How to Get 100 Medium Followers
in 2023 In 35 Days (Or Less)
by Matt Giaro
This article will show you how I’ve got 100 Medium Followers in just 35 days (and how YOU can do the same – or even better).
This stuff works in 2023 and is suitable for beginners.
But let me warn you: The tips that I’m going to give you require work.
Still excited? Then let’s get started.
Why do Medium Writers Focus on 100 Followers?
Let’s start with a simple question:
Why focus on 100 followers?
In the past, to join the Medium Partner Program (which allows you to make money from your Medium Writing) you had to have 100 followers to start earning.
As of August 2023, this barrier has been removed.
Personally, I couldn’t care less about the number of followers.
I use Medium primary as a lead generation platform. And my sales happen in the backend.
At the time being, I don’t want people to have to pay to access my posts.
I want my post to be free deliberately to get maximum exposure and build my email list.
But well, this is how I’m approaching it. You don’t have to do the same.
No matter your strategy – 100 is a nice attainable number to start and build up some momentum.
Not too big, but not too small either.
How To start writing on Medium as A Beginner
First of all, let’s be completely transparent:
Today, I am a “Top Writer” in several Medium sub-niches.
But when I started writing on Medium I was a nobody.
A random guy with a red beard that you could meet in the street and couldn’t care less about.
I didn’t have ANY social media following by the time I started writing on Medium (except my 300ish subscribers on Youtube).
I had an email list of 643 subscribers – but I never sent them to Medium neither told them that I was publishing there.
All the growth on Medium happened organically
And I truly started on Medium from scratch on November 22th:
With zilch followers.
Additionally, I wasn’t commenting on publications. And I followed nobody.
The first “applause” email every new writer on Medium gets when publishing it’s first story…
I was just a complete “selfish jerk” who started to publish some articles and took a step back.
I’ve published 4 articles 8 days.
All articles where related to note-taking.
After all this heavy-lifting, lazy me took a step back.
For the first days, nothing seemed to happen.
Crickets.
But then, suddenly, on the 14th of December, something happened. I started to get some traction, as you can see here:
It seemed that the Medium Algorithm worked in silence for me to see if my content deserved to be pushed out to more people…
And suddenly my inner dialogue shifted from: “I suck” to “I’m a GENIUS Writer!”
Am I a genius, seriously?
Did I manage to hack the medium algorithm for exponential growth and unlimited financial wealth…?
Ehem no.
I admit that I’ve been “lucky” – because it’s my first post on Medium that allowed me to get the most traction.
This success does not hide the fact that 92.417% (yes, 92.417%) of the 91 Youtube videos I published in 2021 got less than 1000 views.
And man… I wasn’t even able to hit 1000 subscribers in one year!
All this to say that if you are not able to get your first 100 Medium followers in 35 days, that does not mean that you’re a loser.
Take it easy.
Mostly it’s simply an indicator that the content you wrote did not resonate with your target audience.
Most people who succeed already have a background knowledge that they’re applying – even if they don’t tell it.
I openly admit that I achieved growing my Medium followers after being a content creator for a decade.
So now, the paradigm shifts!
Wasn’t I supposed to crush it since day one? Well. Maybe.
But that’s not the point here. I have 10 years under my belt, and I still took the stairs like everybody else.
A Simple Strategy to Gain 100 Followers on Medium
There are many variables that comes into play to get your first 100 followers.
Some people will tell you to follow other writers, to comment, to do this or do that.
I’ve done nothing of that.
Does that mean that their advice sucks? Maybe. Maybe not. I really don’t know. (Heck, they may not even know themselves! Is there a way to track all that stuff?)
I can only tell you what worked for me, and what makes sense if you look at it from a common-sense level:
I simply created content that people want to read.
Nothing genius. No magic bullet. Simply hard and dirty work.
So now that our question shifted from “How to Get 100 Followers on Medium” to “How to Write Content That People Want to Read?,” we can move further.
This is key.
We often ask the wrong questions – thus, we prevent ourselves to find the right answers.
To create content that people want to read, the answer is simple:
You need to become a better writer!
Becoming a better writer means becoming someone who understands his market and can keep its reader’s attention.
This is the 80/20 you have to focus on.
Far from sexy, I got it.
But why should I suggest you to publish your articles at 2:46PM and do some weird things if they don’t move the needle?
