into your Facebook account from your computer/laptop, you will need to find the Settings option on the top-right corner menu.
Once there, on the left hunt for the Videos option, which should ideally be dead last. Click on it and on the right, there are only 2 options, the second one is which you need to pay attention to. Hit the drop-down button and select Off for the Auto-play Videos option and breathe a deep sigh of relief.
On iPhones
Whether you are on the latest iOS or not, if you have an iPhone, you need to first head over to the Settings menu of the phone. From here, navigate to Facebook and then to the Videos and Photos section. Here you will find an Autoplay option which wasn’t available earlier. Tap it and then select Never Play Videos Automatically, which will ensure that you won’t be interrupted while scrolling through your Facebook feed.
On Android Devices
Android being Android, you get the right settings directly from the app. So, open the Facebook app and tap the hamburger menu on the top-right corner. From here, head to the App Settings and here you will need to select Videos Play Automatically.
Once you change the option to Off you know that you are never going to see those annoying videos on your Android device ever again.
Facebook app alternative: If you’re looking for alternatives to the default app on Android, look no further than Metal, which we’ve quite liked here on GT.
Breathe Easy
These simple steps are all it would take for you to disable auto-playing Facebook videos on all platforms. While the number of views on some of the videos seems ridiculous, I’m not sure if this can be the way for Facebook to grow. But that’s just my opinion, join us in our forum to have a cold glass of your favorite ale and discuss it sensibly?
