Medium Writing Tips
How to Increase Your Medium Followers
7 actionable tips to get more followers on Medium
How Can I Increase My Followers on Medium?
Followers are critical to any successful Medium writer. Below I’ve outlined 7 tips for increasing your Medium followers. I’ve tried to present unique tips, that have worked for me, and that I have not seen suggested elsewhere on Medium.
1. B R A N D I N G
Readers who take the initiative to follow you on Medium are expecting some level of consistency. They liked what you had to say about a particular topic or the way you apply your unique perspective to a wider range of issues.
When you are writing, you are also developing your personal brand. One of the ways to establish a brand as a writer on Medium is to use custom visuals to support your written content
For example, when writing for Medium Blogging Guide, I try to insert custom visuals that both promote my publication and serve as a useful guide for readers:
Another example of this is the custom paragraph/page divider that I use in many of my articles:
2. P R O F I L E
It’s not that hard for someone to initially follow you on Medium. However, readers likely follow many people and change who they follow to adjust their content.
This is why it is essential to make sure you completely fill out your Medium profile with unique and up-to-date information so that readers can quickly identify you and remember why they followed you:
Although everyone likes to style their profile and bio differently, my general advice (unless you already have a huge and established following) is to clearly state some of the topics you write about and to mention any relevant job roles. If you are new to Medium, simply list some of the topics you are passionate about or plan to write about.
3. N E W S L E T T E R
Establishing a well-run email list and campaign is one of the best ways to engage readers. It is also the perfect opportunity to remind readers to follow you. While someone may be reading your content on a regular basis, they may not be following your Medium profile. A newsletter email is a great way to remind readers that, to ensure they never miss a post, they should follow your profile.
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Additionally, if you have readers in your mailing list who are not Medium members, this is a great way to encourage them to sign up. Not only will this increase your followers, but you will effectively be compensated for recruiting them to Medium.
4. L E A D E R B O A R D
It is tough to stand out from the crowd when writing on Medium. One fairly easy way to boost your standing, and increase your followers, is to become a top writer in a particular topic.
There are only 73 topics in which Medium currently ranks the top 50 writers. Make sure that your writing focuses on these topics, and that you use the exact tags for the topics you want to be a top writer in.
I’ve been a top writer in a number of topics, and while it may not directly increase your earnings, I believe it does increase your followers (at least initially). The top writer list contains a follow button beside each writer, which allows readers to follow your profile even easier:
As you can see from the image below, Top Writer status on Medium can be achieved without having thousands of followers. Under the top writers for “writing” Mike Paul Vox (who has 314 followers) is listed beside Ayodeji Awosika (who has 43,000 followers). This is especially impressive as the top writer tag for “writing” is quite competitive on Medium.
5. C O N S I S T E N C Y
One thing almost all successful Medium writers can agree on — you need to produce content consistently. While the quantity of posts published increases earnings in the short run, consistent publishing allows writers to develop a genuine fan-base that actually cares about their content, and will become followers.
6. R E C I P R O C I T Y
While I don’t advocate randomly following people on Medium as a strategy to grow followers, following a targeted group of writers can definitely help you increase your own Medium following.
A basic tenet of the psychology of relationships is called the Principle of Reciprocity. This principle defines the human need and tendency to want to give something back when something is received. This need is strongest when the gift is given without expectation of return.
But even at the lowly (but important) level of simple social graces, a “thank you” (in response to an act of kindness or compliment) is still followed by another reciprocal gesture of accommodation “you’re welcome.” Not only are we compelled to give something back when a gift is received we are also compelled not to feel indebted to others.
Some groups of people that may be worth following:
- Writers whose work your genuinely enjoy — This strategy is a must. If you really enjoyed an article someone wrote, follow them. If that post ends up being an aberration and you don’t like any of their subsequent posts, you can always unfollow them. But this gesture goes a long way toward building relationships with other writers.
- Writers with a smaller following, who, like you, are clearly trying to succeed on Medium — This strategy probably takes the most effort but is definitely the most effective. By following other small but emerging authors, you will definitely increase your followers. You should still focus on writers whose work you actually read and enjoy but these writers are far more likely to follow you back, because they understand the struggle to be heard and are more likely to empathize with you.
- Writers who have a massive following/are considered thought leaders — Many people mindlessly follow writers who already have tons of followers, even if they don’t enjoy their writing. They do this for 2 reasons:
First, they want to seem like they are “in the know” and they have carefully selected only “the best” writers to follow. The flaw with this line of thinking is that very few people, if anybody care who you specifically follow. This is purely your ego.
Second, they are hoping that by following top writers, they will get more followers because other readers/writers will employ the same logic, and will blindly follow some percentage of the superstar writer’s followers. This method technically does work but it has an extremely low ROI. Since superstar writers have massive followings, you do get exposure by appearing on their list of followers. However, you can only follow 125 people per day and Medium randomly mixes up the order in which followers appear, so in practice almost no writer will ever find your profile among the tens of thousands of followers.
7. R E S P O N S E S
Responses are posts. They are the same object in the Medium system. They have their own URL and can have responses and all the other features of posts on their own.
Responses are perhaps the most underrated way to gain followers. This is partially because responses are not monetized like stories. So fewer writers take the time to write well-informed responses.
But if you are not focusing on short term financial gain, and want to develop a solid Medium following, you should be writing useful and insightful responses to as many posts as you have time for.
Although it is tricky to quantify, I’ve noticed that after taking the time to write a useful response to someone else’s article or answered the question contained in someone else’s response, that I consistently see growth in followers.
This is only anecdotal, but it does make sense to me. I follow people who take the time to write insightful responses because I know they are trying to improve the larger Medium community and are not simply looking to boost earnings.
Thanks for reading this article! Leave a comment below if you have any questions. Be sure to sign up for the Blogging Guide newsletter, to get the latest tips, tricks, and news about writing on Medium and to join our Facebook group, Medium Writing, to share your latest Medium posts and connect with other writers.
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Casey Botticello is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Blogging Guide, an online community of writers with an award-winning newsletter. He is also the creator of the popular Medium Writing Course and the Substack Newsletter Course.
Casey previously worked at several tech startups, a lobbying & strategic communications firm, and has created several businesses of his own. He is a graduate of The University of Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. in Urban Studies.
You can connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, follow his Medium publications, Digital Marketing Lab and Medium Blogging Guide, or reach out to him directly on his personal website.
