Shopping From My Medium Closet

Don’t just follow writers. Read them.

Do you know the difference between fans and followers?

You should because the answer can make or break you if you want to grow your readership.

A fan makes a comment on an article, claps for it, or highlights it, then moves on. Kind of like a one-night stand.

A follower respects you in the morning.

They care enough to click on the button that says “Follow,” indicating they like what they read and they’d like a second date.

I was lucky in my Medium romance to discover the meaning of followers early.

Moreover, I discovered helpful articles with tips on how to grow my following.

After 16 months or so, I have upwards of 4k followers. Hardly the big time, but not chopped liver, either.

But what do you do with followers?

You can only date so many people at a time? What are they good for?

In the old days, like last week, a follower didn’t mean that person would read every word you wrote or receive an update on your published work.

Having a gazillion followers didn’t improve the stats on your dashboard, meaning $$$$, if you didn’t continue to write quality articles in a timely manner.

Go on vacation, for example, and your followers would go looking for the next hot writer instead of collecting your mail, feeding the cat, and patiently waiting for your return. Yeah, take a break and you’d have to start over luring followers into your den.

Smart Medium marketers would attempt to corral as many of their readers into their e-mail lists and keep in touch outside of the platform.

Still a good plan, but we’re in a new world now. One that has come full circle and is giving our followers their due.

Recognizing that Medium is not just a clickbait factory (oh really?), the powers that be, looking at you Ev Williams, have realized we should form better relationships with our followers. Starting 9/1/2020, Medium apparently will do a better job of connecting writers with their followers.

And I’m all in.

So the question of the day is, how do we get more followers?

I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, let’s take a minute to talk about the care and feeding of our followers.

Gone are the days when the point of followers was just to rack up the big numbers, sort of a big d*ck competition. I was guilty of that when I’d click on any member with a pulse just hoping they’d follow me back.

Then I began to realize I wanted to know who my followers were. Instead of just swallowing the articles Medium fed to me on my daily feed, I began randomly seeking out the writers who signed up to follow me.

It wasn’t enough to just follow them back, like the tit-for-tat game that we played when claps ruled the known universe.

I’d actually read their work.

I made wonderful discoveries. I had my posse. The folks I’d found early on who acknowledged my work or palled up with when we found common cause on an article thread. And the folks whom I befriended in a publication or Facebook group.

But the thrill of Medium was discovering the writers who would never have crossed my radar if I hadn’t taken the time to learn who had found me first.

I already had a practice of searching randomly for writers in categories I liked. It was a good strategy for growing my readership. Then the lightbulb moment hit me.

Just because someone followed me didn’t mean they’d stay for dessert. I realized I didn’t read every one I followed. I’d click the follow button because an article appealed to me, and then move on. Too many writers, too little time.

But instead of just finding random writers to read, I also made a point of reading my followers. Not everyone resonated with me, but my little aha moment increased my enjoyment of Medium exponentially.

I’ve long said that I would stick with Medium even if I never made a dime. That was mostly bravado in the early days when I had a bit of beginner’s luck. But it’s still true. Not only for the friends I’ve made here but for the quality writers, I find every day and the depth of their work.

I follow these writers, and some of them follow me back. But I continue to read my followers, scrolling down randomly, looking for names with profiles that intrigue me, with backgrounds different from mine, or maybe similar to mine. People who are younger than I am, the few who are older than I am, or who have a different sexual orientation.

The writers here open my mind and heart with their work, and I’m lucky that so many of them have found me. I just have to scroll down my list of followers to connect with them.

I can’t read 4k writers a day, or a week. But I’m grateful for them. I try to check out new followers to see who they are and what they write if they do, or why they came to Medium.

The platform promises to make these relationships easier by showing our work to our readers. I’ll let Ev and the gang tell you more about that. But if you want to know how to grow your body of followers, I’d do it old school. It sounds strategic and it is. But it’s the way you find your people.

I don’t recall who wrote the article I read, but many have done something similar. The author said to read 20 new writers a day and comment and follow them. A percentage will follow you back.

That number was daunting to me. I don’t skim articles. I read word for word, and with all my other commitments, I was lucky if I had time to read 8–10 new writers who interested me.

But I made my search a priority. In time, even connecting with a few writers consistently increased my own presence. I wasn’t born with the marketing gene of Tim Denning, so this was a big deal to me.

I have to add that I was passionate about my commitment to Medium. I wrote weekly roundups of my five fave new writers. I commented on articles; I read the work of people in the Facebook groups I joined. Medium became an arm of my social life.

I wasn’t just here for the free toaster.

But the word got around that followers weren’t worth anything. Not if making bank was your jam.

Hey, I like money as much as the next hack, but writing is my jam. And I want people to read my work. I put as much into a Medium piece as I do into my novels. So I appreciate every reader. And followers are readers.

I’m happy that Medium pledges to give followers their due. Because that means me. I follow many writers whose work never shows up on my feed again after I click that magic follow button. I’m hoping that will change.

In the meantime, I’m renewing my commitment to reading my followers, instead of just waiting for Medium to remind them I’m still here fogging up a mirror.

I suggest you do the same.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. Thank you for reading.