Just Reached 2K Followers And You Won’t Guess How Long It Took!

This might be the antithesis to every similar story you’ve read…

Every time I hit a milestone such as this one, I feel incredibly humbled and indebted to every single user who decided they’d want to keep reading whatever my brain produces and turns into text. To you all, a huge thank you, even if you’re that lost bot still figuring out why you followed me in the first place and now regretting it — oh wait, you’re a bot, you have no regrets! 😆

When you think of it, it might not sound like much initially, and if for whatever unfortunate reason 90% of your readers are bots, then it probably isn’t, but while we often take followers for granted and focus on the numbers, more often than not there are real people behind them all. It’s a person who makes a conscious decision to stick around for more of your voice. It’s a responsibility, which is why I decided to tell you the story of how I got to 2000 followers because it’s not the one you’d expect and the things I’ve learned from this journey are not your usual bragging. I hope you’ll genuinely take some of it as perhaps inspiration for your journey as a writer.

People love to read!

I hear grandpas and grandmas often saying “ahh, today’s generation doesn’t read any more, they stare at screens all day long”. For some reason, every generation has a tendency to consider the newer generation of lesser quality somehow, which is hilarious because it’s the previous generation that raises the current one! The assumption that people read less is in many ways wrong. Sure, in the past, the act of reading was typically associated with past-time or your job if you worked in an office, and it was much better defined in time.

Today that world has changed and judging by my stats of never less than 200 reads a day, I’d argue there’s plenty of people who still read. The mere fact that this platform is expanding is a clear indication that reading is still something people do. Sure, attention-span has shortened, though I would argue that a truly engaging article can be as long as 10–12 minutes, and people will still read. That screen we’re all staring at according to our grandparents is often filled with text. In fact, if we combine social media, news, blogs, newsletters, I’d say we probably read as much if not more than they used to. We just do it differently and in smaller chunks.

It all takes time…

I wasn’t kidding in the title. I reached just over 2000 followers in a total of… drumrolls please… seven years! All of ye out there impatient to hit 1K in three months, I have one thing to tell you — “patience is a virtue ‘till we die”.

The fact of the matter is, you don’t want followers alone, you want readers, and while a higher number of followers will inevitably lead to more readers, the percentage of actual fans of your writing, matters. And it’s not even about money. I’ve only gone behind the paywall three months ago. For the most part of my seven years, I just wrote because I liked writing, and this platform is a great place to share that. The only reason I opted to move behind the paywall was because I felt like it was time to take writing to another level — one where I still write about the things I am passionate about while building a community around me that supports my passion. Building that didn’t happen overnight, as you can clearly see from the graph.

The first real boost in followers was thanks to an article about programming, something I do daily, because among others, that’s what I am, a self-taught programmer who loves building software that enhances people’s lives.

Another one that gave me a considerable boost was yet another article on programming, this time about Flutter. In fact, Flutter articles tended to do well numerous times, so I guess I was lucky because I loved and still love Flutter. I think it has a great future! The same goes for stories where I review Apple products I use from a software engineering angle.

But forget for a second the stories that boosted my readership. The real story is not there. The real story is the slow but steady increases, and heck even the flat lines. If you look at the graph, I had less than 10 followers (just 7) for nearly two years! In those 23 months, I published 6 stories. That’s certainly not a lot by any means, but I didn’t care. I kept releasing those stories, and kept sharing my views on the tech world. Whether anyone read, or not, it didn’t matter. The point was that I had a place to write and offload my thoughts.

Connect with your readers

What happened between October 2021 and January 2022?!? You’d think that all I did was write more. You wouldn’t be wrong, but I also interacted a lot more with my readers. First and foremost one has to remember that many readers are also writers, even if all they write is comments. While not writers in the traditional sense, they take the time to express their feelings and thoughts around the topics we write about. I do the same. Very often when I like an article, I further engage with the writer, perhaps even leave a private comment if I notice a typo just so they can proactively improve the story before some troll points the error out in public.

Those kinds of engagements create connections, and consequently readers, not just blind followers. While there’s not that many writers whom I know personally, there are a few, and I intend to raise that number by a lot in 2022. Is it so that I get more followers? Well, that’s a potential consequence, but the reason is getting more diverse views on the world, and getting access to their thoughts and experiences through their stories, which in turn inspires me and helps me write even more.

Don’t take it for granted

An easy mistake to make is to think that once a follower, always a follower. Absolutely not true. Some leave, either because they get purged by the system as spam or because they decided you’re not that interesting any more. That’s a number you want to pay attention to. While it’s not directly in the user interface, there is an easy way to find that number out.

Take for instance my 2021. Thirty-six followers decided not to stick around any more. Can’t say how many of them were real readers, but even if just one, it’s important to make note of.

As I said in the beginning, writers have a responsibility to their readers. Actually, let me rephrase that. People, who want to create a nurturing community around their writing, have a responsibility to their readers. Banging out articles blindly will not get you much more than random people who just do the same themselves, then wonder why the strategy is not working. It’s not meant to.

Reading is an active, conscious choice of enjoying the act of consuming someone else’s thoughts. Don’t ever mess with that.

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe and/or become a member for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility! For my less regular readers, I also write about random bits and writing.