100 Medium Followers Won’t Make You Feel Better
Reaching your first 100 followers on Medium is a struggle so you have to know the reason you`re willing to write for that long in the first place because otherwise, it’s a waste of your time!
Yesterday I noticed I was close to the 100 followers mark on Medium so I googled ‘how to get 100 followers on Medium”.
I know that’s pretty ironic given I was almost there but I was curious as to what the advice would be.
I wanted to see if I`d experienced any of the same things that those who attained this amount of followers before had.
But, to be honest, I didn’t.
Because the initial Google search showed a bunch of results displaying tactics of how best to orchestrate a path to gaining 100 followers. And even though I read the advice intently at first I got bored. So then I wondered what is the point in having followers if the reader gets bored when they are reading?
More irony.
Yet the reality is we live in a world of people seeking followers. But it’s not the world I grew up in. Thankfully.
So in this piece of writing, I`m not going to give you a set of tactics about how to get 100 followers on Medium now that I`ve attained that number but instead I`m going to explain my feelings along the way.
After all, we live in a universe of feelings.
Although you could have been mistaken given the importance of the ‘Follow’ button in social media and how people get so wrapped up in the vanity of the numbers on a screen. I mean how is that good leadership if that’s the extent of a generation’s ambitions on planet earth?
When you were born into this world after all the magnificent things it took to happen and to go exactly right in your favor and after all the struggles your mother went through when did many people suddenly dedicate their lives to having so many followers?
It’s a pretty sad thought when you think about it.
Luckily, I don’t.
Not much anyways.
Rather, I try to just do the right thing. And if people choose to follow my journey then great! Good on them.
But rather than constantly seeking followers I try to push forward and do what I feel is the correct thing to do at a given point in time. Because if you dwell too much on looking behind and analyzing who’s following you, you`ll miss the opportunities right out in front of you.
Still, it’s a good time to reflect today given that I’ve reached the centenary mark.
Because some time in life you have to stop and look around to see where you`re going. And that’s what I`m doing right now.
So how did I feel when I opened up my laptop and discovered I hit 100 medium followers?
Honestly, I didn’t feel any different than when I was struggling to get my first 10.
I stared at the 101 followers on the screen for a moment and wondered:
“Isn’t it amazing how there are 3 numbers there instead of 2!”.
I know that’s a child-like reaction but it’s how I felt for bout a second.
And it just shows you how we as humans compare things instantly.
In reality, though, I know the value of my writing on Medium. Because by the time I got to 100 stories on the platform I had to write over 230 articles. That means I only got a follower every 2.3 stories.
So, it’s clear I need to improve my storytelling if I want to have a lot more followers!
Because it’s obvious that from the first 100 followers that I’m not writing enough interesting content. I mean if you do the math you`ll realize that at that rate it will take me another 9 months to get the next 100 followers. And I`m not going to waste my life worrying about gaining followers over that period in my life because having followers doesn’t give you anything that will change your life substantially.
Yet the next 9 months of my life if lived correctly can change my life forever.
Because that’s a substantial amount of time to spend alive if you know what your intention of living is for. Given that most of the world has spent double that amount of time in several enforced lockdowns in the time it took me to gain 100 followers I know that time alive and being free is more important to me than numbers on a screen.
I`m serious.
People are creating content in this world to serve the endless demand for data that the internet needs to keep the online content free and original without thinking of the consequences that it gives to their lives.
And many young creators get anxious that they are not gaining substantial amounts of followers.
Because that’s all they’ve become accustomed to having as the world of online media has placed the ‘Follow’ button next to many social media platforms and the creator then creates with this in mind.
Yet many young creators are cash-poor and wound up in an everlasting loop of anxiety to continue to produce content.
Don’t get me wrong it’s fascinating to see what story or piece of content will catch on fire online but when something does it doesn’t always make sense as to why that is. There are so many factors that come into producing the perfect story and none of them combined will guarantee that your work will go viral.
Because you never know what people will find interesting at any point in time.
So if you`re trying to get followers for the sake of having big numbers there’s no real sense in it. It’s not going to give you a great feeling when you reach the goal you`ve set out for yourself unless it does something beneficial for your developing self. Fair enough, you may think:
“If I can get a million followers I will be famous!”
But by the time you get one million organic followers having that amount of followers will be too small to make anyone blink an eyelid. Because other content creators will have had several bump ups in their numbers of followers and they’ll be way ahead of you. So your feelings once you reach that milestone will only confirm to you that there’s no huge egotistical reward at the end of it all unless you feel good about why you’re producing the content.
For me, it’s pretty simple.
I want to help people.
So when I woke up this morning and noticed that I`d hit the 100 followers mark I knew someone out there may have got something beneficial from what I`ve written. And the reality is I`ll probably never meet that person. Because the 100th follower is as important to me as the 1st, the 2nd, the 3rd, and the 99th.
After all, they are all people with feelings just like me.
And if I can help them feel better by producing what I think is interesting content that will make them think and feel good then I`m happy.
That gives me some feeling of connection with the reader and viewer.
And it may make my poor mother happier to know I’ve done something good for somebody this morning!
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