For Our Illumination Tribe: SEO Tips, Cross-pollination, and Writing Prompts
In my cross-pollination stories, I take you with me on my reading/writing journey. I’m like a butterfly. I flutter in and out of the Illumination publication, finding snippets inside and out. Here are some of my recent finds.
The first writer I encountered took me straight to my heart. Lucian Tarnowski wrote a beautiful tribute to Toni Lane Casserly (Toni Lane, TLC). I didn’t know the lady in person, but when I read this I get to know her. Goosebumps…
And then, some of my Illumination-friends tagged me in their chain. It started out with a clever writing prompt by Sherry McGuinn.
If I wasn’t a writer, what would I be?
Some of the stories already spoke to me, but I didn’t get involved. Until Timothy Key tagged me in his. I started thinking. Will I write about being a regenerative farmer, nerdy about soil life? An ecologist? A pilgrim?
Then another writer tagged me: Michele Thill. Inspired by her story, I thought back to my youth. Remembering mini-me, I would have been a dancer! Moving in my own world, together with beautiful music and my body…
Look, this is what a clever writing prompt and some tagging of your writer-friends can do.
It sparks the fire. It lights the bulb. It moves body and soul until your friends can’t resist anymore. They just have to grab the keyboard and start hitting the keys. Art is being born…
My story as a whole still has to emerge. But be on the lookout! I’ll tell you how a dancer/pilgrim/farmer became a writer in the end…
And don’t forget about the writing prompt I hurtled into the world. I already read so many good Stories of Hope. And I still think the world needs them…
And then I came across a well-written story about someone like me. Like us, I should say (Mike and I). Changing our lives, mid-life. Embracing a minimalistic lifestyle, and now telling stories that matter. From home. Or abroad, where we help to implement systemic solutions to world problems.
This story is written by Elle C. Too bad we aren’t sailors. We’d love to travel for a bit with Matt Ray. Freediving with dolphins and whales…
And then there’s Henery X (long). His stories trigger something in me. I think it might be because there’s lots of wisdom and love underneath them… Check out this one about listening. Being a teacher is being a student.
Now it’s time for some serious promotional stuff. I haven’t been a marketing professional for 25+ years for nothing. Now that nature needs me to give her a voice, I use my skills… And you might be the wiser for it…
Search Engine Optimization. SEO. You might have heard then the term and thought: Woah, sounds difficult. Don’t worry, it isn’t. And if you have questions, ask them in the comments.
You might have thought: Why would I need SEO? Well, you don’t. At least not if you don’t care about people finding your work.
But if you do want people to find your work online, it’s a useful tool.
SEO makes sure that internet roaming folks end up finding your stories. They type in their keywords and tada… your story emerges if it has the same keywords.
Two tips for SEO:
1 Chris Hedges 🦄 has been so utterly friendly (and wise and savvy) to give us a tool to attract traffic to our stories. It’s called the Illumination Spotlight and can be found here.
Fill in the form, one story at a time. Make sure you use some good descriptive words (the ones people would search for) in the story synopsis part. Don’t worry about spamming Chris. Apparently, it’s been automated…
2 You can also make sure every story is optimized for SEO by yourself. Go to the three dots … at the top. Click on ‘More settings’. At the left of your screen, a menu will appear with ‘SEO settings’ in it.
Click on it and fill the box SEO description with 140–156 characters. Make a sentence using search words that fit your story.
And one more tip about tags:
3 Tags might do something for general internet SEO too, I’m not sure. But they certainly belong in this little list of mine because they enhance your visibility. Tags make sure you can be found in the right places on Medium. And they might get you curated.
You can add up to 5 tags to every story. I’d say use them all.
There are two kinds of tags to look for. Choose at least one tag out of the list of Topics on Medium. You find an overview of this list when you click on your own little picture at the top and choose ‘customize your interest’.
Choose the other tags out of the list that might make you a top writer in something. The list of top writer tags is nicely written about by Casey Botticello.
Okay, let me give you examples out of my own experience. Many of my articles got curated on environment. This is a tag in topics.
However, it’s not in the list of top writer tags. I am a top writer now in sustainability, climate change, future, and social media.
And don’t think you’ll be a top writer forever if you got the status. You’ll have to keep writing beautiful, insightful stories on these topics to stay in the league. But that’s what we like to do, don’t we?
For me, it didn’t start as rational as I now make it out to be. I just started writing about what I loved. And after a while, I saw I became a top writer. Wow, I didn’t know about this. So I started reading about it and learned.
And I still do everything kind of organic. But I do try to be professional about my writing and the skills that come with it. It’s the best way to be of real value to my readers.
So please, if you are a starting writer here, don’t be shy, don’t be insecure, ask your mates to share some of their tips and write the best words you have to give! Good luck creating traffic to your stories, folks!
And for those of you curious about the fiction style of someone mainly trying to get people to become systemic thinkers and create a sustainable future.
Here’s one for you. This is also cross-pollination…
This time I read stories by Lucian Tarnowski, Eliot Kersgaard, Elle C., Besom & Bletherskite, Spandrel, Alifiya Nagree, Elikplim Zanthia, Ashley Cleland, M.Ed., Michael Fichter, Kimberly Fosu, Fiona Sommer, Mary Holden, Indra Raj Pathak, Dipti Pande, Nachi Keta, Priyanka Srivastava, Pallavi@305, Dennett, Deborah Christensen, Simran Kankas, Henery X (long), Selma, Elisabeth Khan, Chris Hedges 🦄, Simona, Kathryn A. LeRoy, Ph.D., Dr Mehmet Yildiz, Kevin Buddaeus, Claire Elaine, Harley King, Daniella Mini, Rasheed Hooda, Brynn Mahnke, and many others.
This is it, for now, my friends. Gotta do some work on my book again. See you around on Slack or social media.
If you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook or somewhere studying bees on an apple tree…
