MyTeaPal Stories is a digital publication by MyTeaPal that features stories from the tea community.
While there are a few magazines featuring professionals in the tea industry, there’s no publication that shares stories of tea hobbyists. They may not work in the tea industry, but tea is certainly an integral part of their lives. MyTeaPal Stories exists to provide a platform for these tea enthusiasts to share their experience, spark meaningful discussions, and potentially inspire others.
Background
- MyTeaPal is a mindful tea mobile app that helps tea enthusiasts track, brew, and log their teas and tasting notes.
- This publication is open to everyone, not just users of MyTeaPal.
Purpose
- Share tea stories and knowledge with the tea community
- Explore deeper significance of tea beyond beverage
- Facilitate cultural communications through tea
What Does it Mean to be a Writer?
- Your article will be shared with the MyTeaPal community in multiple channels.
- You can include links to your own blog or service, and even affiliate links, as long as it’s done tastefully and transparently.
- Your article are yours. We don’t lay any claim to them. You can cross-post them wherever you want. We just ask that — since we invest a lot of time in editing and promoting your stories — you don’t remove them from our publication once we’ve published them.
Publicity Channels
We will help you promote your article using the following channels:
- MyTeaPal Stories
- MyTeaPal Mobile App
- MyTeaPal Community
- MyTeaPal’s emails
- MyTeaPal’s social media
What Do I Write About?
It’s up to you, but please let us know the outline before you start writing. Here are some topics that you could consider:
- How did your tea journey first start?
- What are some unique experiences you could share with others about your tea journey?
- What’s the significance of tea to you?
- How have you incorporated tea into your life?
- How are you involved with the tea community and what have you contributed?
- What are your wishes and hopes for the tea community and for tea culture?
Submission
If you would like to have your article featured, please feel free to email hello@myteapal.com to let us know. Then, we will add you as a writer so that Medium will give you the option to submit the article to MyTeaPal Stories.
Note: When submitting articles, please do so in draft mode. Check out this link for more information.
Editing & Feedback
Our editors will read your submission, and if we think it’s promising, we’ll give you candid feedback as to how you can improve it. Then we’ll perform final editing on your story, publish it, then help you publicize it.
Suggestions
- Ask yourself: why? Why should the reader spend the time it takes to read your story? Will it add value to their tea journeys? Could it help them expand their understanding of tea culture? It’s good practice to consider the “why” before you sit down to write anything.
- Be authentic. People are reading your article because they are interested in learning about your personal experience and things that they don’t already know. Please do not promote yourself or insert intentional advertisements.
- Make it a reasonable length (typically 5–9 minutes). Each article should be at least five minutes. Anything shorter than five minutes isn’t really telling people very much and is probably too light in content for us to publish. In the other direction, anything over a nine-minute read tends to make the brain itch. If you’re getting close to nine, see if there’s a place you can break it into parts.
- Have a good headline. Your headline is very important. Spend time refining it. Generally speaking, headlines that are 80 characters or fewer work the best. Otherwise, the title will get truncated in news feeds when people share your article on social platforms.
- Use a header image. It may not seem necessary when you’re on your article’s page but when it’s listed with other articles in a list, not having an image is going to make a bad impression. The image isn’t necessarily for those reading your article, it’s for people who are browsing the list on the front page.
- Provide a place to pause. When an article is just a wall of text then people don’t absorb it very well. This is why experienced writers break an article up into chunks and have a header for each chunk, like the word “Suggestions” over this chunk. It’s not just easier to read, it also provides a place for the reader to stop if they need a tea break.
- Add some humor. Make it fun because tea doesn’t have to be serious. Even if you’re not being funny, use images… but make sure they make sense in the context of your article.
- Check your grammar. We suggest using the free version of Grammarly.