Alan, here are my .02 —

as someone who has documented many stats over the last two years.

Followers in no way affects reader or views.

Intuitively, you would think it does, because in an ideal world if someone follows, they would read. However, most members seem to be writers. Many writers do not spend nor have time to read.

When I read others writers, that’s the one factor that absolutely makes reads go up, because many do reciprocate. However that’s time consuming and most don’t have that time nor are willing.

This is where titles and boosts come into play.

1. Title and topic: you must write about things that a random readers who don’t know you would be interested in reading and keep reading in order to get many views

2. Boosts are exposure, but not necessarily reads…that’s why the curators want to make sure that if they boost that viewers will read…but I’ve seen boosted articles that get below average reads bc well—it doesn’t appeal to a large audience

Your article on computers had such a good title and it appealed to many whether they knew you or not…so it did very well.

Those SEO tags matter and the title so that if readers are interested in those topics they’ll find your article.

My advice: enjoy whatever followers you have and do not overthink that number.

Views and reads have to do with our writing…and that’s a tougher pill to swallow. It hurts our ego. But it’s the one factor that you can control.

There will be times when views go up and down. If you consistently had views for consecutive months and one month dropped, keep following and look for patterns. One month is too short a time frame to draw causal relationships.

Keep well!

This is obviously just my opinion, and you can disregard that which makes no sense to you! 😉🙌🏽