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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Glipho: What it is and Why I Love it


Glipho is a new social media site specifically geared toward bloggers and writers. If you're like me, you just thought another social media site? How many of these does a person need?  That's exactly how I approached Glipho, but I had to give it a decent chance because I was asked to check it out for work.

And I fell in love with it.

I've been on Glipho a little more than 3 weeks. And I already have 122 followers. Of course, there is more to social media than followers. . .

Appearance and Feeds

Glipho basically looks like Pinterest, but instead has blog posts. They have a trending writer section and a trending post section. And you don't have to be the most popular person to be featured as a trending writer, which is nice.

Users have three feeds on their homepage. One feed shows the posts done by those we follow. One feed shows all posts published on Glipho. And the last one, the feed that really makes Glipho different than other social media sites, shows every post on topics you follow. For example, if I follow the topic "Writing Tips" every post published by anyone that falls in that category will appear on that feed.

So, if I write about Harry Potter, then whoever is following Harry Potter will see that post. This feature helps people with the same interests find and follow each other. And it helps users connect with the right audience.

The People

On Glipho, I'm reaching different people than those I have on Facebook, Twitter, and my blog. All of the users have been polite, supportive, respectful, and just downright kind. There's no gnashing teeth or destructive attitudes. I've never found a social media site with people like this. I've already befriended dozens of writers, and readers.

The team behind the site is also very helpful and willing to answer others' questions.


Beta

Glipho is still in beta (it's only been around for a few months), so it's not completely polished yet.

I'd like to see a badge or box of some sort that I can code easily into my blogger blog someday.

So How Many Social Media Sites Do We Need?

I don't know. But if you are a writer, never spend more time on social media than writing. True, social media can help your writing career, but it can only help so much. The most important part of your writing career are the stories you write, not how many tweets you've tweeted.

Pick a few favorite social media platforms and stick with those. Glipho just happens to be one of mine. (And if you are already blogging, it just takes a few extra minutes to post the same post there.)

You can check out my Glipho profile here. Or check out Glipho's homepage.

Someday I'm going to do a blog post (or rant) about social media in the writing world and how important or unimportant (time wasting) it is.

Let me know if you try out Glipho.

1 comment:

  1. Glipho is definitely fun for its user friendly interface and striking colour (orange and black) that makes it look classy! I feel social media is important to get more human connection but of course writing is more important than anything

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