You Need to Read This Before You Do Follow to Follow on Medium
From the moment I started writing on Medium, I heard something called the "follow to follow" method. This means you follow a new writer on Medium, and at the same time, the person will follow you back. I will not tell you to do it or not; that is absolutely your choice. However, if you choose to do it, then you need to read this article before doing it.
But before that, you need to know that there is nothing wrong with the method, but it is the way you do it
“It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it” Loi Holtz
1. Do Not Be Selfish
Many writers on Medium follow you, so you follow them, but once you follow them and they get approval for the Medium Partner Program, they unfollow you, and you will end up in the same place you were before. This is exactly what happened with our friend Raymond. You can read about his full experience below.
There is nothing more disgusting than being selfish and making money that you do not really deserve!
Remember, We are all here to learn and educate each other, not to climb on each other’s backs…
2. Read The Other Person’s Work (Be a Real Follower)
One of the things that makes me like this method is that it helps us gain the required support. When you start from scratch, you will start with 0 followers in your account, and thus you need more followers to present your work to. For that reason, you will join publications to get as many readers as you can to read your story.
It is okay to follow a person you do not know and read his work, or at least open his story, to find out if it is interesting or not. We need to listen to each other and read each other's stories instead of just following each other to get a high number of followers under our names.
This is the only ethical way. All you need is to follow and read.
3. Do Not Unfollow Other Person Before 6 Months
When you follow another person and he follows you. Then, you may find that the stories that the person posts are not really interesting for you, and here you may be thinking about unfollowing. Before doing that, you need to know that the other person may be significantly affected by your unfollowing him/her in a short period of time. In more cases, it is more harmful to him/her to unfollow than to not follow in the first place.
Remember, we are here to support each other, not to fight each other. Therefore, give the other person a chance to improve his/her writing and give 6 months or even a year before unfollowing.
4. Tell Everyone When you Stop Doing It
You may think to use the method just to get a limited number of people, but then you will not do it again. In this way, you want to gain more organic followers who are more interested in your stories than the old ones. However, if you decide to do that, make sure to delete all your comments or posts that ask people to follow you. Not deleting these comments may gain you more followers, but these are the ones who are expecting you to follow them. If you don’t want to follow them, then delete your stories that request followers.
5. Improve Quality and Give Value to Readers
It is always good to be flexible in writing and not stick to one way of doing things. Give your followers value and something that benefits them other than the follow you give. Simply make these friends stick with you and really follow you by giving them value.
These are the five things that I think every Medium writer needs to know before getting into the follow-to-follow business. However, I do not encourage anyone to do the follow-to-follow method and focus more on how to improve stories to be more interesting and effective.
