3 WRITESPIKE FEATURES THAT YOU SHOULD BE USING

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Submitted Date 04/06/2019
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So, you’ve done it! You’ve joined a writing community. You’ve bravely transferred content from your private stash to a public forum and even let yourself become intrigued by a few new writers. While exploring stories, poetry, articles, and music, you’ve likely noticed a few features that help members of the WriteSpike community interact with one another. These include spiking stories, adding comments, and bookmarking posts. However, a few less prominent features may have slid under your radar. Here’s a brief outline of three WriteSpike features that you should be using.

Customize your search

You can opt to have WriteSpike send you weekly digests to get an overview of what’s new on the site. However, some days you may just want to snuggle up with a warm cup of tea and browse content at your leisure. Whether you’re looking for a helpful how-to article or a stirring creative work, you can use four features on the Discover page (writespike.com/discover/) to narrow your search.

*

1: Use the first dropdown to search by story post type: text, audio, or video.

2: WriteSpike allows authors to categorize using story tags. With these tags in place, you can easily search content by genre (article, book, fiction, poetry, non-fiction, etc.) or subject (current events, health, humor, romance, sports – to name a few).

3: Change this dropdown from Newest to Trending or Most Spiked to see which topics are getting the most buzz. You may even find inspiration for your next post.

4: Use the search engine to run specific word searches.

*the numbers in red do not appear by the actual dropdown menus

TIP: Make sure to use all relevant story tags when posting your content. You can also edit stories you've already posted to add tags.

 

Highlight text

When reading a text post, scroll over a sentence or phrase to access WriteSpike's unique highlight text feature. There are 7 icons to choose from.

Pencil icon: Click this icon to quote the highlighted text and leave a related comment for the author. As writers ourselves, we know the difference between reading general feedback, like “great story” or a heartwarming comment, such as “you really captured the spirit of it with this line.”

Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest icons: Of course, we’re all familiar with these social media giants. Use these icons to share your or another author’s post on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.

Message: Click the thought bubble to share content with another WriteSpike member through a personal message.

Email: Share posts with friends by email or invite followers to view your work on WriteSpike.

Private Note: Highlight a phrase you’d like to remember or take action on, and leave yourself a helpful note for later. Only you will see the note.

TIP: Social media platforms like Facebook allow you to view insights on your followiers so you can to determine the best time to share your content.

 

Link to YouTube

Perhaps you’ve already used the Write page (writespike.com/write) to post text, video, and audio files, but have you noticed the fourth icon? Along with the three story types that let you post content directly, you can also click the html icon to embed YouTube videos.

If you’ve already uploaded performances of your stories or songs on YouTube, embed them on WriteSpike and increase your following. As with all story types, you’ll need to choose an image that represents your post. It could be a still frame from the video or a promotional picture.

TIP: In general, I recommend adding post titles to your picture to attract more listeners and/or readers.

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