Calling All Illuminators
Your publication needs you!
I love being part of this publication, it is the best thing to happen to me this year, even better than being curated!
I can see where Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s vision is going.
He paints a fabulous picture with his words on a daily basis.
He is encouraging and supportive, he highlights great articles.
He sets us tasks and challenges that will help us and the publication reach dizzying heights.
Like most of us who are part of this project, which is only going to continue thriving, I have limited time to do as much as possible!
I thought you might like to know what the most important tasks are currently.
My daily priority tasks are to:
- look on the front page of ILLUMINATION to find the featured article, read and tweet it, then share it on Linked In.
- check Twitter for ILLUMINATION articles that have been tweeted, read them and respond to them, and retweet them with #illumination @medium #RT
If I have time, the additional tasks are:
- find the latest post from the good Dr which contains tons of superb information regarding the all-important stats so we can see our progress. 1.3k followers so far.
- first, read the curated articles, and then as many other amazing writers from the links to tens of must-read articles that I have time to read. Please believe me when I say I do want to read them all. I simply do not have the bandwidth.
- go in search of interesting writers outside of ILLUMINATION to read and respond to their articles and invite them to join.
- write an article, this happens less than I’d like.
Time-saving tools and activities
Some of the most important tools and activities, which will help us all be as efficient within our time constraints as we can be, fall under the titles of:
- Slack: we currently have 48 members of our publication out of 1.3k on Slack. We need people who are keen to share their skills and opinions and their time on marketing and promotional tasks outside of writing, as well as helping writers prepare their best works of art.
- Marketing and Collaborating: go hand in hand for writers who want to succeed. Both activities are essential. Read. Respond. Tweet/post/share. Repeat.
- Writing Initiatives: writing practice, fun, growing our content, and getting to know our community.
- Submit stories: after you have published first on your personal account and then added your article to the ILLUMINATION publication. This will save editors from having to trawl through hundreds of drafts every day. If you’d like some help with your article, please join Slack.
Slack
If you’re interested in finding out how we can and do work together here’s what Dr Mehmet Yildiz wrote in his recent article:
New writers are invited to join our Slack channel to have a chat and collaborate with other inspiring writers. We also discuss editorial matters, Medium policies, content quality, and overall writing skills improvement.
We created a comfortable and innovative social circle for our writers. If this link does not work, please contact me so that I can send you a private invitation to Slack.
When you have logged in you’ll see various channels on the left-hand side. For new arrivals to get up to speed with the basics #1starthere.
Editors will read and suggest improvements for your work if you post in #editorial
Marketing and collaborating
The Doctor is going to get us to viral status but it is not possible for one man to achieve on his own. All of us together, however, can make it happen.
Daily activities based on the Doctor’s extensive knowledge and experience include:
We need to click on the featured article for each day, clap it, and leave a brief or long message, it is up to your preference and time.
When a featured article goes viral, your comments with your name will gain credibility in the Google algorithms. The more times your name is mentioned in viral articles, the more visibility and credibility you can gain. Believe me, I am a silver-haired technologist.
In addition, we share the specific article in our social media, especially Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. You may consider Quora, Reddit and others too. The more tools you use to share, the better.
Current writing initiatives and challenges
Just in case you missed these, in no particular order:
The best gift you can give to a writer can be a surprise testimonial for their creation. With this act of kindness, their creativity can flourish with joy.
I propose each writer creates one article per day in the next 30 days based on a single idea with a maximum of 500 words; preferably averaging 300 words.
For the next ten days, read ten articles from ILLUMINATION on each day. For these ten articles, highlight key points, leave one supportive comment, clap the article, share it in your social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Then, follow ten new writers randomly leaving traces on their work of art.
I recommend you (each writer and editor) to submit an article introducing your background, skills, experience, writing goals, purpose in life, and a few sample articles to showcase your prior contributions.
Please tag a few followers of your work so that they can join us, extend our capabilities, and enjoy our intellectual garden.
You can also use a great template on Authors & Peeps led by Kabir Mohammed.
Let’s dare to dream
By revealing quick activities for days when I’m working and longer ones for when I’m off, based on Dr Yildiz’s articles and master plan, I hope to save you time, yet still increase our reciprocity and followers tenfold, and get writers going viral!
My dream is to make ILLUMINATION a top Medium publication.
One where the people who put in the grassroots work now, by responding to and promoting other followers’ work, are helping each other go viral.
When we achieve this goal, some of us can stop working at our crappy 9–5s and do all the above tasks on a full-time basis!
Can you see what the good Doctor can see?
Watch out for small shoots sprouting, thriving, and blooming.
Thank you for reading.
