I wish Medium would do what Substack does
Why are we so stingy with words when they're free?
Happy Friday,
If you write on Medium, have you ever noticed the ratio of reads to comments?
It’s pretty lousy. Typically, around 10% of readers leave a comment. Sometimes more, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it over 20%.
I’ve seen it far less, though. Especially if a story takes off. One of my stories has 25K reads (not views) and 83 comments. That’s not even 1%. lol.
The low rate of response isn’t unique to Medium.
Years ago I wrote a marketing and seo blog and saw the same there. Except when it’s your own blog, there’s more spam and self promotion in the comments.
Why are we so stingy with words?
I do it, too and I don’t even know why...
If I make it to the bottom of a story, I always clap. But I don’t always comment. And I don’t even know why. Words are free, you know?
Wouldn’t take me but a couple of seconds to say hey, thanks for writing that. Or hey, I enjoyed that, made it all the way to the bottom. lol.
The psychology of human behavior fascinates me, especially the puzzles. To me, this is a puzzle. I mean — if I read all the way to the bottom — why not leave some few words of thanks to the writer? I have no idea. Yet I do it.
I wish Medium would do what Substack does…
Someone at Substack understood that people who read and reply are the minority so they did an amazing thing. They introduced gold stars.
Readers on Substack earn gold stars when they read, like or comment. Except, readers don’t get to see the gold stars. Only the writer does.
Can you see the amazing things people could do with that?
A writer could offer a complimentary copy of their book to their 5-star readers. A small business could send private coupons just to their best readers.
A little way of saying hey, I see you!
I wish Medium would do that.
I wonder if knowing we’re earning gold stars the writer can see would make us more generous with comments. Call it silly, but I’d probably want my favorite writers to see me at the top of their “gold star readers” list. lol. Would you?
Any thoughts on why so few people comment?
More reading…
P.S. If you are reading this in email, you can click the title to see the online version, where you can leave comments, just like on Medium.
xo,
Linda
Speaking for myself, when reading on Medium I usually will look at the existing comments before adding my own. If there are many, saying essentially what I would say, I don't comment. And there's also the issue of Medium itself - I read less and less there. My subscription expires in less than 2 weeks and I won't renew. The writers I care about are already on Substack or Patreon.
Hey Linda,
For me, most of the comments I leave tend to be on the long side...Some of them are very long, lol. Occasionally I have something more concise, but I typically don't like to leave something bland and brief. So that means commenting takes up tons of time. So sometimes I just end up reading the article on my Kobo (I do this for my eyestrain, since Kobo e-readers have no backlight), and don't get around to commenting or even clapping. Not because I don't care, but because the sheer number of articles is immense and overwhelming.
There are some additional reasons: If I see that there are already 40+ comments or so, I might not say anything unless I know from past experience that the writer will reply to (or at least clap for) every comment, including for old posts. Otherwise, I think it's pointless for me to comment if it's unlikely that anyone would read my comment, buried down among so many. (That's why I don't know why people even bother to comment when there are already 80+ comments, but that's my opinion.)
Also, if I have commented on several of a writer's articles, and they never or rarely respond, then I might get discouraged and stop commenting on their work altogether, though I may still read from them. I understand some writers have massive followings and can't possibly get back to everyone. Or some only reply to comments on their newest articles to make the workload more manageable. That is valid and I don't blame them. (Devon Price has written entire posts about needing to set strict digital boundaries with regards to comments and messages! So I can empathize.)
However, even though I can understand and empathize, as a reader, I may still feel discouraged if I rarely or only occasionally get replies, because it feels like my comments make no difference and don't really matter. For writers who only respond to comments on their latest articles, I may end up only commenting on their latest articles. I may clap and/or highlight their old articles, but not comment because I highly doubt the writer would even see them.
Sorry if that sounds cranky, haha, I don't mean to be, just that my time is unfortunately quite limited. So it makes sense to me to write comments only if it's likely that I will hear back from the writer, or at least get claps from the writer as acknowledgement that they read and hopefully liked my comment.