I Analyzed the Featured Photos of the Top 100 Medium Stories of All Time and This Is What I Learned
Curated from: medium.com
Ideas, facts & insights covering these topics:
5 ideas
·35 reads
1
Explore the World's Best Ideas
Join today and uncover 100+ curated journeys from 50+ topics. Unlock access to our mobile app with extensive features.
How to Choose the Best Image for Your Medium Story
Unsplash is a great resource. But ever since its partnership (and embedded search-and-insert tool in the editor) with Medium in February 2018, it seems everybody is using it.
Is that good?
As a writer, if you do exactly what everyone else is doing, your voice will be lost in the crowd.
“It is better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation.”
— Herman Melville, novelist
2
12 reads
Top 50 Stories
How do you choose the best image for your story, Unsplash or not?
To dig up some data on this, I analyzed the featured photos of the top 100 Medium stories of all time and found that they fall into six categories.
TOP 50
- Unsplash or HD generic: 18
- Custom design/photography: 15
- Famous person: 7
- Screenshot: 4
- Cartoon: 4
- GIF: 2
2
5 reads
Next 50–100 Top Stories
- Custom design/photography: 20
- Unsplash or HD generic: 17
- Famous person: 6
- Screenshot: 3
- Cartoon: 1
- GIF: 1
- None: 1
- Suspended: 1
2
5 reads
Totals:
- Custom design/photography: 35
- Unsplash or HD generic: 35
- Famous: 13
- Screenshot: 7
- Cartoon: 5
- GIF: 3
- None: 1
- Suspended: 1
2
9 reads
Takeaways: What does this data actually mean?
- Don’t feel bad using Unsplash . Custom photography and design and generic HD photos were exactly equal and made up 70% of all top 100 stories.
- Ui and design articles were mostly custom designed. News-related stories tended to be Screenshots of events or photos of famous people.
- 54% of photos had people in them , that number increases if you include POV photos, as if you’re looking through the eyes of the author.
- Only one story didn’t have photos at all.
The featured photo of your medium story plays an important part, but it also shouldn't be used as a crutch.
2
4 reads
IDEAS CURATED BY
Oscar Moss's ideas are part of this journey:
Learn more about writing with this collection
The historical significance of urban centers
The impact of cultural and technological advances
The role of urban centers in shaping society
Related collections
Similar ideas
11 ideas
2 ideas
6 ideas
6 Lessons From Jane Austen - On Love, Life And Writing | Writers Write
writerswrite.co.za
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Personalized microlearning
—
100+ Learning Journeys
—
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates