Making Healthy Connections Is All You Need
Natural Growth Is Much More Significant Than Empty Follower Count
Hey all, Medium readers, and especially writers.
Once upon a time, this writing is for all of us on this awesome platform.
And no, this should not be yet another guide on how to be better, how to write catchy and perfect stories, or how to battle the algorithm.
I simply would like to put down a word about the most significant aspect that many of us forget or maybe simply dance around it, trying to force how to be seen the other ways.
For a moment, forget about Medium or any other social platform, and let’s imagine that the internet is not a thing at all.
Ask yourself a question. How did all those old philosophers and scholars spread their work around the world?
How is it even possible that we learn about guys like Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras?
How did they spread their wisdom?
Was there any algorithm that told others that their work was good and should be visible to others? Sure, nothing like that.
All these personas of our past were simply dedicated to their work; they stood behind their opinions, and most importantly, they created connections with others from their era who spoke about them and shared their knowledge.
Well, sometimes they got famous because their work was so disruptive and unconventional that the rulers threw them into jail for many years, or they even ended up on the bonfire.
No!, I am not telling you that this is what we should do. Especially that thing with jails and bonfires…
Yet, unconventional thinking isn’t bad at all.
However, what I mean is that it were the connections that were so important back then, just as they are important today.
We all can see how many followers this or that author has. I have under three hundred now, you may have above five thousands, other one have only dozen so far.
But what does it mean?
Is it some pointer that someone who has several thousand followers writes better than one who has lower hundreds?
How can we know that all those followers are there because they want to read the works of the author or they simply hope that they will get the eyes of others by simply following the big ones?
For some part of my life I was participating in various communities online, be it Twitch, YouTube and now on Medium. But it can be any other where the number of followers is somehow important.
After some time of sharing my work on these platforms, I got, sooner or later, an email or other message offering me to get hundreds of free followers in exchange for several bucks.
I never agreed to such a deal because what will I get from that?
Sure, especially for Twitch, such an offer may be tempting as your streams are put in front if they have more live viewers than others, but again, will it make any difference in the long run?
What we need on all these platforms is to have healthy connections with others.
And making connections, maybe even friends, is what should interest us the most.
Let me drift a little into my memories.
Several years ago, there was an acquisition of the company I worked for with a much bigger one.
It was a friendly merger, and even though people thought that it would be the end of the company, it was not.
There was an event where some high-level persons from both companies spoke, and next to many other interesting things, one clever man gave us advice — make connections.
“Speak to people from both companies, create your own connections between both, and get advantage of knowledge from both parties.”
That was the best advice we could get, and now I am sharing this advice with all of you.
The connections that we made by interacting with each other are something that can make a difference between being the best writer around and being the best writer around who is known to be there.
I will give you one more of my memories — once again from the company meeting (yea, I know…), but this time it is even older one, this one happened probably over a decade ago, in another company that even not exist anymore (but not as a result of that meeting!).
It was at the time when I worked for the customer support department, and we discussed aspects of customer satisfaction.
The part of the presentation was about the concept of Meta Mary. Perhaps it is called somehow else in different circles, and you maybe heard about it already.
It is very simple — imagine that there is some Mary (or maybe Joe) who is your customer, in our case, our Reader.
Mary will really enjoy our work and will share it with nine friends of hers.
As it is an interesting story, one-third of these friends will share it again, each to another nine friends.
And so on and so on.
Over a really short time, the story will go viral.
Sure, originally we were speaking about the opposite — sharing dissatisfaction with the service and why it is important to ensure that we care about every single customer as if it is our biggest one, but the same way it could work in sharing positive news or, for us, interesting stories.
So, to summarize — make connections.
Be an excellent writer, be a great stylist, and share your awesome stories with us.
But do not forget that if you want to have a healthy and stable community who will appreciate your work, you need to connect with them.
We have the tools available directly on Medium — we can clap on other works, we can make comments on all those stories, we can highlight important parts that make a dent in our soul.
We can even subscribe ourselves to the work of others — it costs us nothing, but the author will know that you are interested in their work.
And if you will do all this for others, people will see it, will understand that you are interested not only in blasting one’s own story after another but that you want to make that connection.
And as I already said, the established connection — and keeping it alive — is the best what you could do to share your own work among the stars.
Hi there! Could you help me write more stories like this? If you enjoyed this one, sharing it with your friends or posting it on social media would be amazing! ✨
Every comment is welcome, as your feedback helps me improve. And of course, thanks for reading — it truly means a lot!
