7 Easy Tips To Increase Your Follower Numbers On Medium In 2022

Is Getting To 100 Followers Even Possible?

I had a hit on here, once. My article exposing the nefarious underbelly of the Landmark Forum (a pseudo-cultish pyramid scheme of wide renown) had nearly two hundred and fifty ‘Likes’, eight comments and is in the top three searches in Google for the (rather too frequently asked) question:- “Is the Landmark Forum A Cult?”.

Good numbers, one would assume.

…and yet a while back, I was informed that my articles on here, numbering nearly fifty, would no longer be eligible for the Medium Partner Program.

I’d fallen short of the magical ‘one hundred’ follower number. I had ninety four, meaning, in the eyes of this platform, I wasn’t big enough to matter. I was discounted — thrown back — a second class writer of irrelevance.

Except I should matter. You should matter. I can’t be alone in thinking that this exercise in volume control (it’s surely not quality control?) was designed to induce A/ a rapid click of the Premium button to , B/ some shameless self-promotion on other social platforms or C/ a bit of both.

For those in a similar boat, I sympathise. I wasn’t making a shit ton of money from Medium, but I relished the fact that my articles, often written — for free — for other publications, had a chance to accrue some material value. But not anymore.

If you find yourself wondering what happened, it’s simple economics, and perceptively the only way to get yourself out of the doldrums and into the VIP seats is to grind your way past one hundred followers. Here’s a list of your easiest hacks (without throwing money at the problem):-

1. Write a listicle on here and syndicate it to your other social channels with a pithy, click-baity titles like ‘7 Easy Tips To Increase Your Follower Numbers On Medium In 2022’, for example…
2. Leap on trending topics, celebrity guff and news stories and just fart out populist crud that will induce some people to comment in anger and others to kowtow to your mind-melding wisdom. You don;t care if your followers are lovers or haters — they all count.
3. Pick low hanging hashtag fruit — go for the high volume/ low competition ones (and pick your 5 ‘Topics’ wisely) and churn a daily missive related to those topics. Some fools will bite anything
4. Be timely — Medium articles published at certain times of day have a better chance of catching the breakfast reading/ lunch break/ early evening/ bed time crowd. Customise this depending on the locale you;re targeting with your content (there’s no point in praising the deep South Christian far right of America when Moscow is just waking up)
5. Cross-promote your articles — eat into your own social equity and whore out your content to anyone who follows you elsewhere. You don’t need to beg them to follow you, but asking them fervently and frequently will get wear down a few of them eventually
6. Publish and be damned — seek out Medium publications with smaller followings. The big guys are elitist snobs when it comes to publishing new writers (they just want access to a large follower base for their own ad revenue purposes, too) but there are plenty of minnows who just need new content. Sign up with as many of these as you can and see which ones syndicate your work — then push more good stuff their way.
7. Write well. Despite what I’ve said above, the shit doesn’t float on here. Good quality, opinionated and well-research writing should and does index better, so aim for a quality/ quantity balance.

If all else fails, you could always beg. But the only thing you’ll likely gain from that strategy is an intense case of dismay and regret, and probably not one single, solitary new follower.

Harry Lang is VP of marketing at mobile game publisher www.Kwealee.com and author of ‘Brands, Bandwagons & Bullshit’, a guidebook for those starting their career in marketing, advertising, media and PR. You can find him at @MrHarryLang and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Or just follow him on here…