How I organically grew my followers on Medium in a month— from 36 to 100+

Engaging with members really is the key.

Being a new writer is hard.

We are still discovering which topics to write about, fumble as we convert our thoughts to words, and it doesn’t help that many of our articles get few to no reads. It takes time to develop our followers base, effort to learn the skills to write quality articles, and more importantly, consistency to grow on this platform.

Having consistency can overcome the lack of any talent.

I had 8 followers during my first several months on Medium. This included some friends (whom I pestered to follow me) and some other kind people who probably were trying to motivate a newbie. I would write and publish often but my work gained no traction. I wasn’t looking to turn my work into an overnight stream of passive income. I just wanted to write about my experiences to help others in similar situations. So I focused on the things in my control — writing, reading, and improving on my work. I published 29 articles in the last 3 months of 2021 but grew by only 7 followers on average per month. How was I ever going to hit that 100 followers mark and be eligible for the Medium Partner Program!

Starting January, I decided to tweak my approach by reading more, and highlighting and leaving comments on others’ articles. Many articles were so well written that I wanted to give them more than 50 claps (some excellent pieces that have helped me in a big way are how to make an impactful start by Ben Rutt, PhD and getting those followers by Valerio). I was learning, improving and discovering new topics of interest. Medium became the first app I opened in the morning.

The result? things started to change for the better. One morning I woke up to a notification that 5 more people had followed me. This was exciting news. Since then, I have kept up reading and adding value to others’ works. The results are as follows:

My followers count keeps growing everyday. I suspect that my regular interactions with fellow members has led my articles to be more frequently distributed by Medium’s algorithm. Year-to-date, I have responded 140 times and I aim to keep this up. Additionally, my combined efforts have begun yielding results. Now, people actually read my work, leave claps and provide valuable feedback.

The average member reading time on my articles has gone up from <10 seconds to 5 mins. The average number of claps on my stories has gone up from 2 to about a 100.

This is very encouraging. Having witnessed this, I have decided that:

Meaningfully responding to others’ articles and consistently writing quality articles of my own will continue to be my goals. The results (income, followers) will follow in time.

I hope that this story helps you do better on this platform. To all my followers, I am confident that our partnership will only grow deeper. I enjoy interacting with all of you. May we continue to add value to each other and grow as individuals and writers.

Thanks for reading. If you liked this article, please leave (up to 50) claps and consider subscribing 👋🏼 ☄️🎊 to get the best of my articles delivered straight to you.