Goal Achieved: 1000 Followers on Medium in 6 Weeks!
I reached 1000 followers yesterday on Medium without being curated or published or having Top Writer status, here are some tips on how I got to that many
In early October, I finally got a bit more serious about taking up writing as a hobby. I started setting some challenges to encourage myself to write more often — and boy did I.
I’ve written 35 stories on Medium since then, much higher than my goal of just 18 over the same time.
I also was able to perform a tonne of research into the subject of Medium. It’s helped with my understanding of some of the other projects I’m working on (outside of writing).
It’s also helped me gain a sneak preview into the online world of blogging and to learn more about the freelance economy I keep hearing about (but missed out until now!).
How did I get to 1000 followers in 6 weeks?
Simple, I put in the time to do it. Not every day, but most days. This is the one piece of advice that almost every single author I’ve seen on the subject restates in their way.
You need to do the work and not hope for a winning lottery ticket.
I was only able to put in the work because I managed to change my Medium experience into a bit of a challenge. I like challenges, and I’m sure you do too.
1000 followers seemed like a nice target for the first few months on this platform. Seeing as how I was new to blogging and freelancing, I figured the goal was a bit out of reach for me.
I’m glad to see I was able to achieve it — and in half the time to boot!
My process for getting to 1000
- Write a lot — If you can manage to write 4 to 7 quality articles a week, you’re off to a great start and probably don’t need to do more than that (unless you want to)
- Learn a lot — There is a huge amount of articles on Medium about getting better at blogging, writing, and at Medium itself — use them! Comment on articles, ask questions, highlight your favorite posts. Use Medium as it’s meant to be and not just as an outlet for your writing.
- Follow people that you resonate with — I’ve used following as a method to gain followers and haven’t been shy about it, this piece explains more of the strategies you can use to max out the results from this
- Interact a lot outside of Medium — Join Facebook Medium groups and take part in the conversations, don’t just post your stories and expect people to read your stuff. Ask questions, talk to people, help when you can. The community is extremely helpful in the Medium groups I’ve been a part of so far.
- Wait a lot — Be patient. I’ve been happy to see that by far, the most successful people on Medium have been active and on the platform for a long time. Not too long, mind you, but from what I can see, most very successful creators on Medium have been working hard at it for at least 1 year. I say I’m happy for the simple fact that most people are far too lazy to keep up a new hobby that long, myself included! If becoming successful on Medium was purely about rolling the dice a few times a week, I wouldn’t be on here anymore. Slow and steady wins the race, and it seems that’s true on Medium too!
Curation, publishing, and Top Writer status
I learned about ‘curation jail’ on Medium a while ago. It’s a theory that the 35 curators on Medium are way too overwhelmed to possibly be able to manually review thousands of submissions every day. The idea is then that they will largely focus on reviewing new authors to the platform and mark the ones that don’t suit their style or content guidelines.
It makes sense logically. I also am very sure I am in this prison myself. I even went to do a curiosity check the other day to see if any of my posts had been reviewed.
Amusingly, I found that my very first two articles I wrote way back in June this year (my first unsuccessful attempt to get into a writing habit) were reviewed and rejected.
Every single other post since then has had the “we’re too busy to be bothered by you” nonsense. I have chosen to not let it bother me, but I am curious if it affects my chances to get published in Medium publications. Time will tell!
Next 1000 followers
I’ve been steadily increasing my follower rate at about 20–23 per day, which is a level I’m happy with. I do wonder though, that if I were able to up my Medium game, could I achieve a faster growth rate?
I am to find out over the next couple of months with some new goals. December will be focused on attaining Top Writer in at least one category. After I hit that (or if, I should say) I will set my sights on some of the bigger Medium publications for fun. I’ll also be starting my publication on a very niche subject that I’ve selected, to attack that area for 6 months to see the results.
If I’m able to achieve both of the above, I’d love to see if I’m still not out of curation jail. I’d be confident at saying their sorting algorithm is a bit broken if that’s still the case. I hope not, but let’s see.
I hope the above points are helpful to any fellow noob writers! I’ll see you guys at 2,000 followers if I’m lucky!
‘Rant’ over.
Have a wonderful day and check out some of my other stuff here.
