Get 100 followers — My START (Search, Talk, Appreciate, Reach, Trust) of a social experiment on ‘Medium’ to build a reader & follower base
I have come across many articles about getting 100 followers which were very varied in their suggestions to do so. While some were with a simple straight forward ‘you follow me — I follow you’ approach, some with click bait titles of getting 100 followers in 24 hrs, 48 hrs, 3 days, etc, some have tried to explain the science behind it and some have even suggested against having this inorganic way of getting followers. Let’s not judge any of them and just take the best from what suits our needs. I joined Medium on Dec 16, 2021, after posting 2 articles, having garnered 35+ followers in the last couple of days, reading articles and gathering my insights to get followers, here is my START approach for the kickstart towards your journey of getting 100 followers. Not just 100, you are sure to get much more than that provided how actively you pursue it. 100+ followers is definitely possible in 24 hrs as per my estimates, though I chose to not rush into just a follower base but a healthy mix of reader-follower base. START comprises of the 5 steps or stages of Search, Talk, Appreciate, Reach & Trust which are explained below.
S — Search
The low hanging fruits are searching articles on 100 followers (I hope this one also features one amongst them). Most of the people writing these and commenting on these are looking to build their follower base too and would be kind to oblige with following you, if you follow them. Which I believe is a fair deal. This community is extremely approachable hence don’t feel shy. Try to reach as many people as possible and you would see the follower base ticking high. Depending on how responsive the people you reached are typically the ratio as per my experience is 3:1 i.e. 1 person would follow you back for every 3 people you reach in this community. So if you manage to follow 250–300 people, that should most likely get you the 100 followers. You can pace it the way you want - 24 hours, 48 hours, or maybe 1 week. I am yet to have 100 followers, but if you notice I am only following 100 people so far and have around 37 followers and hoping some more would respond from the balance. There is a reason I chose to go slow on this front which I have explained in ‘Appreciate’ section. Following are few links that I found helpful, these gentle souls didn’t disappoint me, I am sure you too would find your luck with them.
T — Talk
Talk here means communicate/comment. When you request to be followed, be courteous enough to leave short introduction about yourself and acknowledge their gesture to commit to follow which they have stated in their article or comments. Let them know that you are following them and subtly reaffirm the commitment from them to follow back, here is an example I used for myself — ‘Hi ____, I am Kartik, a professional from the world of media and communication living in Shanghai, China. I like to write about how we can draw inspiration from life to address challenges at work and focus on attaining a work life balance. Your gesture to commit to follow is such a beautiful analogy that we can draw on teamwork to help each other succeed. As teamwork is also about trust, I am already following you and would be glad if you and other people reading this can also do so. I would commit to reciprocate with the gesture of following them back. Cheers to 100+ and more.’
Please avoid asking them to follow you first for you to follow back as that loop would never get closed. This is a follower base building approach, just take the leap of faith.
A — Appreciate
Next step is to search for the topics and communities of your interest and read related articles. Leave appreciative and insightful comments and claps for the author with a short introduction about yourself and suggesting to them and their readers to read your stories. Never lose your focus on the organic route to grow your ideal target audience and the reader base. Hence, dedicated time to build the the follower base and reader base, basis your priorities. As I am not in a hurry to achieve 100+ in a certain period, from the approximate 2 hours that I can spend on Medium a day at this time, I devote 30 minutes a day for follower base building and 90 minutes for reader base building approach
R — Reach
I assume most of us here have the intent of making it big as authors, so in the hunt to just get followers do not lose focus on writing. While my style of writing in finding analogies and inspiration in our life itself to address work and life challenges, I realized I need to write one article which has proven larger audience appeal to start with. 100 followers on Medium is one of them, but I wanted my style of writing reflective in this one too. Hence START is my take, my social experiment and way of conveying to see how this fares. You can search for tags or topic which is highly searched and try to blend it into that 1 kick-starter article to get you going. Also try to share it on other platforms like Twitter, Linkedin, etc to get traction from those.
T — Trust
Trust and patience are stepping stone for success. You chose to follow people who looked to add followers and reciprocate. Now there is a possibility that they might not been able to follow you for certain reasons, do not get worked up. Do not get fixated with the follower:following ratio. Keep focussed on increasing the follower & reader base. Once you get the traction and visibility for your writing that ratio is bound to change.
If you find the article helpful, kindly oblige with claps and comments for me to reciprocate to you by following you. If possible in the comment, help me with a short introduction and the kind of articles you write as I hope to try to read them (time permitting) and probably be a part of your reader base rather than follower base. Feel happy to reach 100, but remember it is just a milestone, there is larger long term goal and journey ahead, do not lose focus of that. As I call this a social experiment, I will write a follow up article to share the learnings of how this went irrespective of the result.
