3 Days Writing on Vocal Again — Here’s How It’s Going.

The X Dilemma

I recently started taking X (formerly Twitter) seriously and the experience has been rocky, to say the least. You see people churning out piece after piece, getting thousands of engagements, racking up followers and making money in the process by selling digital products in the process.

I’ve tried to take it seriously a few times, posting sporadically for a few days and then nothing for the weeks that followed.

Trust me when I say I know how growing on platforms works. I’ve done it video, had a few viral moments on Youtube, grew my account to just over 8,000 subscribers, and my tiktok to almost 50k before my account got suspended for no reason at all.

I know how this works and I preach it regularly — show up consistently, create valuable content, give it time, and hopefully find your tribe. This is the playbook.

For some reason, I just couldn’t follow that playbook for Twitter. Every tweet felt forced. I couldn’t convey my thoughts in 280 characters — it felt like I was leaving a chunk out that made the whole thing make sense.

On top of that, the constant algorithm changes didn’t help — don’t post links, certain words will get you banned, write short tweets, be authentic, be yourself but platitudes will get you more engagements, oh no, write more Threads. These made me want to pull my hair out.

As much as I love Elon’s work, I really think X is missing the mark on getting discoverability right for its creators.

These days, I’ve not felt like making videos, even though it’s my most comfortable platform. I needed a lot of time to set up, edit, and create thumbnails, keywords etc., all of which I just don’t have enough time for these days — and is now being reflected in the quality of the final product. So I needed a new way to keep creating and expressing my thoughts.

Enter Vocal.

I’ve always loved writing here. I published a few posts here and there some years back, but nothing happened. So I’ve decided to start writing again on the platform, and then repurpose the same content for Vocal.

I always knew I could write, it just felt like a task — a hard one every time I tried. But a few days ago I sat down, plugged in my AirPods, and wrote two articles. Just like that. Even after I finished writing, I was still hesitant to publish them because I felt like they weren’t polished enough.

Reading Show Your Work

As I was watching YouTube, a few days ago, I saw a review of the book ‘Show Your Work’ by Austin Kleon. In the book, Austin talks about building an audience and creating an income by consistently sharing our work online. One of the points I held on to that finally gave me the courage to publish my posts was that people are not interested in the polished finished product as much as we think, they yearn for the process. This resonated with me so much.

A few moments later I hit publish on the posts I’d written — two of them.

Since then, I’ve written 6 more, and to my surprise, one of the posts that I repurposed for Vocal was hand-selected as a top story in the Journal category. The feedback was incredible, some even going as far as saying I have a talent for writing. What?! Me?!. Read it below.

https://vocal.media/journal/i-found-success-on-you-tube-then-i-walked-away

The Stats

The moment of truth. The stats. So, I’ve been consistently writing here for 3 days, published 6 posts, and honestly, I’m not sure if the new-found motivation is sustainable. But I intend to keep going for as long as I can sustain it. Maybe I should slow down? Okay, we’ll see…

On Medium, I have 17 views so far, with one new subscriber. Not a lot, but I love to see the bars get taller each day. My goal is to publish at least one post a day for the next month, then maybe I’ll extend it beyond that. We’ll see.

On vocal, the final numbers have yet to come in, but on one post that was selected as a top story, I’ve got 32 likes, 10 comments, and gained 9 new subscribers as I type this.

The views and likes don’t matter as much as the comments. The people who validated my writing ability, those who thanked me for sharing authentically, and those who resonated with the story. It felt good, I’ll be honest.

Looking forward

The plan is to keep writing, sharing and inspiring. The goal is to share everything I know about building a brand online and monetizing effectively through digital products. Who doesn’t like to make more money?

I feel like I’ve found the perfect way to express my thoughts without hindrance, using words to express my deepest emotions and passing across knowledge in its most raw form. If you find my posts helpful, I’d like to engage with you in the comments. Please don’t hesitate.

I teach people how to build a brand online and earn real income by monetizing their brand in my private community — Digital Mastery — You can check it out here.

Thanks for coming back to read and I’ll talk to you again tomorrow..