Newsletter | Community
Clapping Your Way to Success
A reciprocal way to grow your following with claps…
What drew me to writing on Medium? It’s a question I sometimes ask myself…
The answer is that I wanted to become part of a community: By finding good writing allies, and making new connections with like-minded writers.
I was invited by two good authors whose work I knew to write some pieces for their online magazine. Not the sexy stories for which I was better known, but discussion pieces with sexuality as the theme.
So I learned how to write a piece in Medium’s format (fairly easy because I knew WordPress and could google questions) and they reviewed it and pressed publish. Later I signed up for a Medium account so I could read other writers’ work. That’s when I learned about commenting, and clapping (as a newbie I would leave 1 clap, never guessing I could give 50 as often as I wanted).
Later I worked out that highlights were a good indicator of reader engagement. About the same time, I discovered I could earn money by signing up for the partner program and setting my stories to ‘metered’. By this point, I was writing for publications other than my friends’. I had found new writers and vice versa, plus a whole new audience was connecting with me.
I was winning at forging connections. Making allies, and I was in the Medium community.
Nowadays, I help run two publications: Tantalizing Tales and Teaser Tales, with May More 💜 Tales and Marie A. Rebelle, because our goals are aligned: to host good quality fiction and grow a community of like-minded writers.
May and I started out blogging about the same time (2016), without formal training in English or descriptive writing, but with passion and a distinctive style, and we have found our niche. We never forget how it felt to need advice and support on the best way to present or shape our writing, or the value we attach to encouragement from other writers.
In the pursuit of extending a helping hand to writers, and seeking ways to boost each other, Tantalizing Tales is introducing a clapping scheme:
Every writer who publishes with Tantalizing Tales is now required to clap for at least 2 other writers, and this is the format:
- When we accept your story for publication, we give you the date that it will go live via a private note.
- A couple of days before yours is due to publish, check Tantalizing Tales via tweets or our home page.
- We would like you to read, clap and maybe comment on 2 of the stories published in the days prior to yours going out.
Example: Sir Thomas knows he is due to publish on Thursday, so he reads the stories that are published on Tuesday and Wednesday. He highlights some passages and leaves 50 claps on each story (comments are optional) before his own is published.
Most days we only publish 1 or 2 stories, but on Micro Monday there can be up to 3 short ones.
What goes around, comes around, because you’ll be getting extra engagement and claps from the next 2 writers.
It is always good to read another writer’s work. I take it as an opportunity for improving my style or jogging my inspiration, I might even forge a friendship with a like-minded writer. It’s heartening to interact with people who share the same goal, writing becomes a lonely gig if you only press submit and leave.
If we engage with people who leave us positive comments we build connections. It is the way May More 💜 Tales and I became friends.
Had you noticed that Marsha Adams reads and claps for all your stories? We have Mrs. K, who reads through brand-new writer stories to check they will work for the magazine. Both are talented authors who solidly support everyone we publish, and they deserve you to support them right back!
It’s just some of the ways we’re building our wonderful Tantalizing community.
If you’re thinking of signing up for Medium membership, (only the price of a decent coffee) I’d be grateful if you used my link, and I’ll earn a little from your support. Subscribe to my email or Follow my writing. Try another piece of my fiction for free.
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