How to Follow to Get Followers: A Fall Fable

Some tips and tricks for curating a following on Medium

Today a reader asked me about strategies for curating a following, and after writing a way-too-long response, I decided to put my thoughts down in a brief article.

I’ll assume before we get started that you’re okay with the strategy of building a following base by following other people. I write about why I’m okay with it myself in this article.

It can be a gargantuan task of getting yourself noticed in Medium when we have 200–400,000 other writers all vying for the elicit attention of a reader!

So where do we start?

Think of gaining a Medium following as not only having to produce consistent and high quality articles, but also as an effort of successful marketing.

That being said, here’s the general steps you can use to start rethinking how to use this post’s tactic to increase your viewership.

A good way to start is to think about it as a funnel. What kind of people do you want following you, ones that are interested in business, blogging, sports?

Those target readers are the ones you want coming out of the bottom of the funnel that you and your writing can build.

Not sure what kind of readers you want? Well, what do you want to write about? More importantly, what subjects will keep you writing consistently and with high quality over time?

You don’t want to spend all this effort and have a base of followers that don’t want to read your future writing, right? So pick some semi-broad topics that you feel you will write and want to write about over the long-term.

Sources of readers in the follower funnel

Once you pick your niche(s) for writing, you can hopefully think of the type of reader that you’d like following you. Do they share your same interests? Do they like humor? Do they hunt mice at night for sustenance?

Start with finding publications that fit your target followers. You like to write about entrepreneurship and want followers with that same interest? Start with The Startup.

Find several of these related publications (ones that you may be able to write for in the future too!), then navigate yourself to the ‘About’ section of them.

Most publications have one, so it should be easy to find. These sections are usually at the bottom of the pages if you scroll down far enough.

The nice thing about these ‘About’ pages (or aboot as its pronounced in my home and native land) is that they list the editors and writers of the publication.

This is a nice first easy step to follow these people.

They’re people that share your same interests, are paying members, and may even take notice of your work to publish in that publication. I also often found this is a great way to discover new writers that I then started reading and following myself regularly.

Prolific wordings

A next easy step is to then find the more prolific of these writers, click on their profiles, and then look at their following.

Again, many of these readers will be in the same interest group that you are trying to view yourself.

Using the above method over and over again everyday until you hit your daily limit of 150 ‘followings’ is a great first step towards building a base. It does take some time, but this method is pretty efficient and a nice way to start your ‘marketing’ efforts for free.

It’s important to remember that only some of these people will follow you back, so don’t get discouraged. I’ve read about others doing following strategies in addition to their work, and receiving about 5% return followers.

For myself, I’m getting about 20 to 25 new followers a day consistently, with most of those being people I’ve previously followed through this strategy.

Please also note, that this really only works if you do it every day. Because only a certain amount of people will follow you back, volume-over-time is a big consideration.

How to further level up the following

You want to have high quality followers right?

Ones that actually want to read your work, ones that use Medium often, and ones that can potentially contribute to a small paycheck in your bank account every month.

That’s why I often will take the extra time to only add Medium Partner Program members. When you click on a profile, and then dive into that person’s following, you see a scroll-able list of every person.

In this window, you can also hover your mouse over an individual follower’s profile, it will then say if they are a member or not.

This method takes time, and I confess I don’t always feel like spending that extra 30–60 minutes doing so. But when I do take the time to do so, it pays off.

An added side benefit is seeing all the amusing mini-bios out there on Medium. There’s some really clever people on this platform that have made me chuckle more than once from just a bio-line!

Thoughts on the process

I know this strategy isn’t for everyone, and for many creators out there, they may feel this isn’t being true to the art. That attracting followers not purely out of the act of art creation is looked down upon or something along those lines.

I don’t take this view as I’d like (like most creators on this platform) to have as many people in my niches read my work as possible.

By adding medium members in the areas I’m interested in writing and reading about, I’ve not only curated a following base more likely to actually want to read my work, but I’ve come across dozens of writers in the process that I now look forward to reading every day!

As always, stay positive, keep producing great work, and good luck building your followings everyone!

‘Rant’ over.

Some more thoughts on the process:

Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful day and check out some of my other stuff here.