Caveat: There is no shortcut to success; you have to work hard to see results.
I started my journey on Medium back in November 2021 without knowing that it’s possible to monetize the writing. I have been a part of the Medium platform since 2018; however, I never dared to write. I seriously started to write in Dec 2021.
I will share my strategies for gaining real sustainable followers, the people who will love to enjoy your writing. Here is the 6 steps approach
1 — Read
As a writer, I love to read to gain more knowledge and get more ideas. The ideas help me write more, which is the backbone of getting more genuine followers to create long-term success.
2 — Write
Writing is the backbone to get more followers. Try to produce at least 2 articles per day. Try to follow a writing challenge to stay on track. Step-1 will help you to get more ideas about writing.
I am accomplishing the following writing challenge to produce at least 100 articles in 100 days.
Consistency is one of the biggest factors to accomplishment and success.
— Byron Pulsifer
3 — Follow
I would not suggest a follower-for-follower approach because that is not sustainable. I apologize that I made that approach in the first couple of weeks without understanding why I was doing it. I don’t follow the writer if I did not like their writing theme. For example, I don’t enjoy fiction, and I rarely join a writer who produces fiction stories. But I am sure there are plenty of people who do enjoy fiction. I think you get the point.
4 — Clap
Many people don’t know that if you keep pressing the clap button, you can give a max of 50 claps. I was one of them. My reading habit helped me to learn how to clap 50 times. If I love the story, I simply hit the button to give my utmost gratitude to the writer.
5 — Comment
Always engage with the writer and fellow readers. Give a genuine comment after reading the whole article. You commented on the article because it’s not easy to produce writing. Your little appreciation helps the writer to keep going and for you to get exposure to gain followers.
6 — Highlight
And the last part is to highlight the text you loved in the story and felt extremely important to share with the medium community. It also gives positive feedback to the writer from the audience. It is the utmost gratification for the writer that you loved what they wrote. Highlighting will also increase your visibility to gain more followers.
Bonus tip: Pick 3 of your favorite writers, then emulate their success. I follow
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz, Sinem Günel , and Tim Denning to learn from them to analyze their stories: title, subtitles, sentence structure, vocabulary, writing style, even the length of the story, etc
My daily medium engagement strategy
As I am working full-time, running a couple of websites, I still manage to give at least 45 minutes to just read on Medium. I follow this simple strategy: comment at least 10 stories daily, highlight the text you loved, clap, and follow the writer if I want to read more stories from the same author.
Thank you for reading!
