Just One Comment and…
What happens when you comment on a post on Medium
One of my first articles on Medium was about commenting on social media rather than using the ‘like’ button. It was aptly titled Unlike the Like Button, it got a few reads and some claps. As a new writer with a minimal following. But I was happy enough with the result.
Particularly when Tom Kuegler gave me 50 claps for that post, I was quite excited by that.
Now as a follow on to that post, I want to share something rather interesting that has occurred to me here on Medium.
A while back I read ‘12 Common Ways You’re Sabotaging Your Moods and Your Life’ by John Gorman. It was a great post about ways we can self-sabotage our lives. I read it because I am prone to self-sabotage. One of his points was about being on your smartphone too much. Which I will quote below:
The data is out. Our phones are making us miserable. All that time you spend scrolling your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds wondering why all your friends have beautiful kids and Nantucket vacations while you’re binge-eating pizza and bemoaning your stupid-ass coach’s decision to go for it on fourth-and-9? It’s lowering your life satisfaction.
Unless you’re using each platform to truly connect one-on-one with people and build real-world friendships, they aren’t helping. Plus, the world’s a grease-fire right now, and engulfing yourself in negative news is making you mentally ill. Plus, your smartphone emits that dreaded blue light that disrupts your sleep patterns.
I highlighted and made a response to the sentence in bold above. Basically I mentioned that I wrote a post addressing just that and gave the tl:dr version; “Don’t use that effing thumbs up button. Write an actual comment and connect with people.”
I named my post and left it at that. John was kind enough to reply, saying he loves comments and commenting, but claps pay the bills. Which I totally agree with.
I didn’t think much more about it. After all I shared my point of view and had a reply from John. What more can you ask for really?
Then something unexpected happened…….
People started reading and clapping on my comment. Seriously. Within a few days more than 900 people viewed my comment to John’s post.
Bloody Hell !!
The next thing I know that number is at 1.3k. Shit and I didn’t even link my post properly. So I got in and linked my post in the comment.
Lesson learned, if you are mentioning a post you have written in a comment to someone else, then damn will link the thing.
Now as I write this post that one little comment has been viewed by 2.1k people and read by 1.5k. with 25 fans. My reply comment to John’s response is sitting at 1.2k viewed, 1k read and 12 fans.
For guys like John those numbers are probably nothing much these days, I mean he has 18,900 odd followers. His post has over 23k claps as I look at it. But for me with only a couple of hundred followers [236 to be exact] these numbers are bloody amazing.
My absolute best post, The Anglo-Norse Concept of Time, has 211 views to date with 78 reads and 3 fans. Which I am very happy with, after all I only post twice per week and been a member since March this year.
My Unlike the Like Button post has slowly gained some extra views, reads and fans and is now sitting at my fourth most viewed story. I can’t help but wonder how many extra views I could have gained if I had tagged it properly in the first place. But then how long is a piece of string? Such is life and lesson learned.
All of this is not so much about stats, but about how commenting on someone else’s Medium post can put your name in front of a much larger audience. You see you can never know when a comment you write will explode in terms of views and reads. Or how many people will resonate with your comment. Most of my comments will only have a few [less than ten] views and reads. Many only have one. Some though have gone over one hundred.
This single one is an anomaly for me. I have this bloody great spike in that green graph because of it.
If I only clapped, if I hadn’t posted a response to that one line in one paragraph in John’s story, that spike wouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t have been exposed to more than two thousand new people. The jump in fans wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t be writing this post right now either.
So clap for your favourite stories on Medium so the author gets paid. Then comment on those stories and maybe raise your profile because of it. Or start building a relationship with the author. Most of us love getting comments to our posts anyway.
Thanks for reading and clap if you like this article….
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