Goal of the day: 407 words. Written: 550.
What now? And now's a good time to choose which platform to put your content on! We'll talk more about content formats later, but a full-fledged blog will fit everything you need - letters, illustrations, sounds and videos.
(Or even a shop, if you want to set one up.)
If you have a Facebook profile, and it is likely that half of the Lithuanian population does, one of the most logical steps would seem to be to create your own Facebook page or to make it public.
After all, it seems so simple - you write the texts on your wall...
...And then all your new friends see them!
A large number of Lithuanian content creators do so. Andrius Tapinas, Ilze Butkutė, Beata Tiškevič, even Dalia Grybauskaitė and other heroes of our society do not go far from Facebook. Even if they write and create something elsewhere, it remains a kind of a side job, the link of which is shared on Facebook.
But I'm convinced that Facebook is not such a good platform for publishing quality, long-lasting (What else do you want? Poor and short-lived?) content.
Here's why:
Content on Feisbuck is transient. It gets lost on a shared wall (yes, even your friends don't see all your personal posts), it gets lost in groups, it gets lost because the flow keeps pushing everything down. Basically, content older than a day is instantly forgotten, because no sane person drives that far down the wall when notifications of newer posts keep appearing. You can try posting a small entry and see how many comments it gets the next day.
As for finding, Google doesn't track Feisbuck posts. Or rather, it doesn't show Facebook at all unless you've entered a very precise search keyword. For example, if you try to type in "how to cook an egg", it will throw up everything but Facebook. And that's how you get all those people looking to the Omniscient One for answers. Google also generally treats blogs better, even better than Google+. It considers blogs to be of higher quality.
...Feisbuk itself can't find its posts. If you try to search for your posts in the search box on Facebook, you won't find them. Let alone other people's posts. Similarly, if you were to search for pages on a topic, you'd only find them if they mention it in their title. That's why some women call themselves Gel Nail Polishers.
Facebook content is not valuable text. It's not psychologically valuable, because gold in a pile of junk inevitably looks worse than on an empty podium... And it's not valuable because there is no text formatting, no handy links, no way of presenting the content in a distinctive way at all on Facebook. You can play with the text if you want, but it's like sweeping pages into sentences - not as good as chiselling sentences into marble.
Facebook can always grab you by the balls. Metaphorically. And you can't help it if it happens. All the content you put on Feisbuk belongs to him (or at least he controls the links to your content). And if one day the founders decide that "I've put it up, let's get the bucks and go"... then there's nothing you can do to change it, and everything you've created will go down the drain, because you don't have the content in the first place.
Extra: Facebook is not safe. If someone tries to spam your group or profile with loan adverts, you won't get rid of them easily. If someone hijacks your profile, there's no quick way to regain power. These things don't happen often, but they do happen. And even to people who don't collect viruses.
"In my opinion, it is best to have both a Facebook account and a website. Otherwise, you might end up like me - I lost my Facebook and all my readers after the hacking."
- Inga Aukštakojienė, after her profile was hacked this December.
Creating a blog on other platforms can avoid these problems. You own the content, you can do what you want with it - it will last. Once you've created it, you'll enjoy it for five years.
Taking tea in a cup,
Daniel