Do You Know the Followers Hack?
On a relational Medium, building relationships with your followers is crucial
In his blog announcement of the 2020 Medium shifts, founder and CEO Ev Williams gave a concise history of blogging and Medium, explaining:
“The internet has changed media consumption along a spectrum that you might call relational to transactional… as [Medium] evolved…our distribution mechanisms became more transactional and less relational over time. More concretely, while you can build followers on Medium, our algorithms have played a bigger role in what gets distributed. As a result, readers have been less likely to follow writers because it doesn’t have a huge effect…So that’s the big thing that’s changing with this new app (and soon on the web). Our goal is to create the best of both worlds: An open and simple platform where anyone can publish — once or occasionally — that also allows for deeper connections between readers and regular writers.”
Medium has been clear that the pivot to relational means that followers are everything.
On the desktop interface, the real estate on which the writer-follower love story must unfold is a 3'x2' rectangle with space for eight images or logos, along with a banner icon tallying the number of new posts by their favorite writers.
On the new Medium, that little box is the Promised Land! Show up there and you have a chance to connect with your followers. Don’t and, well…
The company has announced that they’re removing as many barriers as possible between readers and the writers they love. For example:
- Partner Program and non-Partner program stories will be distributed equally, so that readers are not limited in access to those they follow.
- The top few we follow are prominently featured on the desktop and mobile interface.
Look Roz Warren, Casey Botticello, David Price, Carolyn Riker and Gayle Kurtzer-Meyers. Today, you’ve made my homepage!
Making it to the Promised Land
So, how does a humble writer make it to the new Medium Promised Land?
By writing good content, of course. But there is more to it than that.
Our work makes it into our followers’ “Latest From Following” when a follower consistently engages with it. Each clap, scroll and comment factors into the Medium algorithm, rating their satisfaction with our content. Satisfied customers are served up more. Those that are not will be offered content from someone else they follow, in the hopes of Medium winning more of their prized attention.
Update November 10, 2020: Medium has re-linked the follower count on the MPP writers’ desktop homepages to our followers so the workaround described here is no longer necessary.
The Glitch
In what I can only imagine is a early version glitch, when Medium implemented the October 2020 desktop upgrade, it make two changes to followers lists:
The number of folks who follow us is now prominently featured at the top of our personal home pages (if you’re a member of the Medium Partner Program).
- That number, is no longer hyperlinked to our actual list of followers.
Why, Medium? Why…?
The Hack
While the straightforward method for having your work displayed to as many of your followers as possible is simply to write appealing work (even headlines and preview images matter less right now…) and hope for the best, there is a way you can hack the system.
In that the new Medium is designed to track “relational,” it measures interactions between followers. What that means is that if you want your followers to interact with you, you can influence the algorithm by interacting with them.
But, since the upgrade, we need a workaround to find our followers. Thanks to Nicklas Millard for sharing this simple one in our writers’ community.
Here’s mine below, in the lovely box. Isn’t it interesting how it’s displaying the follower count in a format not seen anywhere else on Medium?
Click on the preview below. Copy the URL and replace my @Sarene with your Medium handle and violla! You’ll be directed back to the old follower page that you had access to before the upgrade.
This is important. Use it.
By reading and commenting on your followers work, you invest in your relationship with them, both in the real world and in the metrics of the Medium algorithm.
Use this work around and enjoy the work of your followers.
Who knows, you might even make some friends along the way. I know I have!
Bonus Prize: Recommended Reading Footer
There is a nifty Medium bonus prize that comes when you comment on your follower’s work — the Recommended Reading footer.
By formatting responses as stories (urgh…don’t get me started!), when your follower clicks in to read your comment, they end up, de facto, in a Story you’ve written, with an audience of one. After reading that story, ie. your comment, your follower is presented with three other recommended articles, all yours and usually your pieces with highest ranking in the algorithm. Therefore, when you comment, you often receive a read on an old beloved piece, served up by the Medium algorithm, and from there, the lovefest begins!
