Meaningfully Grow your Subscriber Numbers in 30 Days

Community matters and it should be at the heart of everything you do. The way I see things - 30 engaged subscribers are much better than 100s or even 1000s of unengaged fake subscribers.

That said I want to show you how you can build your subscriber base in a meaningful way. I appreciate every one of my subscribers and followers. I love to connect with readers and other writers and even bounce ideas off each other.

By writing on a regular basis and being actively engaged in the online writing community on Medium I was able to grow from about 57 followers to over 1.5K in less than 3 months!

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The chicken and the egg approach

So you need eyes (views) on your articles and you also need people to read your articles to convert them to subscribers! Starting on any platform, not just this one can be hard. Views and interactions with posts make posts more visible to others, but when you are a new writer you can sometimes feel like you are just writing into a void. What comes first the viewers, readers or subscribers?

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Actionable Steps for building a meaningful community

Know your numbers

The first step to take is simply looking at where you are now. How many subscribers do you currently have? Are these subscribers engaged with your writing? Once you know where you are it’s time to set some long and short-term goals. Use your starts to see what topics are your most popular? Look for any patterns, where do you get the most traffic from? Focus on promoting these platforms.

Goal setting for growth

Short Term. How many subscribers are you realistically working towards in 30 days 1–50? 50 -100? Think about your niche area as this will impact your following count.

Longer-Term. How many followers would you like to have after 3 months? Write this down, but plan monthly for how you will achieve this.

For the sake of this article let’s aim for 50 followers in 30 days.

Focus on engagement

Now we have set our target to try to focus on engagement and quality content rather than subscriber count! No one likes to be the first to a party so if you are brand new to this writing platform you could encourage friends to leave a comment or 2 and respond to these. When other people respond be sure to comment back and thank them for their responses. When people feel connected to something they are more likely to follow you. This seems so simple, but the art of a response it's a pretty powerful habit you really need to form.

Write not just for your audience, but to them

At certain milestones, I like to post a short-form story shouting out at the community — in a nice manner, not an “Oi, you there”. I am a reader first, writer second. So I love to promote and read the stories of the people that follow me. Once a month I take the most popular comments from my stories and turn these into posts. So I guess what I am trying to say here is don’t just write for your community, address your community. I see way too many writers just ignore their followers. Having ‘too many’ followers is not an excuse to ignore your communities.

Giving back to the community

I try to read and engage with 5–10 stories daily. Selecting the stories that really inspire me and learning from the experiences of others. When I find a story I love I just can’t help but tip it and share it across social media. I even created a list of my favourite Vocal and Medium writers on Twitter to make it easier to find their work.

Ask Questions

Don’t be afraid to ask questions at the end of the post, then highlight this question to share on Twitter or other social networking sites. Be sure to respond to any comments. Then retweet this question at a later date and time. This leads to promoting your stories.

Promote your stories and that of other writers

So many of the new writers I have spoken to only promote their stories once and often to the same locations. Written a story highlight a quote or sentence and share it on social media. Then a few days later maybe ask a question and share the story again. A week later had a comment on the story — good or bad share it along with the story, but be careful on sharing on ‘happy clickers’ groups.

Join a writer network

Use the group to learn and grow from each other and discover new writers. If appropriate or asked for by other members share your stories — just don’t spam. If I am not sure how I am coming across I sometimes share a link to a draft story for some guidance or feedback.

Having a strategy

Pulling all this together to form some sort of strategy for achieving 50-100 followers in 30 days.

• Consistency is key - post on a regular basis, maybe have a weekly coloumn on an area you like to write about.
• Spend at least 15–20 minutes every day reading and responding to the stories of other people, including those that are already part of your community.
• Join a challenge to help hold you accountable during your 30 days of growth.
• Read before you publish. Don’t hit publish without checking out your formatting, especially if you are writing for a publication. Pop your story through an editing program or have a trusted friend read it over. Sometimes what we see isn’t what is written! I always like to sleep on a story before publishing.
• Promote multiple times. Don’t promote and ghost! Return to where you have posted on social media and respond to any comments (this may help push the article back into newsfeeds), use a different approach such as post with a quote, post with a question or post the article with a response you got to it.

In summary

By knowing your starting place and where you want to go you can steer your writer profile to an island with a close population of 50-100 readers. By actively engaging on the platform and sharing and supporting the work of others you will be planting the seed of growth. Good luck!

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