How to Grow Your Fanbase!

Stop looking for Followers and find your Fans

There are two ways to look at Medium, or any writing platform: Growing an Audience and Growing a Fan base. What’s the difference, and why should you care?

You don’t interact with your audience, you send a message at them, but not to them. They’re faceless.

You make a connection with your Fan base, you are talking to them and sharing with them. They’re people, just like you.

So, which should you build?

Let's dig into that!

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Why should you build an audience?

An audience is a bunch of people that you talk at. An audience is a crowd of people who you may never directly talk to.

These are the people that unfollow or unsubscribe from you when they’re ‘cleaning up their feed.’

Why would you want to grow that? Well, if it’s big enough, those that unsubscribe will be inconsequential compared to those that subscribe.

The problem with the audience pursuit is that it’s all a numbers game, and those numbers don’t mean anything until they start to get huge.

The other problem with the audience pursuit is that it in most cases it takes time, a lot of time.

So, should you build an audience? Yes, but do it by building a fan base.

Why should you build a fan base?

Your fan base are people that connect with you, they laugh out loud or feel sympathy with your highs and lows. A fan will follow you from platform to platform. A fan wants to support you.

Fans, or Superfans if you’re lucky, will be with you through thick and thin.

Pat Flynn has a great video about growing your audience on YouTube, definitely worth your time to learn more. In that video, he shares an anecdote of one of his fans hearing that Pat had a new book coming out, so they pre-ordered 5 copies without even knowing what the book was about. They just wanted to support him.

Fans will motivate you, keep you real, but also boost your ego. Having fans will help you grow your audience, so you will have your cake and get to eat it too!

Most importantly, in my opinion, with fans you get to be your authentic self. No, let me correct that, you NEED to be your authentic self.

Who doesn’t want to get to grow more successful while being themselves?

How do you grow your fanbase?

The good news is, you just have to be yourself. The bad news is also that you have to be yourself.

Most of us believe ourselves to be pretty boring, that might be true much of the time. The trick is to learn which parts of you aren’t boring. If you’re here, then you’re already inclined to creativity, so just lean into that.

Start with the niche

The first thing you heard about when you started writing was about finding your niche. You thought it was just so people would find you in the sea of topics, but that’s only partially true.

Your niche is what you’re interested in, more importantly, what you can write interestingly about. Picking a niche is about your special interests, but also your experiences. The purpose of the niche is to allow you to be yourself as you’re ‘geeking out’ on a topic.

Don’t pick a niche for its breadth or popularity, choose your niche based on what you actually enjoy talking about.

Find your tribe

Once you know what you enjoy writing about, you have to seek out your fans. They don’t know you exist yet, so you have to help them. On Medium, that means finding Publications that correspond to your niche and your fans. Apply to become a writer and eventually an editor for that publication.

Find good Topics that really sum up your niche as well, be sure you’re always adding those tags so it's easier for your fans to find you.

Search for peers and readers! Look for people that are writing about what you’re writing about and read their stuff, follow them and engage with them. The people that relate to your topics will likely be the people who you relate to as well.

Move beyond your platform and find peers elsewhere. Reddit, Quora, Substack, Discord. Any place that has a community could have YOUR community, be active there and let them know you write. If you write well on other platforms, if you have some sense of authority, it’ll encourage fans to find you in other places.

Define your Fan Persona

Understanding who you’re writing for is as important as what you’re writing or how you’re writing it. In fact, knowing what your fan looks like will shape those other aspects directly.

Find an image of what you think your fans look like. Write a list of problems your fan faces, things that get them excited, or what their dreams are. Some of this will overlap with your own. This is great, being relatable and being vulnerable help your fans connect as well.

Having a mental picture of your fan will give you someone to write for and make it easier to write like it’s to a friend.

Personalize your message

As you continue to write, become your niche.

Meaning, write about yourself and how you relate to the niche. Don’t be stuck to the 3 topics you picked when you started writing. Let your topics wander into tangents. Don’t be constrained to a handful of specific topics.

Defy conventional wisdom. Don’t feel like you have to take everyone’s advice. Don’t lock yourself into the perfect headline writing algorithm. Be clever when you want to be clever.

The beauty of fans is, your style will become as relevant as your content. If you’re writing the same headline style as everyone else, you just sound like everyone else.

Forget the numbers

Become ‘stat blind’ when it comes to your writing. A fandom isn’t built on statistics, it’s built on connections. If you’re constantly watching to see what is most popular or has the largest population, then you’ll start to stray from what’s interesting to you.

While it’s validating to see your follower or subscriber count grow, it’s even more inspiring to have that following actively interacting with you.

Pursuing fans is more than just writing, but worth it

The blessing of pursuing fans is that you’re defining it as you go along. The fact that you’re joining communities of like minded people means you’re doing less marketing and indulging in what you’re passionate about.

Don’t go out there with a sales pitch. Interact with the world like you have things to say, offer advice to others with similar interests. Be helpful. Treat people like your friends and they’ll become your friends and your fans.

Remember that you’re also a writer and an educator or an entertainer and continue to grow your voice in a meaningful and relatable manner, but do so with an eye on who you want to be reading your stories.

I’m building my own fan base! Its home is my newsletter, Channeling Chaos, come join me over there!