A Facebook Heart on a Vocal Story

The Initial Vocal Audience

While our Vocal Facebook Groups are a wonderful audience and great for getting some reads, appreciation and feedback for your post, you need to find audiences external to even these wonderful groups if your want more reads (and therefore more money from Vocal). This is just about a minor observation on two album reviews,

Spreading My Wings With Van Morrison

I reviewed “Astral Weeks” by Van Morrison and posted it in a Van Morrison group that I joined. I got a great response from it with lots of positive comments, so I thought I would follow it up with a review of the follow-up album “Moondance”. If you click on the album names it will take you to the actual posts.

While the second review had some great comments again there were a few complaints about a comparison of the two albums although I was only saying that “Moondance” was better received because of its more standard structure, and the two are both absolute masterpieces.

At the moment each post has over a hundred likes, mostly hearts, and between them around sixty comments. The number of comments seem to reflect the number of reads and engagements that my stories got in the group, and this is probably true in the Vocal Facebook Groups for any posts you might share in them.

Vocal Reads But Not As Many Vocal Hearts

By sharing them externally to Vocal you will get reads if you hit the right groups although not Vocal Hearts, they only come from Vocal members, though I have a few where the Vocal Hearts are double what the Vocal read count and these are on actual stories, so I am not sure if some Vocal members think that dropping in and hearting counts as a read, although there are areas of Vocal that have problems with numbers, especially the Stats list.

My biggest post with external reads is “The Invincibles” which I shared on a Preston North End site but the reads stopped when it was moved from the main thread to a subordinate one. You can read it below.

Then my tenth most read is my one on Nigel Blackwell of Half Man Half Biscuit which I posted on either the home page or the lyric project site, I actually found it on the latter after a Google search here. This has 115 reads, but 8 Vocal hearts and this will happen when you share your stories externally, but you will still get paid the same.

Search Engine Optimisation

I see people eulogising SEO but this often means compromising your writing to get noticed, but if you don’t get it right you are compromised with no benefit. I have tried two experiments in this, one hit 1100 reads the other got 33 and I am still not sure why one worked and the other didn’t.

Conclusion on Vocal Hearts and Reads

Self-promotion is a hassle because it involves doing something that is not actually creative. While our Vocal Facebook Groups provide a solid encouraging base they will not give you a huge amount of reads.

I think all of us have a primary focus of creating and Vocal is a very good platform for that, but when you sign up they tell you that it is up to you to promote your work.

You will only get exposure on Vocal if you get a Top Story, are among the Challenge winners or are featured in a Spotlight.

The Vocal Facebook Groups were an absolute godsend for me. Without them, I would have had virtually no audience or support.

❤️ 🧡 💛 💚 The Groups Who I Love ❤️ 🧡 💛 💚

The Vocal Creators Support Group

Vocal Social Society

Vocal Writing Prompts

Vocal Cafe

Vocal Creators Social Media Support

Vocal & Medium Poetry Writers Outlet