How I earned My First 200 Followers in 12 Days: The Secrets to Success on Medium

12 days ago, I gained my first follower on Medium.

Now I have 200 followers. Here’s how I did it.

My Initial Attempts at Writing for Medium (And why they were flawed)

I’ve always wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know how

If you’re looking at my profile, you may notice I’ve posted one article a lot longer ago than the others.

When I first posted that article, it lead to me feeling exhausted due to the extreme effort it took to write — and I remember checking it days later, surprised to see not a single view, applaud, or even just one follower

I could’ve kept going at that for months, and it would’ve got me nowhere.

That’s because I didn’t know how to market my articles.

How to Market Your Articles Effectively

There are several ways to market your articles, and I’ll go over the most effective methods here :)

Following others is the most effective way to actually earn more followers if you are just starting out. As of writing, I follow 1370 other people.

Following Others

Additionally, if you would look at the people who follow me, a majority of them are from people who followed me back after I followed them.

This method is preferable if you do not have other social media accounts with a bunch of followers to promote your articles.

Social Media Posts & Groups

There are quite a few additional ways to market your articles, especially if you have a large social media following.

There are also unofficial Twitter / Discord groups that will let you post your articles and receive feedback.

Here’s an example of some:

You can additionally link your Medium profile in your Bio of your favorite social media accounts, this will let you reach more people.

SEO Optimization

Medium allows you to change the text that pops up when people query results in search engines when people Google information similar to what your article is about.

This is good especially for tech related articles, as people often Google technology questions, but this is the weakest of the three for normal articles if you haven’t already cemented your ground as a writer for Medium

Writing Effective Articles

Writing effective articles is difficult, but can be made more simple with a format and good article formula.

The formula that works the best for me is the following:

My best articles start out with an interesting story as a hook, to keep the readers interested. (Generally I would advise keeping this story short!)

Then I forward them along into the middle of the article, and shift them along into what the article is about, and making sure to describe everything in detail

Finally, I will add a conclusion. This part is optional, but it helps!

Using this formula, you can gain a lot of traction in Medium, even if you are just starting out.

Here my audience stats for my first 11 or so days:

As you can see, just by simply marketing your articles like a product you can drastically increase your view and follower yields.

Writing quality articles also helps you stand out, so be sure to focus on writing your best work.

Conclusion

The best way to earn followers is to work on writing, and social media marketing.

Write every day, and work a little bit on your marketing every day. Believe me, it takes a while, but it actually gets easier as time goes on.

Try to get popular on more then one platform, and promote your articles across multiple platforms. This allows you to get the highest yield of viewers, and followers for your writing career!