People want easy hacks – but easy hacks won’t get you far. Trust me.
Even if you can manage to trick the algorithm but deliver poor content,
the dropout rate from your content will punish you anyways later down the road.
So do the things right from the beginning:
Enter the conversation that happens in your target market’s mind.
Do your market research right (I’ll show a facette of it in just a second).
Test (A Lot), Fail (Even More), Rinse And Repeat.
There is NO shortcut to that.
And if you want to become better content creator?
This FREE 7-day Email Course will teach you how. Tap here to get full access.
Besides what I’ve said,
here are some crunchy lil’ techniques you could add to this to get your first 100 Medium Followers the right way.
Tip #1: Find the Right Tags
Medium allows you to add tags to every story you publish.
Tags are important because they help Medium to show your article to the relevant audience.
What’s the point of showing a Crypto content to someone who’s interested in Gardening?
After all, Medium wants to keep his readers on their platform – not kick them away.
If you don’t add tags to your story, Medium will have a hard time figuring things out for you – especially if you’re a new writer.
How to choose the right tags for your Medium article?
Glad you asked.
I like underserved tags. Which means that I want to publish my first stories under tags that have between 1k-2k stories. This is the kind of sweet spot I’m shooting for.
It’s enough to get traction, but not too crowded to still get some visibility.
If the Medium tags you choose are too broad, you’re trying to compete against the big fishes in the pond.
This is a big no-no for new Medium Writers who want to grow to 100 subscribers.
Here you have a perfect example of a too broad tag:
392,000 stories and 108,000 Writers. (Yes, k means 1000!)
The perfect recipe to get absolutely no views, and no subscribers as a newbie Medium Writer.
On flip side, here you have a tag with way less competition,
which means that you have way more chances to get noticed IF your content is spot on
Tip #2: Find the right topics
Remember when I told you earlier that you have to become a better writer?
Good.
What did I say?
I said that a good writer understands his market.
If you want to get some data about what your target market resonates with, then it’s time to use Medium’s Content Filters.
At the bottom of every article you read on Medium you’re going to see a tag pane.
Click on each tag to browse the category.
Usually, Medium uses an URL like this:
https://medium.com/tag/TAGNAMESo as an example, for the the tag “podcasting” the URL is :
https://medium.com/tag/podcastingOnce you found the tag you want to write in, you can sort the articles by different types of filters: Trending, Latest, and Best.
Go to “Trending” Or “Best” and analyze the kind of previous stories people resonated with.
It’s not a rule of thumb – but sorting articles by popularity shows you what people engage with.
I don’t use it this all the time – but this can be worth exploring, in the beginning.
🥷 NINJA TIP 🥷
You can even push this technique further and see what videos or books are popular in a particular niche on a platform like Amazon or Youtube, extract the big ideas, and then just create a relevant piece of content on Medium.
Tip #3: Craft a Compelling Title
Great. So now you have a category (a tag) and some topic ideas you can start with.
Even if you hit a home run with your content, spend the necessary time to craft a compelling title.
Because by default, people will focus on 2 things: Your title and your thumbnail.
Unless you can hook them with your title, they’re not going to click.
Imagine your content as the house, and your title as the door.
The Title of your Medium Story is the entry point to your content.
If nobody crosses the door, nobody will ever explore how beautiful the house is.
A good Medium title has to be intriguing enough to make your target audience click it.
Please notice that I’ve said: Your target audience.
If you’re creating an article about how to grow a banana tree,
don’t try your title to appeal to anybody else than people who want to grow banana trees.
Avoid clickbait titles like “This Stunning Tree Will make you live 23.72% longer than the average American!”
Don’t transform your titles into clickbait traps that once clicked will just attract you people insulting you.
Do you like people who waste your time?
No. Nobody does.
So do treat Medium user’s alike and don’t sacrifice integrity for a lousy click.
How Long Should the Title of Your Story Be?
Currently, Medium truncates titles after 80 characters.
So don’t have a title longer than that. Be sure to double check the length of your title by using a tool like Character Count Tool (Free)
Example of Title Structures That Work On Medium
Good titles trigger questions.
The diabolic thing is that our brain pushes you to do whatever you can to answer them (i.e: click and read)!
So let’s nail this concept with some real-world examples:
“5 Books I Have Recommended Over 100 Times”
triggers
“What Are They? Did I Actually Know Them”?
“How I Made Over $33,000 on the Figma Plugin Without Writing a Single Line of Code”
triggers
“How Did He Achieved This? How Can You Make Money From a Plugin Without Coding?”
“Why Does Your Brain Overthink Things?”
triggers
“Yeah, That’s True – What’s the Cause and How Can I Avoid This?”
“Five Signs of a Highly Intelligent Person”
triggers
“Do I Have All 5 (Or at Least One of Them)?”
“6 Brain Damaging Habits You May Want to Quit”
triggers
“Do I do any of them?”
So now you have great title templates that have shown to be successful on Medium to work with!
You may be asking yourself about the image?
It’s certainly important, but not as your title. As you can see, in my example the main image is not outstanding. (Parts of the text are even truncated on mobile…)
So it does the job, nothing more – nothing less.
But boy, the title is important: So get your freakin’ title right!
Tip #4: Structure Your Stories Around a Big Idea and Provide Mind Shifts
If you’re just repeating generic advice that your audience already read, re-read, and re-re-read, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
People want to read what they didn’t read anywhere else.
Easier said than done, right?
Well, this is why I’ve created this FREE COURSE to show you how.
What is the best length for your Medium Stories?
If you’re just starting out, I don’t recommend writing long stories on Medium.
Creating 2000 words articles is though: Not only for you to create but also to keep your audience’s attention.
So my advice is: Don’t publish too long pieces of content.
500-800 words stories are good enough to provide a mind shift and not lose your reader’s attention.
Tip #5: Ask People to Subscribe to Your Content if They Liked It.
One of the lousiest ways to ask a stranger for something is to start asking without giving them something first – or asking them to help you in a needy way:
PLEASE SUBSCRIBE.
I NEED MORE SUBSCRIBERS.
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!
Instead, here’s a simple and ethical tactic that probably contributed to getting my first 100 subscribers on Medium.
(I say probably because I don’t have any precise way to measure it.)
At the end of my stories, I ask the reader a simple question that he has to answer by himself. The question is: “Did you appreciate this post?”
If yes, then subscribe.
Simple, yet effective:
Tip #6: Write for Medium Publications
Medium Publications are nice to get some eyeballs on your content.
What is a Medium Publication?
Medium Publications are like “magazines” or “groups” where you can publish your stories. They have their set of followers. And Publications can give you a nice leverage point to start.
How to find Medium Publications?
Publications are quite popular on Medium but.. they are quite hard to find.
Understand the paradox? No? I also don’t.
Anyways, let me show you how I find interesting publications.
After finding the right tags (Tip #2 above),
I’m scanning the publications within the tags that appeal to me and look for stories who have a mention like this:
<Author Name> in <PUBLICATION>
Here you can see that the author “Clement Brian” published his article in the publication called “Level Up Coding”.
On the flip side, author “Dimitrii Eliuseev” has nothing mentioned after his name.
Once I find a publication, I simply click on it.
What To Do Once You Find a Medium Publication to Write for ?
Don’t take any publication – take the ones that resonates with what you want to write about. I would avoid publications for Newbie Writers… unless my target audience is newbie writers.
So choose your publications wisely according to your target market!
Tips to get published on publications
If you want to get published – STUDY the “Submit” or “Write for us” post that you can find just below the header of the publication.
I’m not saying to read it – I’m saying STUDY it.
For every publication I want to write for, I take at least 30 minutes to understand exactly what they want before starting to write a single word.
I constantly come back to the guidelines to be sure to comply with them.
Doing this guaranteed me –until now– a 100% success rate to get my stories published in publications. (This rate will probably drop, but not a bad start.)
So please, if you don’t want to get rejected, simply do your homework!
My Last Piece of Advice on How to Grow to 100 Medium Followers (And Beyond 🚀)
You can’t control Medium’s algorithm – but what you can control is your output (i.e: creating content.)
Understand your niche, understand your market, learn some basic human psychology and you’ll do well.
Believe me.
Most “hacks” out there won’t get you far.
Focus on growing your skills, and you’ll have enough followers to turn them into raving fans.
One of the best skills you can grow is just to create content that people want to read.
That’s why I’ve created a 7-day FREE email course that you can grab just below 👇
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