Vocal Refinements

Writing on Vocal has been a fantastic experience for me. The platform is excellent for writers to gather and offer advice and encouragement. There isn’t much I would change about Vocal as it is now, but there are a few things that I would add. Items I think would make things better all around. I will discuss these shortly.

First, Vocal has been a lifeline for me. It has given me a platform to publish my nonsense, making things easier to share with family and friends. I’ve always entertained my family with stories, and by using Vocal, I can continue communicating with my family, even though we live states apart and don’t see each other often. Plus, publishing on Vocal has given me such a feeling of accomplishment. It’s also saved me from so much boredom.

One of the first things I’d love to see added is the ability to see who follows you by clicking on the followers' number on the stats page. This addition would help with networking so you can double-check that you follow all your followers. One of the things I do on Vocal is read all posts by people I follow. I do this before looking at the Top Story or Latest Story section. Whoever follows me deserves to be followed back and networked with the most.

Another thing that would be nice is getting a notification when someone stops following us. Include a message as to why the follower stopped following. Adding this to the site could help writers know what to improve to keep their followers. There isn’t anything wrong with unfollowing, but there is a massive problem with not knowing why we lost a follower. It would be nice to know who stopped following, but I understand why the names of those who stopped following are not shared.

I would also love to see more writing tools in the publishing faze. As it is now, we can not center or right align our work. We also need to be able to choose different writing fonts. These tools would improve the looks of some of our posts so much. I would also love to see the toolbar at the top of the work area, not a floating piece appearing when we select a word or phrase. This stationary bar would make things much easier when preparing our posts for publication.

It would also be nice to see an article from the platform explaining how they chose the top story. As it is, it is hard to tell what criteria the platform uses to decide who makes it to the top. Until the platform does add this, many will continue demanding it. It would not hurt to get this out of the way now so that everyone can concentrate on other questions.

More challenges. Daily, weekly and monthly challenges. I can’t stress more challenges enough. We writers always need more challenges. More writing prompts. More, more, more. The writing prompt inspires us to try better. One can not have enough challenges.

These are all the things I would like to see added to Vocal. Each one can make this site an even better place than it already is. Adding more tools for more efficient writing and networking is always great. More challenges would encourage more writers to write their best. It never hurts to be more transparent, either. I hope to see some, if not all, of these suggestions implemented one day.

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Author’s Note:

This article in no way reflects the beliefs, wants, or needs of all writers on vocal. This article is meant to share the Author’s thoughts only.