How Medium Titans Grow Their Audience To 20,000 Followers And Beyond
In case ya’ll haven’t noticed, I write about Medium a lot.
Why shouldn’t I? I think it’s the bees knees.
You know what else is the bees knees?
Meeting other Medium writers who make my accomplishments look like chopped liver.
Who am I talking about?
Well, Tiffany Sun, Jonas Ellison, and Anthony Moore to name a few.
They have a combined 65,000 personal followers, and Jonas has the biggest solo-operated publication on Medium (Higher Thoughts, 70,000+ followers).
So, what did they do to get to where they are?
Let’s talk about it..
Jonas Ellison — Write Every. Single. Day.
There’s lots of 30-day challenges out there, which are great/cute, but what if you actually committed to writing something new every single day?
Like, for a year?
That’s exactly what Jonas Ellison did.
Jonas writes..
At first, it was crickets. But it was cool. Because I had no idea what to write about or who my audience was, I wrote whatever came to my mind that day. I was my audience and I wrote strictly for the process. I tried my best to divorce myself from results. Blogging became my meditation. Being in a quasi-depressed state, I used it as a daily excuse to publicly elevate my lowly thoughts to a more positive, life-affirming place.
Hear that?
Let me highlight a REALLY important idea from this quote..
Divorce yourself from the results at first. Write because you love it.
As I interviewed him for my virtual summit, I realized that there’s no real “secret” behind writing every day.
It just takes a lot of work. It just takes you sitting in the seat once every 24 hours and willing yourself to be more creative.
Jonas actually told me a funny story (you can read about it in the above post) about how he had to frantically run around for cell reception in the Swiss alps just to keep his daily streak going.
He wrote:
And somehow, just like that, my phone was graced by the Swiss gods above with two bars of cell reception.
What a guy. That line actually made me belly laugh for a moment as I read.
Anthony Moore — Become A Student Of Blogging
Anthony Moore is ridiculous, people.
This man is probably one of the most genuine bloggers I’ve ever met (this whole article highlights genuine bloggers). I bet he’d totally hop on the phone with one of his readers on a whim if they asked him (maybe he has).
The guy has tons of things going on along with thousands upon thousands of readers and email subscribers — and I’m still super confident he’d do it. Here’s a recent article he wrote:
Anyway, I also interviewed Anthony for my summit, and one of the strategies he highlighted was super powerful…
Become a student of other top writers.
Medium is awesome because it’s given us writers a measuring stick. I can see how many followers I have compared to Jeff Goins.
At a moments notice, I can search and see who the top writers are on this platform. In the Wordpress world, there’s no easy way for me to see how much clout one writer has compared to another.
But here, on Medium, it’s as clear as day — just look at the follower count/which publications they write for/how many claps they normally get.
Anthony took advantage of that.
You can, too.
Here’s what you can do..
Take 30 minutes every day to study top articles on Medium. Check out Medium’s top 20 articles of the day and click in to a few of them.
Then ask yourself why you clicked in. What was it about the headline/cover image that made you want to read?
Then ask yourself why you’ve read so far into the story.
Is the author using a conversational tone? Is he/she dropping f-bombs? Are they inserting a lot of interesting stories inside?
What exactly is it about certain articles that gets you to click?
Anthony went on a vision-quest to figure this out. He probably spent hundreds of hours being a student of this game, and if you put in the same effort, you’ll see blogging in a whole new light by the end of it.
Trust me. Well, trust Anthony Moore! 😄
Tiffany Sun — Ask Your Audience What They Want
Tiffany is my oldest Medium friendtor.
She’s also every bit as genuine as Jonas and Anthony. I’ve interviewed her a couple times — once for my podcast and once for my summit — and she’s been so generous with her time during each conversation.
One of the cooler things that came out of our talks was her strategy for getting closer to her audience..
After you sign up for Tiffany’s email list, she asks you what sort of stories you want to read from her in the future.
For some reason I was dumbfounded when I saw this. Like, why didn’t I think of doing that?
There’s a very subconscious thread that runs through this entire article. Did you catch it?
All of these writers are essentially gathering massive amounts of data.
Jonas writes every day. He’s getting 7 times more feedback/insights/practice than somebody who writes once per week.
He gets to see what sort of topics do better than others, and he’s actually simultaneously putting everything into practice while doing his analysis.
That’s the coolest part of writing every day.
Anthony literally did research and gathered data by reading other amazing stories from the best Medium writers.
And Tiffany’s rounding it out by asking her audience directly what they want to read from her.
It’s data. It’s practice. It’s repetition. It’s figuring out what sort of content people WANT to read — these three amazing writers just had different ways of going about it.
And that’s what you need to do, honestly!
Research, write, and ask. If you do all of them at the same time, there’s honestly no telling how far you can take this writing thing.
Special thanks to Jonas Ellison, Tiffany Sun, and Anthony Moore. Follow them, people!
Want to get started writing online? I actually have a free 5-day email course called “Your First 1,000 Medium Followers” that will teach you how to build an audience here on Medium! Sign up for it right here. I’d love to teach you a couple things.
