AN INSIDE LOOK AT
Getting Started As A Writer On The Softway Blog On Medium
A fictional tale of how a fictional woman became a Writer for our Medium publication: The Softway Blog.
Ever wondered how we write and publish content for The Softway Blog?
Well then, this article’s for you. 🙋♂️
(Psst! This article is also for you if you work at Softway and want to get started with your first blog for our Medium publication.)
I’m Bapusaheb Patil, and I’m a Mobile Engineer at Softway. I build stuff and then write about it with a dash of humour, usually on weekends.
In this article, I’ll walk you through the practical steps a writer has to follow to publish his/her article on The Softway Blog.
Prelude
To best explain these steps, I’m gonna bring Susan Writerson into the picture.
Susan Writerson is an imaginary, made-up, wanna-be writer for The Softway Blog. She loves to write blogs in her free time, when she isn’t taking her dog out for a walk in the park.
Susan just joined Softway a week ago, she sees how cool The Softway Blog is and she wants to contribute with her own articles, but Medium is new to her.
She expresses her interest in contributing to Neethi Gnanakan or Clency d' almeida, who work in the Ops Team at Softway, and are also our in-house Editors for the blog.
“Hey Neethi/Clency! How do I get started with this Medium thing?”
Either one of these two super-friendly women will tell you that the very first thing that you need to do is to create a Medium account.
It’s free, although they have a Medium Membership plan with some perks that you can look into, should you choose to opt for it.
For now, go ahead, and sign up here on Medium! 🚀
You can use your personal Google or Facebook account to sign up too, we don’t really mind. 🤗
Now that you’ve signed up for Medium and have your own account, let’s see how to set it up and make some polishes to it! ✨
Polishing Susan’s Medium profile
When you first create your profile and go to your Profile page, here’s what it looks like:
Doesn’t that look a little empty? Let’s fix that.
It’s probably a good idea to speak a little bit about yourself on Medium. So click that Edit profile button and write a short bio about yourself!
Optionally, you can also change your Medium username. Usually, your Medium username is automatically set when you sign up.
But if you want to change it to something more catchy, simply click on your profile icon → Settings → Account → Edit username.
Look at that, Susan just changed her Medium username from @susan.writerson to @susanwrites!
Good job, Susan!
You can also find other settings related to notifications, your account and more on this page here, so go ahead and set it up as you’d like.
How can Susan get her first article published in The Softway Blog?
Before we get into the nitty-gritty details, here’s a list of steps to give you a brief overview of our publication process:
- Come up with your first draft.
- We add you as a writer here as soon as you’ve notified us when you’ve done writing.
- You then submit the draft to our publication.
- We review it, edit it (a little) and then publish it.
Let’s get practical and see how these steps work. 🐾
Helping Susan with her first draft…
You with me so far, Susan? Yes? Awesome!
Let’s get started with your first draft! To create a new draft, click on your profile icon → New story.
Now, go ahead, give your article a title and get started with your first draft!
You don’t have to worry about adding a cover photo, adding tags or using any of the Medium formatting options in your draft, we’ll take care of that for you. 🧐
Just work on your content, because that’s all we look forward to. 😄
“Okay, Bapu, what happens after I’m done with my draft?”
Once you’re done with your first draft, you notify Neethi or Clency that you’re done.
Here’s a sneak peek at what they do once you notify them:
Basically, as Editors of The Softway Blog, they add you as a Writer to the publication! 🥳
This allows you to contribute articles to the publication easily in future. Let’s see how in the next step.
Submitting Susan’s draft to the publication
After you’ve been added as a Writer, you can now submit your first draft to our publication!
To do this, click on the 3-dot button at the top-right corner → Add to publication → Select ‘The Softway Blog’ → Select and continue.
Then click on Ready to submit? → Uncheck the ‘Allow curators to recommend my story to interested readers…’ checkbox → Submit to publication and you’re done!
Note: We need you to uncheck that box so that the articles on our publication are freely accessible to everyone, without them having to pay for the Medium Membership to read our articles.
What’s next?
Well, Susan, here’s the good news: You’ve done everything on your part in this process!
The next step is for our Editors (hey there, Neethi & Clency! 👋), who will review, edit and publish your article on the blog after they receive your submission.
Here’s another sneak peek into how the Editors view your draft when you submit it:
Wow, this is a breeze! What’s next?
Hooray! We’ve now helped Susan get her first article published in The Softway Blog! 🎉
Susan seems very happy and excited about having her first Medium article out. Here’s to more articles and future contributions from Susan! 🥂
If you want to contribute to the publication like Susan just did, let us know. We welcome articles in all shapes, sizes and categories!
You can find our entire list of Editors and Writers here:
I’ll close with a reminder to visit us on Instagram here, we often post cool things that are happening in our workplace everyday.
If you’d like to join our amazing team, take a look at our current openings here:
To learn more about us, find our website and our work here:
If you liked this article, click on the 👏 button (did you know you could go up to 50?), follow me here on Medium and share this article on your socials!
I’m Bapusaheb Patil, and I’m a Mobile Engineer at Softway. Find me and all my socials here:
