avatarDr Mehmet Yildiz

Summary

The undefined website content outlines a comprehensive SWOT analysis of the ILLUMINATION publication on Medium, detailing its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, alongside future plans and lessons learned in its first month of operation.

Abstract

The ILLUMINATION Writers Content Strategy, as detailed in the undefined website content, celebrates its one-month anniversary by conducting a SWOT analysis to assess its current position and strategize for future growth. The publication's strengths include a diverse community, successful implementation of values like synergy and cross-pollination, strong collaboration, and a culture of serendipity that has attracted internationally recognized writers. However, it acknowledges its newness and lack of established presence as a weakness. Opportunities for growth are identified in technology and innovation, including an external site, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The publication faces minor threats from those who view it as too radical or diverse, but it maintains a stance of zero tolerance for harassment and toxic behavior, emphasizing the privilege of membership and adherence to community rules.

Opinions

  • The diversity of the community is recognized as a key strength and is appreciated by readers.
  • Cross-pollination and collaboration are seen as successful innovation techniques that have contributed to the publication's growth.
  • The publication's culture is described as supportive and caring, fostering collaboration over competition.
  • The newness of the publication is viewed as a weakness, but there is a clear plan to convert this into a strength by achieving a follower count of 10K and increasing visibility on Medium.
  • The use of technology and innovation in content development and marketing is considered crucial, with Google index

ILLUMINATION Writers Content Strategy

SWOT Analysis for ILLUMINATION

Lessons earned in last thirty days and future plans

Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” — Anonymous

“All progress takes place outside the comfort zone.” — Michael John Bobak

Congratulations to our community; we are now one month old.

In this post, I want to provide some quick lessons learned by highlighting our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and provide some high level guidance. I have been using this assessment technique over three decades, which is called SWOT analysis in the industry.

Strengths

Our key strength is diversity. This strength is also recognised by our readers which I pointed out in my previous articles.

Implementation of other values synergy, fusion, and serendipity turned to strength for our publication and community.

We implemented the cross-pollination vigorously. It is evident in our articles writers citing and tagging each other. While we are creating, we are also learning from each other and extending our capabilities. Cross-pollination is a proven innovation technique which I have been using over three decades successfully. I am glad it became one of our strengths.

Collaboration is also a noticeable strength for our community. I noticed that writers and editors are continually collaborating to create new ideas and inventive solutions. Our Slack channel is operating like an ideation lab. We have many channels covering various initiatives.

Serendipity naturally started. Through our communications and networking, we met many internationally recognized and published writers joined our publication. By cross-pollinating with these eminent writers, we can level up constantly. Most of them are mentors and have shown interest to create our visibility inside and outside of Medium. I don’t want to give names here. However, I encourage you to spot them and explore their work. They started posting their remarkable articles in the last few days.

Another strength is our technology capability. As a technologist, I know the importance of technology in content development and marketing. Therefore, I added technology and innovation to our growth strategy. We achieve Google recognition. Google is now indexing hundreds of articles published on ILLUMINATION. There are more technological initiatives progressing well, which I want to discuss in my next articles.

Our culture is shaping well. We have excellent input from many writers to help form our culture. My preliminary understanding is that we have a supportive and caring culture. It is a beautiful observation that writers do not compete with each other; instead, they collaborate. I am striving for a collaborative culture.

Weaknesses

Our weakness is we are new and not an established publication yet. I will see this situation as weakness until we reach the 10K follower level. We are not known well on Medium yet. It is natural because we started only one month ago.

Instead of dwelling on this weakness, we will turn this weakness to strength by growing each day. As the orchestrator of the publication, I take all necessary measures with full personal responsibility. However, this is not enough for a publication to get an established level. We need each editor and writer to take full personal responsibility to create visibility for our publication and community.

I provide guidance on a daily basis in my articles and conversations on the Slack channel. I am pleased that 80% of our writers taking active participation for this goal. We need other 20% to join the team and contribute to our growth. We will grow together. No one will be discriminated or isolated in our community.

Let’s turn this weakness to a strength in a reasonably short time. I recommend new writers to check my articles written in the last four weeks. Each article provides some guiding points for creating visibility and growth. If you have inquiries, you can reach out to me directly from this link.

You can also join the Slack channel and start conversations with other writers. The beauty of Slack is you can join the general conversation and also chat with each writer one on one basis privately. This communication mechanism can be ideal for new writers to find mentors in our community.

Opportunities

We have several opportunities. They all revolve around technology and innovation. We have an external site developed by Chris on which you can showcase your articles. We need to use our Twitter List more frequently. Our opportunity is to hit the first page of Medium Twitter handle. I recommend our writers to have a Twitter account and connect with all ILLUMINATION editors and writers. If we tweet and retweet each other’s articles, we can hit the first page.

Another opportunity is tapping YouTube. I created a YouTube channel exclusive to our writers to showcase their bios and content. My plan is to activate the channel within a month, so please work on creating at least one video introducing your capabilities and featuring your content.

LinkedIn is another opportunity which we need to use more frequently. As mentioned previously, I have over 24K followers on LinkedIn and want to create visibility by leveraging my contacts. Each of us has many followers, so by collaborating on LinkedIn, we can create substantial awareness for our publication and community. There are many more benefits of collaborating on LinkedIn beyond the scope of this article.

Threats

We have minor threats. There are, of course, a few Medium members who don’t like our publication as we are considered too radical and too diverse. I have no fear of those narrow-minded people; however, they may pose some risks creating rumors and wrong perceptions about our goals. So far, only one writer out of 260 left our community, as our culture did not align with his perceptual values. I respect each person and value their thoughts; however, we won’t let them intoxicate our community.

To deal with threats, we will remove the privileges granted to disgruntled writers. We all know that joining a publication is not a right; it is a privilege on Medium. Writers need to be aware of this privilege and obey the rules of publications. However, improvement recommendations are always welcome.

Our rules are on the FAQ document. Those writers who don’t like our culture and don’t intend to obey our rules shouldn’t join our publication. If we notice non-compliance after joining, we will remove them from our publication. We are big thinkers and success oriented individuals. We don’t like playing juvenile games and don’t enjoy dealing with petty thinkers focusing on personal attacks.

We are tolerant to diverse ideas and freedom of thought but we have zero tolerance on harassment and toxic behavior. We never censor content as long as the content is legal and meet Medium policies.

If our writers find any harassment messages related to our writers and publication, we need to use Medium guidelines and policies. Based on policies, we can report offending and non-compliant members. Medium has zero-tolerance on harassment.

Medium has right to cease membership on non-compliance. Our community is comprised of assertive professionals who wont accept victimization. We don’t attack individuals or their work, and we don’t’ allow others to do us either. Medium is one of the most peaceful content development and sharing platform.

I appreciate your wonderful support and let’s continue growing for higher success each month. I hope you enjoy your journey in our publications. I am one message away to connect with you and answer your questions at our Slack workspace.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

About the Author

I am a technologist, postdoctoral researcher, author of several books, editor, and digital marketing strategist with four decades of industry experience.

I write articles on Medium, NewsBreak, and Vocal Media. On Medium, I established ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters, Technology Hits, SYNERGY, and Readers Hope publications supporting 12,000+ writers on Medium. You can join my publications requesting access here. You may subscribe to my account to be notified when I post on Medium. I share my health and well-being stories on my publication, Euphoria.

If you are new to Medium, you may join by following this link. A small part of your membership fee will not only support my writing but your reading times can support many great writers on this platform. Opportunities for readers and writers are endless on this platform.

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