Followers is easy. There’s a semi F4F culture at Medium. So, if you follow others most will follow back.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for readers, I wish you all the best finding a loyal audience of any size. I have 7200 followers and it’s estimated that about 1% get notified that I’ve written something new. Some of these folks view my stories. Fewer still read them. Few comment or clap. And, I’m fairly successful! Certain topics do tend to attract more attention — self-help, business, life, etc. It’s not difficult to find out which topics do but it’s hard to break into the circles of success there. Humor and satire, which is where I focus, are not extremely popular since there’s no profit or WIIFM messages there. Again, all the best. If you find the magic bullet please let me know :-)