How to use Medium for your Organization
For organizations who want to use Medium to share knowledge and earn revenue.
From my experience running a scientific research organization, there are a few ways to organize your medium articles under your publication:
- Publish all of your articles under one account
- Publish articles based on each department (UI studies for Design, Javascript Tutorials for Coding, etc.)
- Have your writers create their own account using their organization email and then have them publish their articles individually.
That’s it. If you decide to have each writer use their own personal account to publish articles, then the organization has no control over the volunteer editors’ work.
As stated in the ruling of in the revenue ruling of Van Dusen v. Commissioner, to determine whether services has been provided to a particular organization:
courts consider the strength of the taxpayer’s affiliation with the organization, the organization’s ability to initiate or request services from the taxpayer, the organization’s supervision over the taxpayer’s work, and the taxpayer’s accountability to the organization.
and having your writer use their organization’s account is a good way to establish affiliation.
With this in mind, the next step is which one is right for your org.
Deciding the Right Structure
Deciding how you want to organize your organization’s publication structure may not be super complicated, but I still created a simple to understand diagram to show you the pros and cons for each structure based on revenue, work flow, and individual efforts.
Individual Structure
When Comida For Familias, Inc. (CFFI), began publishing on Medium, we decided to adopt this structure because it allowed individuals to publish on their own time without having to notify the administrator, they could see how many views and readers their article attracted, and how much their articles earned. It gives a chance for have the editor to show some personality and be directly recognized for their work, because their profile image, name, and cover image shows up even before clicking the article.
The few cons that this method presents is that revenue is earned through individual efforts, so it may take a long time before the organization sees any substantial revenue (or any revenue at all since you need at least 100 followers to earn revenue since the requirement changed on March 2, 2022). You also have to make sure that your org’s Stripe account is connected to each one of the accounts. So an audit may be necessary every once in a while.
This structure may be best for big orgs that have dedicated editors whose different personalities attract many readers.
Topics or Department Structure
This structure is where your organization has an account for each topic. The editor needs to either submit their article to an account manager for it to be published or the org needs to provide the account login info so they can publish whenever they want. This may slow down the number of articles being published since it is a shared account and 2-factor authentication has to be done to login. So the writers have to either wait their turn to access the account or they have to wait for the account manager to be available so their articles can be published. It also takes away the “personality” of editors, since they won’t have their name be the first thing people see. However, we can still give credit to the author at the beginning or the end of the article.
The pros to this is that there are less accounts that the org has to audit, you get to clearly see which topics are popular, and the org can earn revenue faster because all followers will follow one account.
Organization Structure (1 Shared Account)
With Medium changing their Partner Program requirement to 100 followers before earning revenue, CFFI is planning on changing to this publishing structure. All articles will be published under one account so that the org can start earning funds faster. This will also keep the org’s stats and funds in one place instead of having to audit separate accounts.
Although I made a big deal about how individuals and different departments can keep track of each article. It really isn’t too hard to view the stats for each article concerning each topic under one account.
Like the department/topic structure, each individual can be accredited at the beginning or at the end of each article. Also, since it all under one account, the admin will have to decide if they want to grant shared access to the account or if they want one user to publish the writers’ articles. (I would suggest the latter, so your org doesn’t have to give everyone the login details.)
Publishing Contributors’ work
Unfortunately, you cannot copy and paste the link to a Google Doc to import an article onto medium, so if your contributor wrote it on Google Docs, you will have to select all, copy, and paste the article onto a new story.
It isn’t really hard, but something you have to consider is the formatting and the position of images and videos. These are small details such as,
“What style should I use for quotes when the author is writing in quotes?”
since there is the option to make quote blocks to add emphasize like the one above. Or…
did the writer mean to write this as a command or code block?and… should I embed a link here like this or like this?
Because let’s admit it, as a reader, adding these small details makes reading these articles a bit more interesting.
To solve this, you can spend 5 minutes going over the article with your editor/writer, or you can save a draft and send it to them to edit themselves.
Opening a Publication For More Writers & Editors
As mentioned in the beginning of the article, volunteers that are part of the organization should be accountable to the organization. So why would an org create a publication and invite writers and editors?
The first reason is for organizing your topics and articles. If you visited our publication page, you would see our different brands such as CodeQualityCode for programming, and DesignerHub for designing tips and samples.
The second reason is to spread brand awareness.
“Medium publications are shared spaces for stories written around a common theme or topic, usually by multiple authors”
as explained in the Medium help page. So if your publication is known for having informative articles from popular authors, this could be a way to attract more readers to your publication. These also includes any partnerships that you have with other organizations.
Email lists/Newsletter — be able to reach your readers through the newsletter feature which can only be found on publication. See help page.
Lastly, if you are short on people to manage, organize, proofread, and review your publication’s content you can add editors. Editors can add or remove stories, and can also review, edit and publish submissions. So I guess your volunteers can be an editor with their personal Medium account, just remember that it may be hard to hold them accountable.
In this specific case, it may be best to have an agreement that they publish articles about particular events or topics on the org account. That way there is no conflict of interest. For example, if a writer was blogging about a trip to give out food in Mexico in the name of CFFI, then they would publish about the activity using the CFFI account. But if during that time, they went to go visit family or decided to visit some beaches, then they can publish an article about their personal experience on their personal blog. Just establish what is business and personal.
How to start a publication
Once again, you can go to Medium help page, but since you are here…
- After registering an account, click on your profile image (bottom-left hand corner), and click Manage Publications.
- Click New Publications.
- Fill in the text fields (as well as upload images).
- After clicking next, stylize your publication with background color/image, layout, font, etc. (Not shown in gif.)
Select your editors carefully. Remember, once they are editors they have permission to add or remove stories, and can also review, edit and publish submissions.
Written by Antonio Mendieta
CEO, Comida For Familias
