Maximise Your Potential for Subscribers by Telling Your Story

Social Media is abuzz thanks to Vocal's new 'Subscribe' feature, which is absolutely ace, by the way. We finally have a chance to curate our own feeds by subscribing to our favourite creators—what could possibly go wrong?

Ah yes, the dreaded 'sub for sub' threads.

I've been there. Especially on social media platforms. You want people to see your stuff, so you jump on a 'follow train' or something similar. You get a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling inside when you see your count climbing. And then the strangest thing happens...

You don't see an increase in engagement.

The reason is a simple one. Many of the people following or subscribing to you aren't doing so because they are interested in reading your work. Sure, they might throw a few early reads your way, but these are generally done in the same vein as the follow itself—so you'll reciprocate.

You might be thinking to yourself - "How else am I meant to get subscribers? It's only something I'll do once to get a little boost, then they'll discover my work and love me!"

Possibly. Or it's possible you'll get lost in the sea of people they are now following in the hopes of increasing their own count, and you won't see your reads climb at all.

The Solution? — A killer bio or "About Me" story.

Some creators are already jumping on this, and it's paying off. Check out this fantastic piece by A.M. Radulescu. She's a brilliant writer who has led an incredibly interesting life. I read and hearted this post and immediately subscribed to her when I saw it shared on Facebook. Then I jumped on the Vocal homepage and was so happy to see it was sitting in the Top Story spot.

The thing is, with a platform like Vocal, there is no shortage of excellent writers. And the communities allow you to find those who write about your interests. But, if, like me, you like to keep your subscription list relatively small to ensure your feed is filled with exactly the content you want to read— there needs to be a way to figure out who to hit that little black button for (outside of reading every story on someone's profile).

Medium writers have been doing this for a while. My followers skyrocketed (ok, exaggerating, but I saw a significant boost) once I published my "About Me" story. I realised then, people who followed me wanted to know me—The human being behind the content.

My "About Me" for Vocal is in the works. I want it to come after this article, so it sits at the top of my profile for a while.

Wouldn't that be a great idea, Vocal? Letting creators pin their "About Me" or other favourite stories at the top. Alternatively, they could build a 'Creator' community where each creator can share one piece to showcase themselves and their work. Given our in-page bio's have a 152 character count, I'm sure many creators would love this opportunity.

Writing this piece will also allow you to do what your profile currently doesn't—categorise your work. And now, with the quick edit feature, it's easy to jump back in and update your links when you publish a new story.

To avoid your epic story getting lost amongst the rest of your content, link it at the bottom of every new piece, and share the absolute crap out of it on Social Media. If your groups allow self-promotion, share it more than once (every few months as you increase your catalogue or make changes). If you're new to a group, make it the link with your introductory post rather than your latest story.

The Caveat

This is the important part. Following these suggestions is not going to guarantee you thousands of subscribers. I mean, it might, but that's not an "overpromise/underdeliver" scenario I intend to put myself in.

You'll notice I used the word 'maximise' in my title, and that's just what this advice is intended to do—It might sound strange, but I would prefer ten genuine subscribers, who actively read and heart my work when it's published, over a thousand who scroll past every piece any day. Having dedicated subscribers is maximising the feature, not the number of total subscribers.

The Takeaway

That's why I no longer jump on 'follow trains' or 'sub for sub' threads.

That's why my current list is very small and growing slowly every day as I come across new writer's whose work I can't wait to see more of.

That, for me, is why the subscription feature should exist. If I'm going to clutter up my feed with random work that I am not interested in, I could go back to mindlessly scrolling through the top stories or communities.

That's not what I want from this feature. I want to be able to curate my own feed with work that makes me relish in my treasured reading time (which, like many of us, is limited).

And I want to know a little about the creator behind the stories.

Every writer on here is capable of producing good—maybe even great, work. But it's not going to be for everyone, so it's not reasonable to expect people to subscribe to you simply because you subscribed to them. Follow the writers you love without expectation, tell your stories authentically and from the heart, and the readers will come, and they'll be the ones that are for you, even if you're not for them.