How to Grow Your Following & Be a Better Blogger
More advice!
There are a million and one posts about how to ‘game the system’ and get more followers on Medium and every other blog. There’s a ton of advice out in the world about making sure you do spellcheck and grammar checks, how to self-edit, and how to optimize your headlines. How to format your post, tag other writers, tag 5 topics, and comment and clap as much as you can.
Those are all good things and the advice is sound — for the most part.
BUT all of it is extraneous.
Grow Your Following
The biggest point anyone needs to know to be a successful blogger is consistency.
It’s the one thing that keeps people reading and brings new followers in, which leads to supply and demand. It’s important to be posting consistently, writing daily, and letting ideas flow. It’s not about posting daily, it’s about posting regularly, whether that is daily, twice per week, weekly, or every other Monday. Maintaining a schedule is important.
Consistency is the main thing I have used to grow my own follower count. I don’t chase followers and I’m not posting when I have nothing to say. But I have a general posting schedule I like to stick to and then if other things pop up and I feel like writing more, then great. If not, then I have the post I planned.
When you write a ton one week and then nothing for the following 3 weeks, people forget about you. Not in a mean or rude way, just in a normal “out of sight, out of mind” way. Consistently writing and posting blogs keeps you in sight.
Write what you know. It’s whatever subject interests you and you know a lot about. Give useful and valuable information, while personalizing it to be from your own perspective, and discuss how things have worked or not worked for you.
When it comes to topics, you don’t have to pick one thing and only write about that for the rest of your life. Not at all! You can have a general overall topic and then write all sorts of different topics, ideas, and stories under that. Or you can be more of a generalist and write whatever you want.
I tend to mostly write about business, writing, editing, and various aspects of entrepreneurship (all huge topics with a ton of variety within them). And sometimes I research and write in-depth posts about things that simply interest me, like the Jaclyn Hill Cosmetics launch disaster or my “How to Adult” series.
These might not seem like they are “on brand,” but I don’t care. It’s my blog, I’ll write what I want to.
Where do my ideas come from?
To write consistently and follow a posting schedule, you need to have ideas. A lot of ideas!
Sometimes you just won’t feel inspired or want to write about what you thought you were going to, so having a list of ideas is a great way to always have other things to choose from.
Mine is a Google doc of blog ideas. A simple bullet-point list of random things as they come to mind. They aren’t all great (or even good) ones, but I have plenty to choose from and see what inspires me that day.
When an idea comes in, add it to your list!
If I don’t have an idea or feel like using one from the list, I like to check out the headlines in the news and my front page of Medium, as well as see what people are asking on Quora. By looking at headlines and questions, I am almost always inspired by one or a couple of them, which becomes that day’s post.
Be a Better Writer
Listen, improving your writing comes with time and practice. That’s really the core of it.
You can use writing tips:
Or do fun writing exercises to stretch yourself:
These are two of the best resources I’ve done for helping people become better writers.
But at the end of the day, it boils down to writing a lot, editing yourself, and then writing more.
Writing is a skill and can be improved over time. My own writing has improved significantly since I was a child and since last year. It’s a lifelong journey and I continue to evolve and improve with time. And I would have it no other way.
What’s the best advice you’ve gotten for improving your writing or growing your follower count? Do you agree with my assessment?
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