Leadership
Redesign of ILLUMINATION Front Page
Better access to stories hosted on ILLUMINATION
We have now a blogging publication.
Let me explain the purpose.
Introduction and Background
I aim to give as much visibility as possible to the stories submitted to ILLUMINATION. While new writers are joining each day, our readers are also increasing rapidly.
As the editorial team, we produce lots of artefacts to inform our writers. Some of these artefacts are not directly related to our readers. To give a clearer view of the front page, I removed editorial articles from ILLUMINATION front-page.
As these articles are essential to our writers, especially the beginners, I transferred them to a new publication called ILLUMINATION Blog.
ILLUMINATION Blog aims to host publication related articles such as editorial bulletins, guidance to writers, announcement and other artefacts created by ILLUMINATION editors and writers.
Initially, I transferred my articles to this new publication; however, most of our editors will also be adding their bulletins to this blogging publication.
Besides, I want to give access to writers who wish to write about ILLUMINATION, featuring stories, writers, introducing their publications.
You can request writer access by leaving a comment on this story.
I provided a link to the ILLUMINATION Blog on all our publications. This will enable our writers to access publication related stories easily.
This new arrangement is also good for readers as they can access the latest stories from the publication’s first pages.
I expect this new design to give more visibility to the latest stories published on ILLUMINATION.
In addition, I created a new feature page based on tags. I want to pilot “illumination” tag first as we have now 4,300 followers of this tag. Some of our readers configure their device based on tags and they use illumination.
What does that mean to writers?
Tags for Feature Pages
When you submit a story to ILLUMINATION, you can add “illumination” as one of your tags in the edit mode. When you tag “illumination”, your story will show in the new featured pages.
Here is the link to the featured pages
https://medium.com/illumination/tags/home
As you can see, it shows all stories tagged with “illumination”.
Here is the first story by Marty de Jonge showing tags. Illumination is one of the tags in this specific story therefore it shows in the featured page.
I will create an RSS feed using the “illumination” tag and distribute these tagged stories to our readers via newsletters.
I noticed that some writers tag me and Medium system created a tag for my account name “Dr Mehmet Yildiz”. This tag is a kind of notification to me to get my attention for certain articles such as writer bios. I don’t mind if you tag my name in your stories. I will also create an RSS feed for this tag in my reading and distribution lists.
I hope you enjoy this arrangement and a new look for ILLUMINATION. I will also work on ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR and Technology Hits to apply these changes.
I will continue to improve the look and efficiency of our publications. A number of our writers and readers increase, we need to find creative ways to improve visibility.
My purpose is to create more reading opportunities. Unfortunately, most of us lost substantial reading times after recent changes on Medium. We don’t know the root causes but the changes affected many of us.
I will help you to create maximum visibility for your stories. However, you need to take responsibility and create further visibility for your stories by leveraging the opportunities we create.
The low hanging fruit is the use of short-form stories as mentioned in this story. Please also share the links to your stories on our social media platforms and also on our Slack workspace.
Let’s continue collaborating.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
Please provide your feedback to improve our publications better.
I am the founder and chief editor of ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR and Technology Hits. I established these significant publications supporting 7,500+ writers and serving 82,000+ readers on Medium. Join my publications requesting access here. You are welcome to subscribe to my 100K+ mailing list, collaborate, enhance your network, and receive technology and leadership newsletters reflecting my industry experience. You can show your interest to support my publications as an editor. My free content strategy and marketing newsletter can be accessed from Substack.
Most of my content can be found on my Medium blogs.