How To Get Our Vocal Stories Read

Introduction

Four years ago I wrote this piece, and it still has a few pertinent points.

I saw this article this morning and I know how the Creator feels:

The music is "Sunday Papers" by Joe Jackson, though you could substitute the World Wide Web for the title. Warning, some of the lyrics are less than subtle, and others nail it.

What Do We Want?

Although we are here to write and publish, we do want others to read what we share, and ideally, we want to not have to put too much effort into getting people to read our work.

The are Vocal Creator friends who seem to get 20 or 30 reads and comments when they publish a story, but three or four recent Vocal Top Stories have had only one comment or less when I checked them out, making me think Vocal are giving these writers a helping hand because usually a Top Story gets you noticed, but it is not in your hands.

Vocal do tell us it is up to us to promote our work, and ideally, building a supportive audience is the best way of doing that. However, they provide a couple of helpful guides here:

So, how do you build an audience?

Read other creators' stories, leave comments, and usually, you will get reciprocal reads. Subscribe to other creators, and again, you may get reciprocal subscriptions. These are a couple of pieces that I have written on the subject.

Also, look for Facebook Vocal Groups, join them, read other members' stories and share your own. This poem lists a few of my favourite groups:

I have over a thousand subscribers, but I don't know how many are still active, and I seem to usually get about five comments and ten hearts on my Vocal stories.

Join these groups, chat with members, and ask for advice and if you can help others.

We do have to think about why we are here. Vocal is the best publishing platform that I have been involved with, but just being on Vocal is unlikely to make you anything but coffee money, although it has been the most financially beneficial (for me) publishing platform I have been on. My blog has been going for twenty years and has maybe brought me a hundred pounds in, that is five pounds a year.

I am not here to primarily make money; I am here to share my creations, but I do want them to be seen, and that does take effort. Many talk about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), but if you are writing to get high in Google searches, you are not taking pleasure in your writing, but each to their own.

Many of my stories have many reads but little interaction from Vocal Creators, and they have not been Top Stories either, but it makes me very happy that a lot of people have read these stories, even though I don't know who they are:

This one is closing in on ten dollars from reads alone (admittedly over three years)

As you can see, 1,500 reads, seven hearts and four comments, so someone loves it but just not other Vocal Creators, and that is fine.

Then there is this one with only 2 hearts, 2 comments but close on 200 reads:

So you should not limit yourself to Vocal groups and sites to get your reads. Vocal pays you for every read, whether it is a Vocal member or not, so the world is your Oyster to find readers for your publications.

You just need to catch the eye of the reader with your title or story image.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading and I hope that you have found something helpful in here.