Associated Content 101

When it comes to Associated Content producing quality work is one-third of the job description. As a content producer, you also need to be focused on increasing your page views as well as building an audience. Content producing is a balanced effort between the three practices and it is the content producer who is great at all three practices that has the best experience at producing content for Associated Content.

In marketing, branding is part of the genre where companies establish themselves with their consumers based on a slogan, pitch, or creative design. Coke for many years was the real thing. Pepsi was the right one. For Lay's potato chips you cannot eat just one. For Skittles their slogan is taste the rainbow. Then you have others who have chosen other methods to distinguish themselves from their peers. The goal of marketing and branding is helping the consumer to distinguish you from the product that looks just like you down the aisle.

Companies that are effective at setting themselves apart have an easier time of building an audience and subsequently retaining them as consumers. Those that struggle with brand recognition continually fight the battle to prove to a new consumer that their product is better while never retaining that customer after the first trial. Writing for Associated Content has some of the same variables attached to it. When you write you are competing with the world for the attention and time of those people searching for information about a particular topic. If you are only good enough to be read one time you will continue to have to find new people to be interested in what you are writing about. On the other hand, if you take the time to build an audience people will stop by and see what you are doing even when you are not advertising that you have produced any new content.

This is called brand loyalty. No one does brand loyalty like Wal-Mart. Everyone knows you cannot find anything any cheaper than you can at Wal-Mart. And so consumers, when they travel, look for a Wal-Mart just like they do a restaurant because there are loyal to the brand that is Wal-Mart. You must build a similar level of credibility as Wal-Mart has with its consumers. Wal-Mart does not need to publish an advertisement in the Sunday paper to get people to barge through their doors on Sunday evenings. It happens automatically people because consumers know there are bargains to be had at America's discount store.

The success of Wal-Mart at building an audience must be something that any content producer for Associated Content must aspire to capture. How you capture it will go a long way to how much time you have to spend increasing your page views and fighting to reach new consumers. When you build an audience your audience becomes your marketing department or evangelist and spreads the word about a particular article or series that you have worked on. When they are working for you, you can occupy your time doing other things. And that makes you a more productive content producer.

Building an audience must shaped around a system that works for you. There are five pillars or aspects of building an audience that are critical. I used an acronym to communicate them for the purpose of this article.

Volume

Content producers have to produce more than one article every two or three weeks. When you are slack as far as writing and publishing new material you allow new readers to get enamored with the writings of other producers and web sites and you never bring them back to you for you to reach them again. It is akin to Wal-Mart only selling one item and then hoping that the next time they display an item the customer will come by simply because they are in the neighborhood. It does not work like that. Wal-Mart has Target, K-Mart, and Costco among other stores with whom they compete for the same audience. A serious content producer should publish between ten and fifteen articles a month. That does not sound like a lot but until you develop the discipline of writing, it can be an arduous task.

Interest

The worst thing in the world is to spend two hours writing something no one is interested in. That is like you opening a soul food restaurant in the middle of Little China and expected to outperform those restaurants native to the culture. When you write about topics that have little to no interest you have wasted time that could have been spent on material that had more interest attached to it. Before you begin any new articles Google the subject and see how many searches have been done in the last thirty days. That will tell you how many people are interested in what you are thinking of writing about.

Excitement

In marketing when a person walks through the front doors of Wal-Mart there is this rush of anticipation, a caffeine-like rush. This is derived from a level of excitement or euphoria that consumers attach to spending money in places that they enjoy. In your writing or content production for Associated Content, readers have to finish your articles excited and be equally enthused when they hear or read that you have published new material. If a person sees that you have a new article in the lifestyle section and there is no buzz in their head or excitement generated, you have just lost a potential member of your audience.

Win Them

The moment a reader finishes an article and is compelled to comment or email you about what you have written you know you just won them over. The chances are extremely high that in the next two to three weeks they will revisit your content producer page to see if you have published anything new. Additionally, they will oftentimes take the next step and subscribe if you have proven over the course of four to five articles that your content is must-read material. Win them over continually and your audience will reach critical mass before you know it.

Spend the Time

You may not think it is worth it but taking the time to visit the pages of other content producers is equally beneficial. Additionally, investing the time in your area of expertise and connecting with other writers, experts, and various bulletin boards and pushing your material and your expertise is another way to build your audience. Wal-Mart has more research and data on the buying habits of its consumers than any other company in the world. They know when people shop. They know why the shop. They also know what they shop for at different times. Such information is critical for them to push products, increasing sales and revenues for them. With Associated Content, people will arrive at an article because they found it, because you invited them, or because someone else linked them. However they get there is irrelevant. What is important is that you get them there. Spend the time learning the habits of your readers. What bulletin boards do they read? What writers do all of them read consistently? Can you publish a blog and pinpoint some things that you are recognizing and then push them to a recently published article? That is how you build an audience.

Associated Content is a dynamic opportunity for people with something to say. There is no point is spending the time writing if no one is going to read what you have written about. To avoid this, invest ninety minutes a day to building an audience and see what happens. Your audience can catapult you over the top in page views and referrals. Do the hard work and build your audience.