Using Medium for Your Personal Brand or Portfolio
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The moment Medium was released, I fell in love with its elegance and simplicity. Their platform has reimagined the way people share and consume thoughts. I’ve been consistently impressed with Medium’s continued success growing its platform. Okay, you probably know they’re awesome, so why should I use them?
Why use a Medium Publication?
I’ve used numerous services (Carbonmade, Adobe Portfolio, Squarespace, etc.)—each with incredible capabilities and features. However, I couldn’t find that perfect tool that felt right for my needs and time constraints. I’m a product designer and technologist at heart. When showcasing my work, it is essential that I express a story describing my journey to the solution. Most times this is a composite of diverse assets in the form of narratives, working prototypes, photos, videos, and even code examples. In essence, authoring case studies are most practical for my needs, rather than just screenshots. As with most people, my time is super valuable to me. Between my day job, side projects and family—dedicating time to designing and developing a brand website is a challenge, to say the least.
And then, while writing a post on Medium, my epiphany moment arrived. I asked myself, “Why not use a Medium Publication for showcasing my brand web property?”. I have always been impressed with Medium Publications and have enjoyed the authoring experience when utilizing Medium. After a bit of experimentation and research, I found that Medium Publications nicely served my needs. Although not an exhaustive list, I listed a few reasons to consider Medium Publications as well. I also shared some insights for using Medium for your brand website.
Keeps you focused on the essentials—As a product or user experience(UX) designer, it’s about your process and solution. Medium’s limits will save you time, rather than investing loads of time on your portfolio’s visuals or code it from scratch.
Perfect for rich case studies—Medium stories are well-suited for long-form content, images, videos, prototypes, code samples and hundreds of other resources using Medium’s integration with Embedly.
Elegant authoring experience—Effortlessly write your content on a desktop, tablet or smartphone with Medium’s charming editing tools. Furthermore, you can track all your changes and view editing history.
Gather private feedback from others—Invite others to edit or post suggestions as private comments.
Monitor traffic and determine areas of interest—Medium provides useful analytics. However, if you need more such as location or advanced reporting, Medium Publications offer Google Analytics support.
Brand your publication with your domain name—Add your domain name to promote your website and elevate your brand. If you don’t have a domain name, I highly recommend registering one with Hover.
Leverage the incredible and high-quality Medium network—Alleviate the burden for potential employers or clients to discover your exceptional work.
Engaging reading environment—Deliver an intuitive and useful experience (bookmarking, sharing, mobile viewing) to visitors and make it easier for them to interact with your brand.
How to use a Medium Publication?
1. Create your Medium Publication
Medium Publications are free. Although, there is a small one-time charge if you want to use a custom domain. A bit more on that later. To set up your publication, open the menu under your user photo and browse to the publications area. Click New Publication to begin your journey. If you need help getting started, Medium offers a useful help article.
2. Author your Content
Once you create your publication, you’re all set to begin to authoring your content. Essentially, stories will be your building blocks. Use them for case studies, written pieces, testimonials and even your about me content.
Tip: Tags are helpful for describing your stories when sharing them in the Medium network. Also, you can link to a tag in your publications navigation.
3. Organize your homepage
Medium provides powerful options for displaying your stories. On your homepage, you can highlight case studies, testimonials or an interesting story. At first, all the options can be overwhelming. For simplicity, I recommend one section for Featured stories, limit to three stories and display them as a grid. In addition, Featured stories provide more control and allow you to pin desired stories. Again, you can choose the layout the works best for your homepage.
Tip: Medium will highlight the first image in a story as the cover photo. You can adjust the focal point by choosing the photo in your story and pressing Opt + click / Alt + click. For more shortcuts, browse to Medium Shortcuts.
4. Organize your Feature pages
Feature pages are similar to Homepages. They can beautifully display groups of stories automatically or manually. I recommend using them for your Case Studies tab. As with Homepages, I suggest a single section with Featured stories that you can pin relevant stories.
5. Define your navigation
Medium provides excellent options for organizing your publication’s navigation. Each tab can link to a single story, group of stories by tag, a feature page, an archive of stories or an about publication page. You also can add one custom external link along with a link to your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Tip: Manage your Facebook and Twitter accounts in your publication’s Homepage and settings area.
6. Brush the visuals
Medium provides a set of options to apply visual elements of your brand. You can experiment with the colors, imagery and other options in your Homepage and settings area and Homepage tab. This help article should get you moving.
For my publication, I kept it simple and focused on the case studies and content. For inspiration and a sense of what’s possible, I listed a few publications.
7. Assign a custom domain and Google Analytics
Adding a custom domain is effortless with Medium. Simply, read the instructions, complete a brief form and update your provider DNS records. To save an extra step, I recommend having your Google Analytics information available when submitting the form.
Tip: Google Analytics and a custom favicon are only available when you setup a custom domain for your publication.
8. Upload a publication favicon
Once your custom domain is applied, a new option will appear on your Homepage and settings.
Summary
After using a handful of services, Medium was the most practical fit for my requirements. Medium may not suit everyone’s needs, and that’s okay. As designers, we’re lucky to have numerous incredible services available. I hope you’ll find this article useful in building your brand website. Feel free to send along questions as comments, and I’ll try my best to answer them.
