Social Media for Content Strategy & Marketing

How to create external visibility for our articles, amplify them, and increase the chance of going viral on social media.

The theme for the ILLUMINATION editors, writers, and readers is focusing on social media today.

I will keep this article simple and practical with actions which can have an immediate impact on the success of ILLUMINATION members. My approach to social media marketing is iterative.

We start with small steps, go to the next iteration, grow incrementally, and keep growing with multiple iterations. With this approach, we mitigate the risk of failure. As an agile champion in my corporate transformation projects, I have been using this approach for the success of massive business transformation programs. It is a proven approach.

In this article, instead of focusing on a full strategy, my focus is on the first step to use social media effectively to amplify our messages, to increase the number of our followers, and collaborate by further extending and expanding the visibility of our content internally and externally.

I will introduce more influencers to ILLUMINATION in a progressive approach. Those industry leaders can mentor us and amplify our messages. This is a global collaboration project therefore we need to commit reciprocity and act of kindness as I discussed in my cross-pollination article.

Let’s start with Twitter

I created a new Twitter List called ILLUMINATION.

Your action is to click on this link and subscribe to the list. This list looks like the attached screen capture. By the way, I didn’t choose the photos; they are Twitter default.

Once you subscribe the list, you can immediately see the posts sent by the members of the ILLUMINATION. I strictly keep this list for our members so that we are not overwhelmed by other followers’ messages.

We need to make it a habit to like and retweet the articles tagged with ILLUMINATION and Medium terms. Please hashtag every article you post to Twitter with #illumination #medium and use @ sign before Medium to direct your tweets to the Medium Twitter handle.

When an article is liked a lot and retweeted multiple times, the Twitter algorithm takes it to the top of the relevant sites.

This can increase the visibility of our articles. This is one way of getting viral on Twitter. Re-tweeting and liking may sound trivial, but in reality, they are very powerful approaches for visibility and amplification. I cannot stress enough that we must make this a habit for our success. With collaboration, we can increase our chance of getting viral on social media.

Importance of FACEBOOK

My second action was to create a Facebook page.

Facebook is a serendipitous environment. Facebook has millions of users globally. Culturally, Facebook users are more collaborative than other platforms. Trust and friendship matter on Facebook. Our strategy is to reach out to large groups of Facebook followers. This strategy can increase the chance of getting our articles to go viral in social media. To this point, please ensure that you only share your Friendlink from your articles.

It is very easy to generate a Friendlink on Medium. In your article, you click on the setting button and select Share Friendlink. Then copy the URL to the Facebook page. We can copy the same link to Twitter and Linkedin as well.

When you click on the Setting buttons it looks like this. Friendlink is at the bottom of the window.

Medium allows us to use this feature because, through this way, we help Medium introduce new readers sacrificing our paid hours because Friendlink does not bring revenue to writers therefore rather than tactical; it is a strategic approach for us. To sustain our success we must think and act strategically.

For example, if your article goes viral through social media, you gain many other benefits. You may be discovered by other content and publishing organizations. For instance, through using this strategy, some of my entrepreneurial proteges were discovered by Forbes and a few other industry leading publication companies, and they secured lucrative writing contracts.

Let me introduce the ILLUMINATION Facebook Page.

The link is:https://www.facebook.com/MediumIllumination/

We need to take the following actions to benefit from the Facebook page.

Action 1. Follow and like the page. I will grant access when you join the page.

Action 2. Start adding your articles in the Post section.

Please only add the Friendlink as our strategy is to reach out to large groups of Facebook followers. This strategy can increase the chance of getting our articles to go viral. If users cannot read your message with normal link, they never click on your posts again. As mentioned before, Facebook has millions of users. It is a truly serendipitous environment. You can be amazed by the power of Facebook if you use it properly. The more we give in Facebook the more we receive.

Action 3. Start liking all articles submitted by the ILLUMINATION community members including yours. Liked articles, like any other platform, get priority in Facebook algorithm.

Another avenue and quick win on Facebook

In addition to our site, one of ILLUMINATION members Dean Middleburgh created a Medium site on Facebook and kindly invited ILLUMINATION members to promote our articles and engage with his existing members. You can access Dean’s Facebook site from this link. Dean will coach us to use his site effectively.

I will provide more resources and guidance on practical use of Facebook in the next iteration of our social media strategy.

LinkedIn.

I have been using the platform from the beginning as an active contributor. I am connected with 24K professionals. Over ten thousands of my connections are senior executives and industry leaders from large business organizations that I work in and collaborate in the last 40 years.

LinkedIn is different from Twitter and Facebook from cultural perspective. We must act extra professional on LinkedIn due to its business oriented nature. At this stage, the most effective way of using LinkedIn is following each other and tagging our articles to the people we are connected.

For example, when you post a Friendlink of your article to LinkedIn, you can use #illumination, #medium, and other tags relevant to your article, for example, #business #leadership #fiction #poem etc.

In addition, you can tag me in your post using the @ sign and typing my name Dr Mehmet Yildiz. My linkedIn profile is https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehmetyildiz/

Please send an invitation to me, and I will accept and connect with you. Once we are connected, I can re-post your articles, and it can be viewed at least by my followers plus millions of other LinkedIn followers globally. I can mentor the team for effective use of LinkedIn, I have several practical ideas which were successfully implemented by my proteges.

That’s it for the social media content marketing strategy in this article.

I leave you with these 3 actions, in summary: 1. Join the Twitter List, 2. Join the Facebook page, 3. Follow me on LinkedIn and share your posts with me in these three platforms.

Special Thanks

Many thanks to Arthur G. Hernandez, who articulated the Vision and importance of ILLUMINATION much better than me in an elegant leadership vernacular. Please read the article, clap it, and share it in social media for awareness of our community.

I also thank Dr Ron Pol who took the action and introduced himself. We can learn a lot from Dr Pol as a high impact professional outside of Medium.

Please take this opportunity and introduce yourself. As I mentioned, yesterday, don’t be shy to promote yourself and your services. It is important for your success.

Thank you for enriching our growing ecosystem with your creativity.

Thank you for your strong collaboration.

We are growing together!