The Only Growth Hack You Need to Succeed on Medium
How to be a better Medium collection editor—gain and maintain followers. Care.
To whomever it may concern,
The majority of people on Medium have trouble getting just 10 followers to their collections over the course of a few months, so how is it possible that I can get 10 followers overnight?
I recently published a 13-minute piece called “Entrepreneurial Advice Nobody Gives You”, and it was received by the community a whole lot better than I expected as it gained over a few thousand views and recommendations in the first seven hours. It appears to be a long reception as it continues to join a number of new collections each day—now well over 140 collections.
But I’m writing to help you be a better collection editor.
Today, I am writing this brief memo to the public in order to tackle the results of a data collection study by James Faghmous published on the last day of 2013.
James decided he would take a look at 1000 Medium collections, and what he found is a bit staggering, but much needed information for the advancement of Medium. Here’s some numbers from James’ survey:
I won’t try to paraphrase his words or interpret his findings for you, so if you would like to see what he came up with, I recommend taking a look at his article, “What I Learned From Analyzing 1,000 Medium Collections”.
In short, more than 70% of collections have zero followers. I won’t go in depth on why I think those collections exist the way they do other than saying that there is simply a lack of care. If you want to succeed in what you do, you have to care, even the slightest bit.
I am no expert, I strongly dislike the word, and I believe there are no “experts”—just people who've been there. If you approach me with a suggestion on selling a T-Shirt without ever having sold a single T-Shirt in your days, I will kindly walk away. I don’t care how many degrees or related accolades you have accumulated; the only thing that matters is whether or not you've done it.
Me, I've been there. I edit nine collections and, with the exception of the three week-old ones, they are all relatively popular. How can your collections be popular, you ask?
To be a Great Editor, You Need to Care
My friends over at @BeTweet and their wonderfully insightful founder, Violeta, are the masters of growth hacks. They work tirelessly to bring the best growing tactics to start ups. I love what they are doing. Just yesterday, Violeta expressed her appreciations for my collections as I enjoy spreading her helpful words to my following. After her tweet, I decided I’d write this piece to help others create collections that reach others.
Do What You Love
My most successful collection goes by the name of Inspire the World. The most important reason for this being my #1 collection (also #1 inspirational collection on Medium) is the sheer fact that I aspire to inspire others. Many of my friends and teammates tease me for always being “so inspirational” in my words and actions. I like that. If I can touch somebody, just one person, with my words, and have a lasting positive impact on his or her life, my mission is complete.
Visit my Medium page to see my other six collections.
The numbers to the above came in the matter of a few weeks of caring. I love to inspire people, I am a computer science major, and all I care about is succeeding. Success is my one true love, right ahead of learned failure.
Care About What You are Doing
Here’s a quick tip: don’t do anything you don’t care about. Don’t waste your extremely limited time in this life (you should enjoy the linked video). If you try to go against this tip, you will find yourself sad, alone, or dead. Don’t find yourself dead.
I care a lot about building a community of people who enjoy inspiring others as I do. I have fun talking about technology, its advancements, and how its reshaping our world. Like I noted above, I only care about success—helping others succeed, self success, and reaching my dreams. I believe that success is best achieved collectively, hence the name of my third most popular collections.
Care About the People
Awhile ago, I had to do something I felt uneasy about. As mentioned above, I appreciate Violeta and BeTweet’s work, but there came a time when I had to reject one of their submissions to Inspire the World. I’ll answer the question before you ask it: the piece they submitted wasn’t what my followers wanted to read about—it wasn’t inspiring—so I rejected it. The piece was great for Succeed Together and my other related collections, so I added it to those collections.
When I go through the many submissions to each of my collections, I am looking for articles that reach out to me, titles that grab me and scream, “READ ME! YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!” These articles are the ones that don’t get the automatic deletion.
The articles that do get the automatic deletions are the ones with titles that whisper ever so slightly, but loud enough for me to hear and realize I don’t like what is going through my central nervous system, “I’m irrelevant to your collection.” These articles are the ones that I have a love and hate relationship with. They make me sad when I see them because they just tell me that some people just don’t respect the purpose of my article, but they also make me happy on the inside as they almost immediately lessen the number of articles I have to parse for relevant content. I rejected almost every submission having to do with Valentines Day over the last few weeks; I don’t have a collection called Valentines. In the end, it’s all about your followers and what they want to read.
As I go through the submissions to Inspire the World, all I have on my mind is whether or not my followers should enjoy reading those articles.
The people who follow Inspire the World want inspiration, and those who follow StartUp Valley want to talk strictly about start-ups. This is all that matters. If I can deliver the content they want to read to them, I’ve done my job.
Care About the Advancement of Others
I read each and every submission to my collections, even if it is just briefly, and try to provide appropriate feedback. I tweet the articles I truly loved, recommend the ones that should be spread across the globe, and accept the ones that fit. If I reject an article, I try my best to provide meaningful reason as to why I rejected the author’s piece—usually because it just isn't what my readers are looking to read on their way to their next destination.
This yields two benefits, one to the author, and one to me.
First, me. I often thank the author for “publishing to [insert collection name here]” in order to show my gratitude, remind them who they submitted to, and to show their readers where to go to read more related articles, my collection ☺.
Ultimately, the authors. By providing meaningful feedback to others, you are helping them grow little by little, or by quantum leaps. I enjoy helping others succeed and reach where they look to be. Guess what else I enjoy. Spreading my knowledge and two cents are activities I have a good time doing. When your peers succeed, you succeed, and society is much better off than it previously was. Its a wonderful circle that you need to care about.
Care About Reaching Greater Distances
Individually, my collections gain over 10 followers a week, sometimes ten over night if I feel like it. That’s right, if I feel like gaining ten followers, I do it, and it happens as I sleep. You can sleep and gain followers as well.
Just care about the people enough to go out and get them what they want.
The people want content, but sometimes, the content won’t be lining up in your submissions box, so you have to fetch it. When I don’t have submissions for an extended amount of time, or I just feel like growing my following, I go out and retrieve relevant content for my current followers to read, and in return, the authors of those articles and their readers start to follow my collection. It’s a nice cycle. That’s how Medium works—you give a lot, you get a little, and in turn, the little becomes larger than you can handle.
There are no experts, just people who’ve been there. I’ve been there.
@AcePlate created StartUp Valley on Wednesday night, spent a few minutes gathering a bunch of prominent articles related to start-ups, went to sleep, and woke up with seven followers to the collection. Isn’t that just great. That same night, I decided to initiate a collection of articles on working smart, simply named Work Smarter, and got similar results the next morning (six followers). Its’s that simple. You can do it, too.
All you have to do is care and your collections won’t smell so bad. Try out these method(s) and let me know how they go for you. If you already do a good job of caring, continue the good work. I hope to hear from you soon. Have a great day.
Best Regards,
Lincoln Daniel
You must strive to realize your dreams, or somebody will pay you 9 to 5 to achieve theirs.
—Lincoln Daniel: Editor of the Inspire the World, Technology and You, and Succeed Together collections on Medium. Creator of @AcePlate: Learn more at AcePlate.com
- Follow me on Twitter: @LincolnWDaniel
- Let’s talk tech, business, success, startups, life http://lincolnwdaniel.webflow.com
- Email me at lincolnwdaniel@gmail.com
