8 Steps to Engage With Medium and Build a Following for Yourself
60 Minutes a Day to Build Your Follower Base!
Every good story includes some type of obstacle. It’s the place in the story for the main character(s) to make a decision: to engage with the obstacle and move to a new state of being or to ignore it and carry on with their life.
Writers have already done one of those steps; they have engaged with the page and put their thoughts in written form. The ones that find Medium can share their words, stories, and articles then go on to receive direct feedback from their readers. If they decide to use the Medium Partner Platform they have another obstacle to face: the search for 100 followers.
For some writers that number looms large, it may as well be 1,000,000 million followers! Thy don’t know anyone on the platform. Their friends and family don’t read what they write. They don’t like using social media. They are afraid of failure but the drive to join Medium Partner Platform is strong; it’s the drive to earn money for their thoughts and words. To be recognized as a paid writer.
Medium requires potential MPP members to meet three criteria before they apply to the MPP: 1) Publish at least one story. 2) Get at least 100 followers. 3) Publish at least once every six months and stay active.
For most writers one story written and a potential 2 stories a year is not a problem. No; it is the 100+ followers that weirds them out.
It doesn’t have to be that way. There are a few simple steps to take and those 100 followers are not a stumbling stone to dread but a challenge to embrace and move past.
8 Simple Steps to Build Followers
- The first step is to commit to looking at your stats no more than once a day. Shift your focus from reaching a certain number of followers and instead decide to engage with the other writers and creators.
- Determine the topics that interest you. These may be topics about which you write, topics in which you have always had an interest, topics about which you want to know more. Use the Search function: click on the magnifying glass icon and enter a word.
3. A new page will open, filled with suggested Topics, Stories, People, and Publications that match the word you entered. This is your Base Camp for the rest of the steps!
4. Choose a Story, read it, clap at least 50 claps (this is non-negotiable, unless you just hated the story, clap at least 50 times, every time.), highlight lines that are meaningful to you, and leave a comment. Then Follow them.
5. Repeat, reading stories and following the same steps, for at least 30 minutes a day.
6. Next, click on one of the Publications. Find the ‘Write for Us’ tab and read the requirements to publish in it. Bookmark that page and Follow the Publication. Find the ‘About’ information (usually at the bottom of the main page of the publication) and find the Editor(s), then Follow them.
7. Repeat, spending at least 30 minutes a day checking out the Publications for your Search word or Topic.
8. Next find writers you enjoy and Follow them. You can chose them from Publications, for the People section of your Search page, from a social media group, or from your home page on Medium. Follow them. Bonus: when you find a person you want to Follow, check out where the publish their stories. The image below is from my profile; just above the title of the article you can see ‘Published in Be Yourself’. If you click on the titles of the publication you can explore it to see if it is right for you.
These 8 Steps are all you need to build your own group of followers. Yes, you certainly can link-bomb your stories on every social media group. That will NOT earn you followers; it will certainly annoy the members of those groups and practically assure that they will NEVER follow you. Plus, it looks and smells like desperation and flop sweat and no one likes that!
Instead, shift the focus off of yourself and build the following of others while you find writing that you enjoy and like-minded writers. What you will notice is that the people you follow will, more often than not, turn around and follow you. This is due to the Principle of Reciprocity, which you can read about in the following article:
But, remember, only check your stats once a day! Checking more often can switch your focus off of others and derail the progress you have made.
In Conclusion
The minimum 60 minutes you spend each day interacting with the publications and people on Medium will build your knowledge of the platform and also your personal Followers. Once you have at least 100 Followers you can apply to join the Medium Partner Program (MPP).
Will this work? YES! In September 2021 I added 94 Followers and in the first week of October I’ve added 33. It was done purely by reading, engaging, commenting sincerely on other’s work, and following people first.
What about you? Are you ready to explore writing on Medium? Why not treat yourself to a Medium membership? It’s $5 a month (or $50 a year- that’s buy 10 months and get 2 free!). If you join from this link, you won’t pay any extra and I will receive a portion. So you will pay $5 a month either way. It’s a Win/Win offer for you and me. Why not try it?
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