Do You Follow People Before Reading Their Content?

I want to hear from you

I like to write posts where I have the answers.

Or at least some of the answers.

I love to read, research, and share my findings with my readers, in hopes of helping them in some way, shape, or form.

This is a different type of article. I don’t have the answers for this one.

I only have guesses and assumptions, since there isn’t a lot of concrete information online about this madness.

I pose a question to you, reader:

Do you follow people before reading their content?

If you answered yes, I have a second question:

Why?

I can say with confidence that my answer to this question is no.

When I first joined Medium, I tended to quickly follow back, because this is something I learned on X/Twitter: Follow them back, or they’ll unfollow you.

This is my fourth month on Medium, and I’m not quick to follow people back anymore. I figure if they like my content, they’ll keep following me. If not, oh well.

In my early days on Medium, I ended up following some accounts I realized I didn’t want to follow (Primarily accounts with AI-generated content).

What perplexes me more than anything is, that I’ll have days where I gain tons of followers, but I have very few views and reads on my stories.

This tells me these new followers are not reading or even viewing my stories before they follow me.

I decided to dive into the reasons why someone might do this. So, I searched Medium to see if any other writers had covered this topic. While I didn’t find any stories that directly answered my question, I found a comment on the topic.

Sarah Ouellet makes an interesting point, and she’s highlighted one reason I think people do this.

Why do people follow accounts without ever reading a single story first?

These are my guesses and assumptions.

1. They’re hoping you will follow them back.

This is the one that first comes to mind and the one Sarah mentions. Follow-for-follow is a popular mentality on other social media sites, so it makes sense that Medium would not be immune to this mentality.

I’ve written about how I think follow-for-follow is an ineffective strategy, though, and why you should avoid it.

2. They saw your comment and want to read your stories, but they don’t have time right now.

This is another plausible option. I comment quite a bit on other people’s stories, so I assume it’s possible that people found me that way.

It’s possible they liked my comment, but they didn’t have time to read one of my stories at that moment. So, perhaps, they followed me in hopes of returning to my stories in the future.

3. They’re just following random people suggested by Medium.

I’ve been on Medium for four months, and I only recently noticed the “Who to Follow” in the corner of the screen.

I imagine some people choose to trust Medium’s advice and click on random accounts to follow without ever looking at their content. (I wouldn’t do that, but to each their own.)

Why following without reading is bad

I encourage you to stop doing this because it only hurts writers.

Medium gives writers a boost in moolah when you follow them after reading their articles, so the best thing you can do for a writer is to only follow them after you’ve read an article they’ve written.

When a reader follows you after reading your story, you will not only earn a little extra for the follow on that day, but you will also earn a follower bonus whenever they read your member-only stories in the future. Learn more about the follower bonus and other adjustments to earnings here.

This means followers should refrain from following writers until they’ve read 30 seconds of a writer’s article.

I believe this is the reason one of my early stories earned so much (almost $100).

I gained a lot of followers from it. (I had under 100 when I published it.)

It’s earned far more than other stories with similar stats.

It can be hard to hold off following. Sometimes I come across an author who — just by their title and summary — I know I’m going to love their writing.

However, I do my best to hold off following them until I’ve read their article for at least 30 seconds, so they can get the earnings boost from me following them after I’ve read their story.

Then I try to at least clap and/or highlight. I can get lazy with commenting, depending on what I have going on in a day, but I try to comment when I can.

If you’re a reader who follows before you read, I want to hear from you! Are there reasons I’m missing for doing this? Please share!