The Facebook Group Vocal + Assist

Many of us creators on Vocal Media belong to many Facebook groups for Vocal Media. While it is important to remember that Vocal does not run any of these groups, they play a crucial role in building community, sharing our work, and acquiring some reads. While there are several groups out there, I would like to highlight the group Vocal + Assist for this article.

Vocal + Assist was started by Rick Henry Christopher in March of 2022. He started this group to distract himself from the grief of the passing of his brother and his mother's failing health. He envisioned a group with equal opportunity for all creators in the group to be seen. All admins' current mission is to build and foster a sense of community. We even have a group chat called "Mood Boost" for creators to chat about anything, building each other up and offering support.

In Vocal + Assist, we offer many ways for you to share your work, engage in posts, and build community. You can start by joining here:

Post Your Pieces in the Group

According to the group rules, you can post stories up to four times daily. Interact with the people commenting on your posts, and do some reading.

Author of the Day

We feature an author of the day, share their profile, or even a specific piece they published. This is a different author each day and is done on a rotating basis, so eventually, everyone in the group will be an author of the day.

Monday's Alphabet Thread

A new letter will be posted each Monday for creators to share their work whose title begins with the assigned letter. This thread is a read-to-post thread, where if you post a story, you read a story or two!

Top Story Thread

Each Monday, we post a "Top Story" thread for that week. Anyone in the group who gets a "Top Story" designation from Vocal during that week is shared in this thread. If the admins miss any, people are encouraged to post their "Top Story" if we haven't.

New Members Post

Each month, we post a Welcome thread and share the names of all of our new members for that month to welcome them to the group.

Top Contributor

Each month, we post the "Top Contributor". This person has contributed with stories, likes, comments, and feedback from Facebook algorithms. The only catch is the top contributor cannot win two months in a row. This keeps the theme of helping everyone in the group get noticed.

Up and Coming Threads

We have some new threads in the works, too! One will be "What the Admins Are Reading", where each admin will post what they read in the group. As of right now, it will be posted on Fridays.

Another item in the works is Critique Rooms, where authors can go to get and give critiques on a piece.

And lastly, we will be working on a prompt challenge, where the prompt challenge winner will receive a five-dollar tip. More to come on both of those, so keep watching! Rest assured, all admins are constantly thinking of new ideas and opportunities to highlight the authors in our group.

Reciprocity

Our group works because we not only post our stories but we read each other's stories as well. As a writer, there are many benefits to reading other works. Reading may inspire you. You may learn a new word or two. You may see how characters are developed or how a plot twist is formatted—endless benefits to reading each other's work. I am attaching a link below to an article from the fabulous Judey Kalchik that explains reciprocity beautifully.

Thank you for learning more about Vocal + Assist. We would love to have you in our group!