How To Grow Your Following And Be A Success On Illumination

With a helping hand from the editors of Illumination and Illumination Curated

So you’ve written a really nice article and succeeded in publishing it on Illumination. Now what? Another article or poem, of course. And then what?

Well, you can just let it sit there and hope that it gets noticed and read, and maybe you’ll get lucky or maybe not.

Here in editorial, we do whatever we can to promote our writers. We regularly feature bulletins, written by our visionary leader Dr. Mehmet Yildiz and the amazing team of editors. Do read those bulletins, you never know, one day you might be in one of them!

There are forty-odd of us dotted all around the world. Maybe one day we’ll even have one up on the moon or Mars. It never ceases to amaze me how, despite widely varying time zones, throughout the day we have group discussions with people like Tree Langdon, CPA, CGA in Canada, Britni Pepper in Australia, Carol Price, Thewriteyard in the United Kingdom, my good self in Japan, Joe Luca in the United States…..And we do that via our very own Slack channel.

Every day we edit, we correct a little, we guide and advise, we encourage and we promote. Now I am talking about a dedicated team of highly talented, accomplished, published, professional writers who freely give up their time to help our Illumination writers to get on. Our time is totally voluntary. We do not get paid a penny piece for all the hours we put in. So why do we do it?

We do it because we all firmly believe in the concept of lending a helping hand to those writers who need it. We believe in passing on what we have learned as writers to those following behind us. And we do not believe that the exchange of money should be an obstacle to dishing out that often much needed help.

Illumination is run by writers for writers, plain and simple.

Our only rewards are the satisfaction that we helped somebody to get better at the job or hobby of writing. And maybe one day we will see those we helped really shine out, and who knows, maybe even become a best-selling writer!

So much for what we do, what about you, apart from writing great articles and poetry, what do you do to make it the success it deserves to be? Or more to the point, what do you not do to make progress in your writing journey?

Ok, first you really should join Slack, it is a great way to be part of our community of writers and make really useful contact with fellow members, who may I remind you are both readers and writers!

Also, you should post all your writings on other social platforms. I post all my articles and poetry on Facebook and Linkedin where I have a decent following. I am using that traction to grow my following, and it is working. I am up, from a handful of followers at the start to almost a thousand since I began to do that.

I also post everything on Twitter and Quora, which admittedly are platforms where I do not yet have a following to write home about. However, I am convinced that in time it will come.

This is all part of the marketing mix. Now marketing can be something us mere writers are not very good at, and that is usually what holds writers back from growing at a respectable rate. And yet, it is so easy to do. If you look at your article at the top, just to the right of your subheading, you will see three symbols; Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook. A simple click on each is all it takes to post your writings on those platforms. That would be a great way to get your marketing efforts off to a good start.

For Quora, simply open an account, easy peasy, then back at Illumination basecamp, use the friends copy link which you will find in settings in your article. Click on copy, then move across to Quora and paste. Nothing could be simpler.

If you make the above postings to social media a habit, believe me, you will see growth in your following.

And more followers means more reads, which means more money. It could not be simpler. We do our level best at our end to help you, which is why I am writing this article in the first place. Now all that we ask is that you help yourself a little with a few simple clicks.

Read, reach out and collaborate for success on Illumination!

Finally, Illumination is a collaborative platform. Over four thousand of our members are writers as well as readers. Make it a habit to connect with your fellow writers.

Extend your reading, which is a great way to find inspiration for new ideas AND grow your readership!

And when you have finished reading leave some claps to show your appreciation and make a complementary or encouraging comment. You will be amazed at the reaction and the way in which your own following grows exponentially.

For further useful advice on how to get on at Illumination read the excellent Terry Mansfield article on how to get on here. And do not forget to copy links to your other offerings at the end of your piece, like I have with Terry Mansfield below. That way you are leading your readers to more reading of your writings.

Many thanks are due to my fellow editor Tree Langdon, CPA, CGA in the editing of this article.