Attracting the Right Followers on Medium
There’s a right way and a wrong way to get followers.
How to get the right followers on Medium.
All new writers need an engaged audience to read their writing.
There are many ways to build an audience. Medium calls engaged readers “followers” —
at least, that’s the idea. If people follow you, it’s supposed to mean they are interested in what you write about and want to read more in the future.
Engaged readers interested in the niche’ you write about will often want to post a comment on your article…these are the followers you want.
When you acquire enough readers (followers), you can apply to the “Partner Program” that pays you when people read your articles.
The “Partner Program” now requires writers to have at least 100 followers. There used to be no requirement, but Medium did this in order to attract more serious and consistent writers.
It’s working, but there are still members trying to shortcut the process and do what I call: “cheap tricks” (more about that later).
You shouldn’t be in a “race” to see how fast you can get 100 followers
If you’re serious about writing and building a large engaged audience, you must be selective about who you follow. Seek out people who write in the niche’ you are interested in.
Find writers who have thousands of followers and are active in posting articles frequently on Medium.
Two huge names on Medium I like are Tim Denning and Zulie Rane. I call them the King and Queen of Medium.
Tim has over 300 thousand followers and posts multiple times a week.
Zulie has over 70 thousand followers and also posts multiple times a week.
What is most important about both writers is that many of their readers respond to their articles in the comment section; that’s where the magic happens for you.
You want to follow huge writers like these and post relevant, thoughtful, and specific comments to their articles. And No, the authors probably won’t reply to you, or even follow you.
Why? because with over 300 hundred thousand followers, 70 thousand followers, or even a few thousand followers, there isn’t enough time to reply to the number of people who reply to each article they write.
However, many other readers (followers) will see your comments and be interested in your writing if you show interesting and relevant opinions.
You should have passion, knowledge, and/ or experience in their niche’. Read their articles, and comment on them. A short comment like: “Great article” or “I like this” isn’t going to cut it if you want other readers who see your comment to want to follow you.
Tim’s niches are writing, financial, online marketing, copywriting, and other relevant topics.
Zulie’s niches are writing, Medium writing, cats, and other various topics also.
Show readers your valuable knowledge, experience, and opinions.
These two are a good match for me because I have a passion, knowledge, and experience in these areas, so I would be able to contribute valuable opinions and knowledgeable questions in the comment section of the articles they write that are close to my experience.
So the thing you have to remember is not EVERY article they write will you be able to write valuable comments on.
Example: When Zulie writes about cats — I don’t have any cats, don’t know a lot about them, and therefore I should not comment on those articles.
Example: For Tim, when he writes about financial articles involving banking practices etc. I won’t bother commenting because I don’t have relevant knowledge in that area, so I couldn’t contribute much value in the comments.
Why follow for follow is a bad idea
We talked about the right way to get followers on Medium; now let’s talk about the wrong way to get followers.
Forget about racing to 100 — that will come quickly enough. The most important thing is to get followers who are truly interested in what you write.
I call follow-for-follow “cheap tricks” because it has nothing to do with quality content, or relevant niches, or even anything you or the other person are interested in.
You are essentially “begging to be followed” without regard to actually reading each other's content.
In my own experience, I saw a young lady last week whose bio stated she had her undergraduate degree and is starting law school. She commented a few-word sentence on an article that had nothing to do with her interests.
She ended it with: “Come on, show me some luv and follow me; I’ll follow you back”. Yeah, if you do this kind of thing, and often you will get your 100 followers pretty quick, but are they going to be an engaged audience, who reads and comments on your articles? Probably not.
So what have you really gained?
Don’t fall for these cheap tricks, don’t beg to be followed, and don’t follow people who beg you to follow them.
When people follow me, I don’t automatically follow them back.
I go to their profile and look at their bio, and their homepage to see what their interests, and experience are. If they are similar to my own, I will follow them back.
This is why it is so important to make sure you fill out your bio and profile and tell who you are, and what your interests are.
I have reached over one hundred followers in less than two and a half months.
Conclusion
I started commenting in the niches I knew something about and had some experience in. I didn’t even write my first article until less than three weeks ago. This wasn’t hard; it was actually easy and fun because of my interests, knowledge, and experience.
I haven’t been very aggressive, and my followers are still growing, some from comments I wrote weeks ago. That’s a residual effect.
Now that I’m getting followers the right way, I know I’ll have readers that will actually read what I write.
One thing worth noting; some people will follow you, and when you don’t follow them back, they will unfollow you. Don’t worry about that; it’s happened to me a few times. It means they weren’t going to be a reader of your writings anyway; you’ve lost nothing.
You can do this too! Heck, when I show my wife how to do something, she usually ends up doing it better than me. :-)
