Your Audience Is Growing, They Tell Me
If that’s true, which it isn’t, why aren’t they reading my stuff?
Most are stalkers, not walkers.
Too obscure? I fooled around with the adage “walk the talk” by supplanting talk with stalk. I’ll leave it up to you to decipher my muddled logic.
I finally got it figured. Not my convoluted adage, but the growing audience thingummy.
In my early days, I watched my follower numbers as if my new life as a writer depended on it. Every century I scored (if you’re a cricket fan you’ll understand) revved up my writing engine to keep batting. I celebrated every email telling me my audience was growing.
As the years passed, I detected the disconnect between followers and readers. Over 3000 followers looked good on paper — and helped me get accepted by News Break for a while until they changed their rules to local content only. But that’s another story.
Here’s my take on audience numbers.
Playing tag
New writers follow me in the hope I’ll follow them back. I never fell for that scam years ago, and never will. They’re wasting their time — and mine.
This reciprocal arrangement only works if they write about stuff that interests me, write well, capture my heart, and make me want to read more. But they should read my work before I explore theirs. That’s common courtesy.
Eish! I’m supposed to be touched by their contribution to growing my audience?
I’ve seen them come and go. Once they catch on I’ve caught on to their game, they go play elsewhere — though not always.
It’s easy to spot. For example, I receive an email announcing 48 new followers, yet my audience only grew by 20 since the previous month.
Don’t allow your number of followers to fool you — only a small percentage are loyal readers.
Clapping before the recital begins
You walk into a concert hall. The conductor raises their baton as the audience reads the title of the piece on their Medium program. The orchestra of words is waiting to perform.
Somebody suddenly claps and leaves the auditorium before the recital begins.
Did they think they’d leave a lasting impression with Al Got No Rhythm by gaming the system — clapping without listening or reading?
I know who they are — I see on my stats those who clap without reading. And I’ve seen the same names doing this to other writers.
Please don’t. That’s bad manners and it certainly won’t encourage me to follow you when you throw some crumbs my way. I won’t nibble, dear.
It happens too often to be a mistake.
Unintended clapping
Heck, I’m not perfect. I’m left-handed, so I scroll on the left side of my phone screen in the Android app.
I’m guilty of tapping the clap icon by mistake when reading responses on a story I’ve just read and want to comment on.
I don’t know how to backtrack, so if you encounter a single clap from me, please blame my fumbling fingers and forgive my intrusion.
You don’t have to follow me!
Final thoughts
I’ve been active here for over five years. During that time, many writers with whom I engaged have come and gone. Situations change. People move on. I understand the importance of community and seek other writers.
I endeavor as much as possible to reciprocate and read their work. I trimmed my Following down from over 800 to a more manageable 300 two years ago, but it’s a stretch to engage regularly with all of you.
Here in South Africa, I must also endure the challenges of power outages (Tues/Wed this week was 38 hours) and a weak broadband signal where I stay.
Please forgive me if you haven’t seen me in a while — I’m doing my best.
I bend with the wind and shall not break.
It’s not about the money, although it helps. What matters most is the kindness and encouragement I receive from fellow writers — that’s priceless.
Without you, I’d be lost.
I wish ALL my followers were motivated by a sense of belonging, but accept some won’t buy into that philosophy.
Thank you for being here and reading.
The idea to write about followers had been brewing when I discovered the article written by from over a year ago on the same topic. Synchronicity in action spurred me on to finish and publish my response!
Thanks for the spark, Shereen 😉
