These are the things I commit to not doing on Medium. Really.
As I write this, I’m at 99 followers. I’m sure I’ll get another soon. I’ve been on Medium for one week.
Here is where the story diverges from what you think would normally expect to read now. I will not write about how I got the followers and I will not give you any advice on how to build your follower list. I refuse to do that.
Let's step back and figure out why I say this.
My last week on Medium I have been not only writing a few stories, but trying to find publications and people that I wanted to follow. Trying to find content that I’m interested in. I have searched every which way to find things I want to read.
I have found some. But I had to dig. A lot.Why?
It’s likely because I did a post asking for help to get to 100. At the time I wrote that, I didn’t know it was a common thing to do. This post got me some followers. Other means got me more. But this one seems to have affected my experience to a larger degree.
What has that post done to me? When I look at my recommended feed, it’s full of posts about getting followers or how much money someone made or didn’t make. There is nothing innately wrong with those posts. But I have to dig to get to content I want to read.
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So, I’m making a commitment right now. At 99 followers, I commit to not creating any of the following types of stories. Ever:
- Stories about how to get to X number of followers
- Stories about follow for follow
- Stories about how much I made on Medium
- Stories about how much I make on another platform
- Stories about how little I made on Medium or another platform
- Stories about how messed up the algorithm is
- Stories about internal versus external views
Again, I don’t hold it against others for these types of stories. For any that have created stories like these, you just keep being the best you that you can.
I just want to find other content and I want my account to not add to more stories like these. I hope this helps the experience for other new or existing Medium subscribers.
If nothing else, this commitment feels good to me.
