100 Followers. Wow, That Was Fast!
Wow, I started a 100 follower quest only about nine days ago and just reached the goal. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to join my journey and to be a part of my tribe.
I appreciate it.
Before I go any further, I want to give a shout out to Hugh Anetoh. He was the 100th follower. Thanks to everyone for their support. But Hugh got the special thrill of putting me over the top.
I did not write down how many followers I had to start with. But I think it was around a dozen. So, basically, I gained about 10 followers a day.
I do not have a chart of my followers, but here is a screenshot of my views for the last month. You can see my site was fairly humble to start with. The increase in my own engagement with others on Medium led naturally to others engaging with me.
This was an important lesson to me. If you want authentic engagement, you have to be willing to engage authentically yourself. It builds community and it is fun.
I wrote a short article, Early lessons from my 100 follower journey (link), so I won’t repeat them here. But I do want to add a few more.
I discovered that I really enjoy helping others in the comments. And, I find that others like helping when I have a question. To me, this sort of interaction is really the foundation of community. Thanks to everyone for listening and for helping.
I discovered that I enjoy be diversity of people — age, ethnicity, location, interests, you name it — on Medium. I met Oishi Dasgupta, a content writer from India; Lyuba Golovina, a Russian Californian based in Barcelona; Garit Ahsanut, a Middle School student, and Michelle, The Sober Vegan Yogi! I wish I could list everyone.
Here is a quick summary of my approach.
I set a goal of simply inviting 5 people a day to follow me. I read that you can follow up to 125 people a day. Some people have gotten to 100 followers in just two days with that approach. My level of effort was nowhere close to that. So, it took me a bit longer. But I am comfortable with the people in my network.
I wanted people who share interests with me, not just 100 random people. So I looked through topics I was interested in and read the works of others. If I liked what they were writing and thought that they would like my writing, I simply clapped and followed. Then I asked them to look at my site and follow back, but only if they were interested.
This is an important distinction. Having a goal of 100 followers helps us get active but it is not the ultimate goal itself. It is more than numbers, it is about building authentic relationships and building community. 100 followers who will unfollow later does not do anyone any good.
If people responded back to me with a follow-to-follow response, I looked at their site. If it did not match my interests, then I politely thanked them and let them know why I was declining.
I did try to read and clap on at least two articles of people I was interested in to show them that I was not simply trolling; that I was actually reading their material and interested in what they had to say.
I also use all 50 claps whenever I engage. It only takes a few seconds to add the extra claps and my hope is that the extra participation helps the pages I visit. We are all in this together. It is ok to take a little time to help each other.
Lastly, when I find someone I am interested in, I sometimes look through their list of followers and read their writing as well. The logic is that if myself and others like the same author, then we must have something in common.
I guess the next goal is to get to 1000 followers. But first I just want to rest and be grateful.
Best wishes to everyone on their writing journey.
James McGinley, PhD is a professor, author, certified life coach, and licensed counselor. He is interested in cross-cultural and applied psychology, whether at work, as a part of a team, in our personal lives and in our relationships with others, or when we face adversity in life — whether from stress, addiction, or exposure to crisis.
For more insights see my books and blog at https://www.jamesmcginley.com.
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