Promotion Guide For Illumination Writers
You can use this checklist to promote your articles for Illumination. If you have additions that I should include in the article, please send me a direct message. I will keep this article updated. This way, over time, we will have a comprehensive promotion checklist for all illumination authors.
Illumination is a new publication that has already generated well over 4000 followers in just over a month.
This article is for all authors who publish their stories on Illumination. Many of these promotions are only available to Illumination authors.
If you would like to write for Illumination as well, you will find out everything you need to know in this article:
One more important note first: If you share your story link somewhere, always use the Friend link. Illumination wants to address a broad readership that is not limited to Medium.
But now to the real issue: Here is my step-by-step guide to promoting your new article for Illumination.
If you do not have a Twitter account yet, you should definitely create one. There is hardly a better channel to generate external traffic for your articles.
If you only have a few followers, you will benefit from networking with other illumination authors who have already built a large following on Twitter.
Follow all followers of @illum_official and retweet regularly all articles published on this account. This way, you will quickly get many new followers for your account.
Step-by-step: Once you have published your article on Illumination, you can tweet it immediately. Use the hashtags #Illumination, #medium #rt, and one or two other hashtags that match the theme of your story.
Add @illum_official and @medium.
The combination of #illumination and #medium is vital so that other illumination authors can find your tweet. I search for this hashtag combination daily and retweet all articles I see with it.
Mentioning @Illum_official makes sure that Illumination’s Twitter handle will notice your article and can retweet it as well.
#rt stands for retweet. Many helpful Twitter users regularly search for this hashtag and retweet posts that are tagged with this hashtag.
Manystories
If you are not yet registered with Manystories, create an account at https://www.manystories.com/
On manystories, you can share articles from all kinds of sources. It doesn’t matter if you have your own blog or if you write exclusively for Medium.
@caseybotticello wrote a detailed article about this platform.
Step-by-step: Log in to your Manystories account and click on Share your Story in the top right corner.
Copy and paste your story link into the appropriate field and click on whether you are the author of the linked article or not. You can share your own articles as well as those of others.
Click on Share. Your article can now be found on Manystories for readers.
I’m still new to LinkedIn myself. I had an account for a long time, but I never used it. Only after @myildizmel ’s recommendation, I reactivated my account and have been using it to promote my illumination articles ever since.
Step-by-step: Log in to your LinkedIn account. After that, you decide whether you want to publish a post or an article.
The difference between article and post is not clear to me yet. In an article, you can create a separate cover image, whereas the picture in a post is automatically taken from the linked article.
Create a post. Just copy the story link into it. You can add something else if you want to.
Then add the hashtags #Illumination and #Medium. Add more hashtags that you think make sense.
You also can tag other users. These users will then be informed about your new post. Use this option sparingly and do not spam.
Publisher’s Spotlight
Our dear @christopher.hedges has created a website for our illumination articles. The goal of the site is to bring Illumination articles to the top of the Google search results and to generate a lot of external traffic for our articles.
Every Illumination author should submit their articles to the site.
Step-by-step: Go to https://96c.co/i/.
Scroll down a little to the Share your best stories form.
Fill in the fields Your Name, Author’s Medium @name, Medium story link, Story synopsis. Please describe the story in one or two paragraphs and email address.
Click the checkboxes GDPR, and I’m not a robot.
Click on Send message.
Facebook Groups
On Facebook, there are many groups for medium authors. Here I list the groups in which I am active myself.
If you join these groups, please make sure you follow the rules that apply there. I also recommend that you read at least two articles by other authors who are posting in the same thread.
These groups, like Illumination, live by the principle of reciprocity.
Don’t just post your link and then disappear again.
I use the following Facebook groups to promote my Illumination articles:
Medium Writers Support and Marketing
Illumination Facebook page
Last but not least, you should definitely share your article on Illumination’s Facebook page.
Whenever you visit the site, don’t forget to add a Like to all the other stories published there.
This way, all articles posted there will get better visibility on Facebook over time,
You can find the Illumination Facebook page here:
Let us maintain this checklist together
Finally, I repeat my call from the beginning of this article: Let me know if you know of any additional promotional resources that all illumination authors can use. I will keep adding your comments to this article. Thanks a lot!
Related articles
In addition to advertising, communication between the authors and editors of Illumination is particularly important.
@timothykey has written an informative article about this topic. Read it and find out how you can best participate in communication within the community.
In this article @timothykey then gives a detailed introduction to the use of Slack. Slack is the essential communication channel for us at Illumination.
René Junge a published author writing on ILLUMINATION.
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