How I Became a Top Writer in 15 Days

And You Can Do it Too!

Nicole Cayer
The Writing Cooperative

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Photo by rawpixel.com on UnsplashI

I Love Challenges

I took on the challenge of becoming a Top Writer on Medium.

I didn’t know much about how to become a Top Writer. After doing research and reading Top Writer articles, I knew I had to do these three things:

  1. write good content
  2. write often
  3. tag appropriately

What to Write About

Finding my Voice — My Past

When I started to write a few years ago, I didn’t want to pigeonhole my writing. I wanted options and to write about whatever I chose.

My three best articles were:

These articles were raw, emotional and authentic — all sharing a glimpse of my soul.

I was proud of them and all three were picked up by Thought Catalog.

Then Life Happened — My Present

I stopped writing on Medium. I started to journal and read about faith.

Followed a morning routine to connect with a higher power, and searched within my mind, heart, and soul for my purpose

Paying attention to all the signs — all pointing toward — writing.

Finally, I got inspired to write about my faith and helping others with their faith questions, their unique faith journeys.

My Writing Brand — My Future

When I combine my three best articles (personal, authentic) with my passion for faith (hope, inspiration) I come up with these Top Writer Status possibilities:

  1. Inspiration
  2. Life Lessons
  3. Love
  4. Self-development
  5. Relationships
  6. Creativity *

*Creativity because I love to create!

My Action Plan

I knew I could write — and write well. I just had to get focused and just “DO” it. No more planning, no more thoughts. I needed to take action.

So, I upped my game and changed my plan of action.

On March 12, 2018, my goal was to:

  • Increase my writing average per day.
  • Post 3–5x per week
  • Tag my article appropriately based on my brand.
  • Measure and track progress

This Happened 15 Days Later

On March 27th, 2018, I became a Top Writer in Advice!

Here’s What I Did:

I published every day — either my content or commented on articles I enjoyed reading.

I doubted this ‘publishing every day’ advice until I proved it for myself.

It takes discipline, and it’s challenging, but it works.

I capitalized on the times I could write and pre-planned the publish dates so I was publishing every day.

How Much Did I Write?

In 15 days I wrote 10,442 words, I wrote every day to keep the momentum and published every day.

I hit the publish button 21 times (12 articles and 9 comments)

My average words per day for those 15 days was 696 words per day.

(It’s important to note for the whole month of February I wrote 3800 words and my average words per day was 137 — this month was a huge increase in writing)

When Did I Write?

My big writing day was on Sundays where I’d write 1500 words and I divided that into 3 articles for the week.

During the weekdays I would write 300–500 words — these were shorter articles and often articles I wrote on my website called Becoming Faithful and then cross-published to my publication called Faith Hacking.

Where Did I Publish?

I published in a variety of publications and tried to mix it up. Making sure my article and message fit the guidelines of the publication.

  • 4x in my publication of 123 people
  • 2x in a publication of 83K followers
  • 3x in a publication of 1200 followers
  • 1x in a publication of 147K followers
  • 1x in a publication of 36K followers
  • 1x in the Medium Partner Program

In addition, I wrote 9 comments on articles I enjoyed and/or responded to comments on my articles.

What Did I Learn About This Process?

  1. Publishing every day is good advice. Not only does it increase exposure, but it keeps you on track and motivated.
  2. I think the combination of publications is important — as well as the engagement from readers.
  3. Engaging and interacting with other Medium users is beneficial — and it is one of my favourite things about this Medium platform.
  4. It takes discipline to write daily — and sometimes this was not doable with a full-time job. I capitalized on Sundays and wrote most my articles then.
  5. The tag “Advice” was a last minute decision. I always seemed to need a 5th word to tag, so Advice was the word that worked for most of my articles. Ironically, Medium gave me Top Writer Status for this.

What’s next?

I will continue to write and publish articles daily based on my brand with the intention of achieving top writer status for one of the tags listed above.

But, we will see where my writing takes me.

Hopefully, I’ve inspired YOU to take on this challenge. Try it — it’s hard work, but it’s rewarding once you get that email from Medium saying you’ve achieved Top Status.

Connect with me here on Medium or Twitter and let me know how it goes.

At The Writing Cooperative, our mission is to help each other write better. We’ve teamed up with ProWritingAid to do just that. Try it for free!

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Helping busy people explore 3 key areas: spirituality, minimalism & creativity. Get the free 15 minute Journal Booster Guide: becomingfaithful.ca/journalbooster