Follow For Follow Isn’t Hurting You
Why you should ignore your follower count
Since you are reading this article, I am going to assume that you are a writer on Medium who is looking to grow on the platform. You want a greater reach for your articles, and you want to earn more. Perhaps you have set goals for how many followers you want to have by the end of the month. I’m here to encourage you not to do that.
The reason I advise you to ignore your follower count is two-fold.
First, you can’t control it, and I believe you should set goals you can control. “I will write and publish 45 articles this month”, for example. “I will join and publish in four new publications”. Those are the kinds of goals I believe are most effective, because whether those goals are accomplished is entirely within our power. Goals for followers, reads, or earnings are things we can influence, but success is not without external influence.
Secondly, and more importantly, follower count simply doesn’t matter.
At the time of this writing, I have 798 followers.
That number means nothing to me.
I have published 111 articles, and on an average day I get 30 reads (the last two days notwithstanding OMG I think it’s happening)
So 800 followers, 30 reads. Maybe 12 clappers and 8 comments.
This means that approximately 770 of my followers do not follow me in any meaningful way.
There are about 10 of you who comment regularly, and I appreciate you more than you know (except you are all also writers on Medium, so you do know). I love you. I feel supported and encouraged and I know you are cheering for me, as I am for you.
There are probably a number of those silent followers who do read my articles semi-regularly — I appreciate you also.
The other 650 or so hit follow for one of two reasons:
- They were mistakenly thinking I would do a follow-for-follow thing
- They read an article and followed to be nice
I don’t mind either of these.
Follow-for-follow people are wrong, if you don’t comment on my article I don’t pay attention to you at all. Thanks for the follow anyway!
As for the second group, I read that writers get higher earnings when someone follows them after reading an article, so ever since I have tried to do that. Generally, I assume that other people are being nice too. I’m happier this way.
If I had unlimited hours in the day, I swear to you I would read every single thing every single one of you publishes but that isn’t reality and I won’t apologize for what is clearly unrealistic.
But let’s be real, I’m working, homeschooling, writing here, and writing a novel, so I don’t have the time to check in with 450 people a day. I just don’t, I’m sorry.
Similarly, I won’t chastise anyone for not actively following my writing. There are an overwhelming number of writers you can follow here on every topic imaginable and you don’t have the time or the bandwidth for all of it, and that’s okay!
Thank you for hitting that follow button, I sincerely appreciate it. Thank you even more for reading, because that number means something. If you CHCF, THANK YOU, you help me keep going!
If you are a writer and you are mad that your followers aren’t reading your work… you need to find something else to focus on.
Have a great day guys, I hope that the success you are working for is right around the corner for you!