The written form, 2023 edition
As a trained marketer and digital enthusiast, I have hit pretty much every social media platform there is over the years. Some with more success than others: I’m doing OK on Instagram, a little less so on Twitter, not to mention that I never quite got Snapchat. I’m too old for that is the excuse I keep brandishing: after all, I grew up before the Internet…
I am a writer at heart, however, whether or not that shows. And, as a writer, I have been wondering for years where to best, well, write on the web. I had all sorts of phases:
For a long while, it was Facebook. Short bits, sometimes one-liners, sometimes a little longer than that. Then everyone started to abandon that ship, not to mention that it was never really optimal for longer pieces;
I did have a Twitter phase back in the 140-character only heyday, but never quite felt that the product was polished enough to fully satisfy writers — and it was obviously only designed for short bits;
I naturally had all sorts of blogs, the first one being on Blogger (like most people), another one being on Tumblr (before porn took over) and now this one, aptly hosted by Squarespace. Blogging is clearly my favored option when it comes to writing, with a major caveat: you have to get people there, as it is not a social media platform per se (even though Tumblr came close at some point).
I also tried Medium (duh), which arguably crosses the social media line, but eventually got frustrated with that. At the end of the day, you don’t own it, no matter how extensive your writing is on there. And even the premium section does not look all that appealing: not sure how many contributors ever made money with that…
Then you have all the non-writing based platforms, from Instagram to LinkedIn (where writing is essentially a loss leader) all the way to Tiktok (before the US bans it). Some people write on those, especially on Instagram, but I don’t really feel comfortable doing it because a) they’re not quite designed for it, b) I feel most people will skim whatever I post, c) the UX for long form writing is not all there, which does make sense since that is not the point of these platforms, but I am an old-school, laptop-using, 10-digit kind of writer. So I use them merely to advertise my blog posts, i.e. share a link or something like to that effect. Always something…F
For years (at least), I have been asking myself if there couldn’t be a better way to cater to writers. Find a crossover between blogging and social media that is more satisfactory to writers than a Medium is, yet allows to generate traffic the way an Instagram does. Maybe I’ll try my hand at creating just that some day, if some 18-year old Swede working out of their mom’s basement doesn’t beat me to it…