Interested in Increasing the Number of Views on Your Vocal Stories?

A week or two ago, I shared a milestone in a few Vocal Groups on Facebook: More than 600 reads in less than two months. The congratulations keep rolling in to this day and the number of visits to my stories continue increasing.

I love the Vocal community. Most of its members are thoughtful, caring and supportive. It is very rare to meet a group of people who want others to succeed like that. In a social media world rife with negativity and trolling, it is very refreshing!

As much as I like sharing my poetry and photography with all of you, I also believe in supporting fellow creators. When I worked as a social media coach, I focused on indie artists, solo-preneurs, and small business owners. I also released a series of books aimed at helping indie authors and artists to figure out the best social media strategy, improve their blogging experience, and promote themselves better. A few of them, I co-authored with my friend and business partner David Ellis.

I want to continue helping you as much as I can, of course. So, if you are struggling to build your readership on Vocal, today's post is for you. Here are a few tips that have worked like a charm for me. So, they will work for you.

Warning: The tips below require work. ;-)

Aim for Quality, Not Quantity

I started blogging in 2005. At the time, there were much fewer blogs and writing platforms around. It was already hard to get traffic then. But now? The challenge is 40 or 50 times worse! Millions of posts are published every single day, most of which are of very poor quality, making it harder for the good ones to be found.

If you write to please everybody, you will never get anywhere. Sure, you may see an occasional spike in traffic, but it will come from visitors who are very diverse. Before you know it, you will find yourself trying to create constantly to replicate the fluke success; and writing will become a chore. Or, worse still, you will experience the nastiest burnout in your life.

You want to be successful? Write great content that helps and/or entertains your ideal audience. Be consistent and focus on the topics you know well or that you can back up with solid sources and reliable information.

Be Active in Facebook Groups!

Like I mentioned in a recent interview (thank you to Lisa A Lachapelle for the wonderful opportunity!), Vocal is not built to cater to outside audiences. So the chances of you being found in search engines are limited.

Luckily, we have wonderful Vocal Groups on Facebook! (See a long list in E.A. Wilcox's article here.) But those will only be wonderful for you if you play the game and participate.

Do not just share your links and leave. Read other people's stories and engage with them. You have to be willing to give much more than you take.

Also, do not drop your links under people's posts without a short comment, and especially if you have never engaged with them. It is rude.

Look at Your Stats

What stories get the most views and hearts? It is a very basic way to understand what might resonate the most with your readers. Try writing more stories in that vein and continue checking your stats.

Pay Attention to Feedback

Unfortunately, Vocal does not give us access to detailed stats beyond hearts and views. So it is almost impossible to know specifically who reads us.

How do we fill the gap? Enter the Facebook Groups I have just mentioned!

But how? Very simple! Pay attention to the comments people leave you. Write them down if needed, and highlight the recurring words, ideas, or thoughts used.

For example, if people keep saying that they can relate to a specific story because they had similar experiences, then you have the start of a lead. This is the kind of things your ideal audience may be looking for.

Share Your Stuff Widely

Stop limiting yourself. Being shy will never get you anywhere.

Go beyond Facebook Groups. Share and re-share on your Facebook page, Facebook profile, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Ello, etc. Re-post your content on Medium. (You can see my page here.) Create a newsletter so you can reach subscribers directly in their inboxes and remind your social media followers of what they may have missed because of the algorithms in place.

For example, Vocal does not have any RSS feed capability, so I cannot automatically display my posts on my blog. And people have to look at their feed on Vocal to actually be able to find them. Not good at all. But it doesn't mean that I cannot make things happen on my end.

So, what did I do? I recently re-opened my old newsletter and now include links to my Vocal posts in each email I send. I also share the newsletter widely. Here is an example: https://haikushack.substack.com/p/12-1.

And why not create a Facebook Group linked to your page? Since the visibility of Facebook pages is just about 1 or 2% to 1%, groups now seem to be the best (and only) option on the social network, mostly because members are notified whenever new things are shared.

I created my own group recently, and re-share my content from my page. So far, the experiment has been very positive.

Before I Go...

One thing I urge you to do, if you haven't already, is to figure out who your audience is. Without that very important piece of the puzzle, your strategy will remain faulty and incomplete. And without a good strategy, your content will never take off.

Feel free to check out my two posts about strategy and reader engagement. They should steer you in the right direction.

That's it for today! Thank you for reading!

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Cendrine Marrouat is a writer, photographer, podcaster, blogger, anthology editor, and the co-founder of Auroras & Blossoms and A Warm Cup of Cozy. She has authored and co-authored more than 40 books, including The Train: A Short Story (2023), In Her Own Words: A Collection of Short Stories & Flashku (2022), After the Fires of Day: Haiku Inspired by Kahlil Gibran & Alphonse de Lamartine (2021), Rhythm Flourishing: A Collection of Kindku and Sixku (2020), Walks: A Collection of Haiku (2019-2020), and In the Silence of Words: A Three-Act Play (2018).

Cendrine's work has appeared in many publications. She is the creator of the Sixku, Flashku, Sepigram, and Reminigram; as well as the co-creator of the Kindku, Pareiku, Vardhaku, and Hemingku.