Celebrating my first 100 followers on Medium
Steps I followed to reach the 100 mark most organically and the journey ahead to join the Medium Partner Program.
Yes, I hit the 100 followers mark on Medium in the last week of November 2021 after regularly posting here for about the last 6 months. In all this time, I have been very careful in choosing my content, the presentation style and learned many new ways to connect to my audience. I am now better at structuring my thoughts while writing in the fields of my interest, ie Technology and Communication skills both of which were well received by my audiences and they showered me with their love by clapping my stories and following me on Medium.
But as they say, the journey is more beautiful than the destination, I’m going to share a sneak peek into my audience growth stats, the steadfast approach I used to reach the 100 mark most organically, and what are my plans ahead to join Medium Partner Program.
A sneak peek into my audience stats
Let’s see my month-wise audience growth trajectory to reach 100+ followers
Well, I began writing on the medium in 2018 when I joined the IMAD course and since then I became a fan of this writing platform. Back then there was no paid membership and anyone could read unlimited stories per month basis their interest fields. I continued using the Medium app for both reading relatable content and writing content in the field of Open Source Technology and Public Speaking.
In the last year 2020, I wasn’t active on Medium and I jumped back here this year around the month of June and started regularly contributing as can be seen in the below image of my audience stats which has grown tremendously from June 2021 to November 2021 especially in the last 2 months.
How did I gain followers organically?
Steps that I followed to gain some genuine and organic followers on medium, no click-bait approach
My intent behind writing on the Medium is Sharing Knowledge and Bridging Gaps and when I got CKAD certified I thought I should share my preparation journey with others so that they could gain from my experience.
I have published a total of 16 stories in the last six months and based on my experience after writing each of these stories, I have summarized the below pointers which have helped me to reach out to my audience more effectively and saw a good rise in numbers eventually.
WRITE OFTEN — Write more often than you could. Yes, you need to push your limits to publish your work more frequently than you think you can. This will help in two ways, one your audience will get to read your content more often and second basis their feedback( claps, comments, shares) you can enhance your writing OR you can broaden your interest area.
SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA(SM) — Share your work on different social media platofrms as appropriate and continously montior the traffic source on your blog posts to see which of the SM sites is providing more traction from the audienece.
KEEP MEDIUM BIO UPTO DATE— Keep your Meidum Bio upto date sharing key information about yourself and the type of content you post so that your audience can relate to. Another quick tip could be to keep same Display Picture of yours across all sharing platforms that you use to share your content on like Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube as that of Medium.
BE REAL and CREATIVE — Be creative and real in your writing. This is most important tip to gain genuine followers. For all my technical writeups, I try to add my github repos link , my learnings in diagrams, few quick tips , shortcuts etc. basis the topic chosen.
For non-technical articles, I always add a personal story to justify the title and share few helpful tips from my life and experiences gained so far.
Did I get into the Medium Partner Program?
Stripe is not enabled yet in India so sadly, it’s a still No.
There are two basic criteria to get into the Medium Partner Program (MPP), one is to write a single story on Medium, and the second is to have 100 followers. After writing 21 stories and crossing the 100 mark, I jumped out of joy and the very next day went ahead to apply for the MPP only to be disappointed to know that my geographic region is not supported yet by the MPP. :(
What’s next?
Off from medium for 1week — no posts —Took time off to reflect and understand what’s next for me?
I was disappointed to see my region not listed yet in MPP and it made me think that do I still want to continue writing here? I took some time off to reflect on it and also think about my way ahead.
It is always said that the journey is more rewarding than the destination. Therefore, I wiped off the grief of not being able to enter the MPP due to geographic constraints and continue writing as it gives me a sense of joy and belonging. Therefore I decided to write this post by sharing my journey experience of gaining 100 followers here and marked it as a celebration post!
Conclusion:
It’s not the end of the world….
As they say, if one door closes on your face, go knock on another door, I’m parallelly trying my hands at other mediums of content creation like Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc and share with my audiences and see if it makes me feel the way I feel when I write and share my content.
If you like my work here, do follow me here and I’m hoping Medium Staff gets to list India soon on the geographic list of their MPP and the Indian writers also get the benefit of joining MPP. Onwards and Upwards!
