How to Maintain
a Corporate Blog
on Medium
We at TouchLay are a (very) young team, so we’re still figuring out all the tidbits of running a startup. When we started TouchLay, it was only a hobby project. Our main site was a blog where we posted updates on the development of the first version of our touch table. Later, our blog turned into a website and we kind of lost the connection with our online community — we focused on attending fairs and exhibitions, meeting up with businesses and finding early adopters for our new touch table. Realizing what we have become, we quickly decided to change all that and start using social media again. We’re still getting there, give us time, please.
Personally, I am a huge fan of reading articles, especially other peoples’ stories — these experiences are really valuable. So I thought, why not get started with blogging again?
Unsurprisingly, the web has changed a lot since our first blog (which was a self-hosted Wordpress instance) and Medium has established itself as the blogging platform for startups, entrepreneurs, and people with a passion for reading and/or writing in general. That’s great, but as Ali Mese points out in his article “The Truth About Blogging”, not everybody understands how Medium actually works.
On a recent trip to Australia, I was asked by a designer from a leading creative agency, “OK, but how do you get read on Medium? Is it like Product Hunt, where people upvote you?” — Ali Mese
The first thing we did was create a company account on Medium — obviously, that is not the best way to go about it. Articles are written by people, not companies. But if everyone has their own account on Medium, how do people know we’re from the same company? Everybody knows blogging is good for your business, but how do you blog — as a company — on Medium? That’s where a neat little Medium feature called “Publications” comes in.
Publications?
I, for example, didn’t even know publications existed. I had to read through some of the Medium help articles to understand the power of publications.
Publications.
Publications allow your company to add a little bit more corporate identity to your Medium blog, without distracting from the content. You can create a publication for your company, add a logo, description, header image (what you see at the top of the page) and much more (custom domains are coming soon!). Don’t worry if you can’t think of the perfect description right now, you can always change these options later.
Including a story in your publication is easy. First of all, you have to be the owner of the publication — or at least an editor/writer, which are added by the owner. Then, you simply click the “…” button in the editor and select “Add to publication” from the dropdown menu.
Now select your publication and that’s it!
You can also do more advanced things like featuring stories, sending letters to all your publication followers or managing drafts.
Share your stories
Being able to share our experiences might be the most powerful and most important human trait. Your stories are what makes you who you are. The same thing applies to your company, so start being more human now and tell us your story!
