Facebook Groups and Email Lists Aren’t Enough
Sharing our stories and clapping for each others’ articles is great, but we need a more interactive environment to share our writings.
The Status Quo
I do use Facebook, as well as Twitter, and both are useful platforms, but they’re not enough, especially in the way that they’re currently run. For the most part, these groups simply act as places for authors to share their own articles with other authors, in the hopes of getting claps, likes, etc. But if we’re going to be successful, we’re going to need to be more interactive, and we’re going to need to reach a broader audience.
Mailing lists are great, but they are fairly archaic in terms of internet technology. I won’t say that we should stop using them, and honestly I think people should be using them more often. Email is still one of the most surefire ways of communicating with an audience, but there are other options, and it doesn’t seem like our community is using them.
The Way Forward
I vote for real time communication platforms, like Discord, Telegram, and Keybase. I personally like Keybase the best. Unfortunately Discord seems to be the most used platform, followed by Telegram. Keybase still needs to grow its user base. And so I’m suggesting that authors on Medium, as well as publish0x, start a Discord server, and eventually some other services, to connect authors together, but also to connect with readers.
The Server
I’ve already started a Discord server, under the Freelance Journalism Alliance banner, if anyone is interested in joining it. However, in order for it to be really successful, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to inviting fellow authors. We should invite our readers. These platforms can facilitate real time communication, AMAs, sharing of links, giving and getting feedback, etc.
Here’s the invite link: https://discordapp.com/invite/xWmebPb. Please check it out, and hang out for a while as the server grows.
Of course, as the server grows, there will need to be stricter moderation, authors and readers will get different privileges to share links, and multiple channels will have to be created to keep content organized, but that’s fine. If the server grows to need such things, it’ll mean that it’s growing as it’s supposed to grow.
Please Help
Over time, it would be great to add more platforms, and network them together through a bot or some other means, but for now, the Discord server is a good start. If the writing community works together to create one or a few solid Discord servers, and other real time communication groups, I think we can really improve our reach. We can interact with a much broader community of fellow authors, and at least as importantly, a broader community of readers.
