Find Your Reader
A Quick Guide on Building Your Audience From Scratch
6 ways to find more readers for your work
This post was updated in May, 2022
There is no secret method or cheat code for growing your audience or increasing story views. Genuine audience growth and readership happens organically over time. When we are building an audience from scratch — zero followers and zero story views — it requires developing an authentic relationship with potential readers and the broader community of writers.
Developing an audience from the ground up is hard and involves a lot of digging to understand your readers and engagement with the community of writers on the platform. Here’s a guide to how you can become your own audience editor and build the audience you want to increase your readership.
Find your ideal reader
Building an audience from scratch often comes down to finding the right community to connect with your content. The one question to ask yourself every time you write is “Who is this for?” Defining your audience helps you narrow the scope of your blog or publication and creates the space for you to focus on cultivating work for a specific reader. Writing for your ideal audience will make it easier to find this audience.
Audience editor Samantha Zabell encourages creators to build the persona of the “ideal reader” to help inform “everything from the voice and style of writing they might like, to whether or not they’d be interested in your particular expertise, to typical demographic information like age or location.”
Zabell recommends going through a simple audience building exercise to create your perfect reader.
This post has a few questions to get you started on building your ideal reader persona:
Be an avid reader
Engage with the community on Medium by reading work from creators who write on topics you are passionate about. This builds a relationship with a community who is most likely to engage with your pieces and become a loyal audience.
When you read an interesting story on Medium consider the following engagement methods:
- Leave a comment.
- Respond to comments left by other readers to engage in dialogue around topics you write about.
- Clap for pieces to celebrate and acknowledge your favorite creators.
- Highlight a sentence or paragraph to draw attention to the parts that stood out to you.
- Leave a private note on a story of an author you admire and ask them to read one of your stories and leave a comment.
Make yourself an active part of relevant communities and mimic the engagement you seek for your own work.
Medium writer Teressa P. recommends devoting 15–30 minutes three times a week to reading and responding to your comments and then reading a piece from a commenter. If you don’t have any comments, focus on reading and responding to creators you admire.
“You have to love writing and be open to reading and engaging with other writers. You may not agree with everything they say, but you’re guaranteed to learn something new and grow as a writer as your audience and readership grows,” she writes.
Share your stories widely
You are the best person to champion your stories and communicate your unique value to potential readers. Medium is a great place to publish stories and connect with your readers, but don’t forget you exist in many forms online. Tap into your other social media networks to promote your stories. Find writing communities on other social platforms to surface your work and engage in discussions about topics that interest you.
“Journalistic self-promotion isn’t egotistical. Rather, it can be a thoughtful way to share work you’re proud of and connect with readers. It’s designed to draw more eyes and exposure to your portfolio,” writes audience editor Elie Levine.
If you’re feeling weird about self-promotion, refer to the Levine’s How to Self-Promote Without Turning People Off guide, where she outlines several strategies to help you unabashedly champion your work online.
Create a social media promotion plan that will enlighten your followers and reflect your writing style. Concentrate on posting where you are the most active. You don’t have to start tweeting if you don’t tweet. Consider where you “live” digitally and focus on promoting stories there.
Also, don’t be afraid to post more than once! Get creative with how you leverage social media platforms to promote your writing. Need help getting started? There’s a guide for that, too.
Follow the link below for more insight into how you can craft engaging social media posts that will direct your followers to the stories you publish on Medium.
Workshop your headlines
A good headline draws your readers into your story by clearly communicating what the story is about. Your headline doesn’t need to veer into clickbait, it should be clear, direct, assertive, and focused on what is most interesting.
When workshopping headlines, imagine you are seeing your story for the first time with no context. Would I want to read this? What framing would make you more interested in clicking this story? If you get stuck on a headline, pause the brainstorming process and answer this question: What is this story about?
Here are examples of strong headlines and why they work to help in your next brainstorming session:
Here is some more advice on writing strong headlines — including a video of a workshop we ran recently on the topic:
Optimize your profile
Your profile information— on Medium, that’s your bio and About page — introduces you to your readers, builds your credibility, and lets readers know why they should follow you and read your work.
Here are some tips for updating and optimizing your profile on Medium:
Get comfortable writing into the void
Building an audience takes time and growing your readership takes effort. When starting out, get comfortable with writing into the void, says Medium writer Allison Gaines.
“Use this time to create a writing schedule, a method for self-promotion, and practice your networking skills,” she writes. “Whatever you do, remember we’ve all been there.”
