Your Follower Count Is About To Be Worth Its Weight In Gold

Are you ready for Medium’s next chapter?

Big changes are coming to Medium. Are you ready and excited for them? I think you ought to be, I think this is the shift we’ve been looking for and needing. It’s a shift that I think will be a win-win for both readers and writers.

According to Russ d’Sa, “[The Medium app will be] completely reoriented around following — so that readers can be sure they’re not missing anything from writers they love, and those writers and publications can more actively engage and grow their audience.”

This is pretty awesome information by itself, but, call me a nerd, I think how they’re going to make all of this work in the app is the icing on the cake none of us should be eating (I won’t tell if you don’t).

Check this out, “We’ll keep track of when a creator publishes, and using a badge over their avatar, let you know how many new stories there are to read since your last visit to their space.”

All of a sudden, your followers are going to start seeing your work pop up more than ever. The only real question is, are you ready for it?

Build your audience

First things first, Medium’s next chapter is going to be largely driven by your audience and the connection you have with them, and that they have with you. It’s a two-way street, but don’t worry, this is exciting news.

It’s going to be about connecting with your audience, and with the rest of the community on this platform. Something I’ve written about quite a bit just lately. It’s a good practice to focus on the reader, regardless of where you publish.

How to build your audience

Build expectations, then live up to them

Creating expectations might seem a little intimidating at first, you’re telling your readers that you’re going to meet a certain standard and then you’re going to let them judge you on the merits of whether you lived up to those standards.

But if you want to be the kind of writer that doesn’t just get read, or even read consistently, but gets known as the person that solves problems, writes in that special way that clicks with your audience, or that knows just how to make complicated things simple and boring things interesting, then guess what. You have to build up and live up to some expectations.

Sure, it can be a little tough, but it’s the first rule of the road when it comes to writing. Create a standard, show your readers what they can expect, then follow through.

Publish consistently

You already know the importance of regularly publishing, but under the new model this is going to become even more vital than it already has been. The new approach is built on connections between you and your reader, your work is going to pop up directly in their feed in a way that’s much more like a traditional social media platform.

This means you want to be sure to have plenty of notifications for your readers of valuable, fun, quality blog posts popping up. Remember, you’re going to be going toe to toe with other writers, some have been at this for a while, and have a lot of name recognition built in. The only way you can manage to get your content opened regularly is to build some of that name recognition for yourself, and guess how you do that. That’s right, consistently publishing awesome blog posts for your readers.

You want to offer them plenty to read but more importantly than this, you want them to be excited when they see you have new stuff for them. So, you have to earn it, and that takes time, effort, and consistency.

Comment in a way that adds value

Tough love, but it ain’t all about you (or me) or any one of us. Medium is a community, and in that community are a lot of other smaller communities that gather around various publications, and writing topics. One of the most powerful ways to build your audience is to be a good neighbor, to get involved with all these levels of community.

This means taking the time to write comments that really connect with other writers. A little praise doesn’t hurt, but if that’s all you leave it won’t be enough to stand out or even to convince the writer or other commentators that you really have much to say, or even read their work.

Instead, find a point or two that you connect with and explain why and how. Show your investment and do it because you’re genuinely interested. No marketing or promo work in disguise, that’ll work against you and it’s just not neighborly at all.

If you want to learn more about this here’s A Step-By-Step Guide to Leaving a Meaningful Comment.

Submit to publications, including your own

Another way to connect with the many layers of communities on Medium is to submit and publish your work with publications. This means publications of all sizes, including your own.

This isn’t just about building your portfolio either. This is about going where readers are, writing quality blog posts that can connect with them and working your butt off to help spark that connection.

Get to know your reader so well, you know what problems they’re looking to solve, what challenges they’re up against, what they’re looking to read next. Go write that, then submit and publish it at the right publications and get your name out there. This is about community building and growing your readership.

Next up we’ll take a look at writing quality pieces that will not only earn attention and help you build your audience but will also help you stand out from all the other notifications readers are going to be getting from other writers.

Write articles that stand out

While things do appear to be shifting to favor both the reader and the writer, this isn’t to suggest that the new approach is going to guarantee you attention. Sure, your name is going to pop up on your follower’s radar with a nice little notification of how many new things you’ve published, but guess what?

It’s going to do that for every other writer they follow. That means you’re going to have to write thing that really stand out, on a consistent basis. You might be wondering why, if all the reader is going to see is your profile pic, name and that nice little notification buzzer. It’s called name recognition, and if you haven’t been writing for long, or even if you have but you still have some room to grow, then guess what your homework is going to be. That’s right, building name recognition.

And just how the heck are you supposed to do that? Smashing the heck out of that publish button, but only doing so with quality blog posts that really add something awesome to your reader’s life.

This means you have to:

• Teach your reader something
• Solve your reader’s problem
• Show your reader something
• Entertain your reader
• Or best of all, a little bit of each of these and more.

Sure, you have some work ahead to prepare for these changes, but the truth is, this work has always and will always be ahead of you if you’re a writer with an audience. Writing, while it is a business and a profession, is an ongoing endeavor of personal and professional growth.

The work of self-improvement, self-awareness, and growth as a writer is never going to stop, not if you’re serious about all this. Not if you want to keep showing up with something awesome for your reader.

Remember, always keep the reader front and center

If you want whatever notification your readers get relating to you and your writing to really mean something, there is one task above all that you must always show up for. That is the task of putting and keeping your readers front and center in all of your work.

It’s a simple but powerful principle for everything you write for your audience, just ask yourself if you’ve been of some kind of help? And, did you make that help clear as the noonday sun on a cloudless day?

The number one rule to writing for an audience, for your readers, is to focus on them more than yourself and what you hope to gain from writing whatever it is you’re writing. Be truthful with your work, did you help your reader? Could you make something easier for them to follow? Are there any areas of your blog post that need a little extra work for your reader to get twice as much from it?

When it comes to your readers, go the extra mile. It’s worth it. It’s a win-win.

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