Gaining Medium Followers | Illumination | Listicle

10 Ways to Gain More Medium Followers

Because I understand the desire for that validation.

As someone who cares about success and what others think, I know what it feels like to want more followers on Medium. To me, gaining followers affirms that I write interesting, solid content and that people enjoy my pieces. It also encourages me to believe I’ll make more money.

If you have similar feelings, know these feelings are understandable and normal. It’s okay to want to succeed socially and financially.

While I’m not a top writer yet, I’ve gained over 500 followers in two months, and I want to share what’s helped me.

1. Write a solid bio.

For your bio, talk about who you are and the focus of most of your stories. Include your family roles and career roles. This way, people will feel connected to you and they’ll know if they’ll enjoy your pieces based on their own interests.

While my bio may not be perfect, here it is: Writer @PopSugar. UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Passionate about mental health, body positivity, relationships and people!

2. Write good content.

Sinem Günel, a 15x top writer, talks a lot about this. Writing good content will encourage people to come back to and read your work because they’ll be able to understand it and enjoy your fresh ideas. Good content will also help you get published in publications and curated on Medium, meaning more people will see your work.

Good content includes novel ideas, intriguing headlines, very few to no grammar errors or misspellings and a balance between conversational and formal writing. I suggest using ProWritingAid to check over your work in addition to reading over it yourself a couple times. Good content also includes personal stories or viewpoints and facts to back up what you’re saying.

3. Write at least a few pieces before going on follow sprees.

If you’re going to follow a bunch of people hoping to increase your following, make sure you have some content that’s representative of what you’ll continue to write on your page. Write a few pieces on Google Docs, for example, then upload them all at once before following others.

This way, people will know if your writing will interest them. Otherwise, they may not want to take the chance on following you if they don’t know if they’ll enjoy your pieces.

4. Use tags that are topics.

Using tags that are Medium topics will help you get curated in more places. You can find the list of topics here. Clicking on these topic pages to see what kind of content is there will also help you know if that topic is right for your piece, and if Medium is likely to curate your piece based on the content they’ve already curated.

You can also become curated or a top writer in topics not listed on that page. Some examples are Life Lessons, It Happened to Me, Ideas and Advice.

5. Make a Twitter for your writing and join the #writingcommunity there.

Twitter is a great way to share your stories and get more views. In your Twitter bio, include that you’re a Medium writer and add the hashtag #writingcommunity. Follow other Medium writers and tweet your work — both old and new pieces — consistently with related hashtags. Link this Twitter account to your Medium profile.

You can check out my writer Twitter here. As you can see, I try to tweet out articles a few times a day most days, scheduling them on TweetDeck. I also engage in #writerslifts and interact with other writers and their tweets to build relationships. In addition, I suggest tracking analytics, such as times to post and hashtags that have been successful for you and your tweets.

6. Write good headlines.

If you don’t have an intriguing headline, people won’t want to read your piece, no matter how great it is. Make sure your headline isn’t too long, but that it also shares your specific viewpoint. At the same time, make sure your headline isn’t only a few words, vague or inaccurately capitalized. I use Capitalize My Title and click the “AP” button to double check my titles.

Additionally, avoid writing headlines that sound like clickbait. Readers are less likely to trust these pieces or believe they have fresh information to share. Examples of clickbait-like phrases include “change your life forever” and “the one thing.”

7. Submit to publications that are new and old to you.

Writing in publications will help ensure you get views on your piece because people follow publications for good content that interests them. Write in new publications to get a fresh set of eyes on your work, and also write in the same publications that you’re used to so people will recognize your name and read your work because they know they’ve previously enjoyed it.

When finding new publications, make sure you read their writer submission guidelines so they publish you and try to find how many followers they have on their Medium page. Aim for an amount of followers that isn’t super high or low, so a significant amount of people will see your work without others’ work taking up all that space.

8. Write about new, interesting ideas.

Some of my best pieces with the most views, reads and fans have been new takes on old ideas or unexpected concepts. People are eager to read this content and follow you after because they want to learn something new and change their perspective in helpful ways. Anyone can write about an old cliché topic — and those pieces quickly bore people or don’t interest them from the start.

Some examples of the pieces I’m talking about include me being a socially anxious extrovert, how love languages can hurt relationships and how goal-setting can be harmful.

9. Follow Medium’s curation guidelines.

While curation isn’t the be-all-end-all, it can help you gain new readers. Medium lists the curation guidelines here. Some publications, such as Invisible Illness, will also help ensure your content fits these guidelines; they have good curation rates.

In addition to helping you get curated, adhering to these guidelines will help ascertain you have quality content that interests people. For example, if you don’t capitalize your title correctly, people may assume your work isn’t great or that you didn’t spend enough time on it.

10. Don’t stress too much.

Ultimately, don’t worry too much about gaining new followers. Anxiety won’t get you anywhere and building a following on Medium takes time. While having a lot of followers is great, it doesn’t automatically mean you’ll start making a bunch of money or your views for every piece will increase.

Write good content and do your best. Market yourself and your work, and have fun writing. Medium can be a great place for many people, so don’t let it overwhelm you and don’t give up on it.

I wish you the best in your Medium journey! While these are not hard-and-fast rules, per se, I hope they help. I have faith in you!

Comment other tips below so we can all help each other more!