I looked through my Medium feed recently and realized a pattern: I hadn't been commenting as much on other people's articles as I used to. Last week, I barely commented at all on other people's articles. Even when other people have left kind and thoughtful feedback on my own pieces, I have just left that feedback there and just clapped on the comments, not even replying back.
Given the hectic and time-consuming nature of work, I haven't been a great member of the Medium community. And the biggest metric of that ineffectiveness is the fact that I haven't been commenting lately. Anyone can clap or highlight an article. However, the comment you write is strictly your own, and no one else's. It's the most thoughtful form of feedback because it is so unique -- when someone comments on my articles, I immediately check it out because I have no idea what to expect.
Today, I have made it an initiative and resolution to comment on more people's articles, and it taught me a valuable lesson to do it more and more frequently.
The benefits are immense, even if they don't guarantee us any more direct stats or earnings. We begin to build relationships with other writers, but also engage more with that other person's article. What we write and what comes out of us as a comment can quickly manifest itself as an article idea in itself, something that has happened to me numerous times in the past.
The biggest reason we don't comment is because it is time-consuming. It's far easier to clap and highlight an article, but the most meaningful engagement comes in the form of comments. We have this misconception that we don't get anything out of commenting -- that it's only a way of giving but not receiving.
But that reality is so far from the truth. In Facebook groups, some new writers will try to analyze what is behind a major spike in views and reads on a given day. My default response is to check their comments -- see if they commented on a high-profile and very popular article and got a lot of reception on that comment. Sure enough, engaging with other people's articles meaningfully will give you more exposure as well.
This is not to say that the relationship between commenting and success as a writer or on Medium is linear. It is not. You can easily comment and not get anything in return.
But why should you let that stop you from doing it? Why let outside validation like stats dictate what you get from a comment? As an example, I left a comment on Zita Fontaine's article a couple of minutes ago about how the world will go on without us when we're not present. I mentioned how I once read a book from a high-profile pastor about how he took a two-week vacation and worried the whole time about how his church was doing, only to return to see that his assistant ran things even better than he did.
I look at my watch and realize that comment took at least 10 minutes to write. You might think that's a waste of time, but it was a way of engaging with a great writer of a great article, and it gave me a lot of insight into what article to write next. Because I wrote that comment, I'll likely write my next article about how if we're not present in the world and lives of others, they will move on without us like we're invisible. A select few might reach out and ask if we're okay, but these moments come far and in between, unless we're calling out of work every day or people expect something from us that we're not able to give.
I will write about how Zita's article reminded me, yet again, of the power of communal responsibility and communal suffering in building bonds. If we don't have that shared responsibility, whether it's in the form of a workplace culture or common goal, then we'll likely be forgotten about. I will likely write about how people won't usually reach out to see how you're doing unless they want something from you, and while that seems cruel, think about the times you, too, reach out to other people. You expect some sort of reciprocity, whether in the form of a conversation, favor, or financial assistance.
All those facts are ideas that originated from a single Medium comment. I know Erik Brown has commented on my articles before and built on those comments to make well-written and researched articles. Commenting gets the short end of the stick on Medium metrics because we typically don't see instant gratification from the comments we leave on other people's pieces -- we don't see views and reads or money in our Medium Partner Program dashboard.
However, we gain something much more in the form of deeply engaging with a topic and building a relationship with a writer and the writing community. We establish our own relationships and interpretations of what we just read. I have to teach books to my kids back in middle school, and I have a much greater ownership and understanding of those books because I have to teach them, which is similar to commenting because when we comment, it's a way of taking ownership of our reading experience.
Commenting is more time-consuming than clapping or highlighting an article. Many times, we find it's significantly more time-consuming, and that's the fundamental barrier that limits our ability to comment as much as we want. However, I personally find that I enjoy Medium much more when I comment on an article. I can share with the writer how their words and their articles resonated with me in a much more unique and personalized way than 50 claps could express. Before you know it, you have a whole new article based on the ideas you expressed in a comment.
Commenting is an incredible tool because it keeps you not only accountable to yourself, but to the writer you're writing back to. Say you really didn't like an article. While you're composing your comment, you start to think of the reasons behind your gut distaste for the ideas expressed in the article, and you start explaining why you disagree. Praise is similar -- you want to find the reasons why you liked an article so much and why it personally resonated with you.
So comment more on Medium, because on the platform, commenting is your best friend.