Reader Engagement — #ILLUMINATION

Can Writers Be Successful Without Readers Who Engage?

What does it take to engage the reader consistently?

I know I am preaching to the choir here, but you don’t know how good you have it here. But then, you do know; that’s why so many of you spoke out when someone tried to dim our luminosity.

Everyone who spoke up made it clear to the powers be, how much and exactly what this community means to us. Thank you, Kevin, for compiling them all in one place.

Many of us have written stories about our stats that clearly show how much of impactful #ILLUMINATION has been to our work on Medium.

You can read some of them here, here, here and here.

Paul Myers MBA wrote about his accidental experiment on curation to highlight just how much of an impact Illumination had on one of his stories. He compared it to two similar stories on similar topics that he published in two other “significant” publications that were also curated and distributed by Medium on the same day. By the way, Medium did NOT distribute the one in Illumination. It’s a fascinating comparison.

When the lights went out at home, Dr. Rosenna Bakari (Rosennab) felt like an orphaned child. She published her lament on a publication called The Bad Influence (included in Kevin’s post above).

In that piece, she referenced her most successful story, a personal challenge of adapting to a LAT lifestyle. She says that it is not her best work, just the most popular one. It was published in The Ascent, four and a half months ago, on Dec 12, 2019.

When I read it, one thing stood out like a sore thumb for me: there was no interaction. Other than Bob Jasper, who beat me to it, only two other people had highlighted one line each; it had only eight responses with 330 fans, i.e., people clapping. (I don’t know how many views or reads she has, but it must be shit load.)

What’s wrong with this picture?

Now, imagine the same story being on Illumination. The reason we have such high engagement with our readers is because of our community is built on the pillars of Diversity, Synergy, Fusion, and Serendipity. Success doesn’t happen by chance; it requires design, planning, and execution.

Thank you, Dr. Mehmet Yildiz. Thank you, editors and writers, but most importantly, thank you, readers.

Nothing is more satisfying and uplifting for a writer than to know that others are reading their work, and it is having an impact. The only way we can find that out is when the readers interact by highlighting, clapping, and responding.

As always, thank you for reading and responding.

Rasheed Hooda is a published author and a regular contributor to ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium where writers support each other.

He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)

“You can let others tell you what it means to be successful, or you can decide it for yourself.”