How to Increase Your Exposure Online

So, you want to know how you can gain exposure and increase your popularity? Kindness, perseverence, follow-up, research, promotion, and patience are six main points you should focus on. At least, that is what has worked for me. Yes, you can write as many articles as you want and eventually someone is bound to read your material. However, if you are writing hundreds of fruitless articles, you need to examine what is wrong. I am going to use AC as an example, since you are probably looking for exposure here.

Kindness Pays:
Whenever you read an article, always leave comments. You want to be as polite as possible, even if the material has numerous flaws and errors. You can still point out these errors, without offending the author, by leaving helpful tips. First of all, readers will want to check out your material as a reference point. Sometimes, these authors do not necessarily agree with your observation, so they will look at your work for a comparison. Obviously, you never want to seem like a know-it-all, because there may be discrepancies in your research. So you should remember to thank those trying to help you out. Secondly, it is respectful to thank your readers. Since they took the time to read your work, you should try and make a point of reading their material too.

Perseverence:
This is my favorite characteristic of all. Perseverent people are the consummate strivers. They are the people that accept criticism well, making sure to place emphasis on the areas needing improvement. To me, perseverence is everlasting practice. The phrase, "practice makes perfect," is a lifestyle for the most perseverent people. Everyone knows perseverence pays off. Anything less leads down the rocky path of failure.

Follow-up:
This is an area you should always pay attention to. It is really easy to forget about the people that got you where you are. So, you should make sure you always check on the progress of your readers. Simply put, if someone happens to read an article you wrote earlier do not forget to keep up with them. This is an ideal way to keep your readership up, since they will continue checking your work out as well.

Research:
Research is a writer's best friend. The internet makes our lives a whole lot easier, since we will not have to spend as much time in a library. Google makes our jobs a thousand times easier. I love using Google as a reference point. When I am looking for a title, this is the place to start. I get a topic in mind, type in the first word, wait a couple of seconds for my results, and check how many sites pop up for that topic. One word is not going to cut it anymore, so you have to find phrases or expressions associated with your topic. As soon as you type in a phrase without any matches, you have your title. However, there are sources everywhere for research. Newspapers, blogs, online articles, television, and the list goes on and on.

Patience:
No one starts out with a huge following. This takes a lot of time and patience. You have to keep plugging away, doing the same routines repeatedly. One day you spend writing like crazy, another day you spend researching, and yet another you spend following up. Initially, you will not have a lot of following up. Keep your wits about you and keep doing what you are doing, unless you are doing nothing.

Promotion:
This is the most important step to gaining exposure. You have numerous options available to you. You just got an article written and published, what now? No matter where you are, you should always let people know about your article. AC provides tools to use for this purpose.

Links:
For example, maybe you have a myspace account. Go into a forum and place the given link to your article in the forum. Warning, do not just place a link there, make sure it will not bother anyone. If you do place a link without permission, it is considered spam. This goes for anywhere on the internet. In order to get your article out, make sure you have permission or someone has asked for your link. You should promote yourself within the AC forums, this is a great place to introduce yourselves, plus you can place a link to your Content Provider page. Personally, I prefer linking my CP over individual articles. This way, it gives the readers several different options to choose from.

Reading:
This is a perfect way to gain exposure. This ties into the kindness part above. You want to read and leave comments, whenever you have read an article. Other people will notice comments left on someones article, so every reader actually sees your comments. They can click on your image, next to the comment, which will take them to your CP page. So, you can see, how imperative it is to leave your comment.

Here is another example you can use.
I am going to start out on the AC home page. So, please follow along.

Check out the Featured Content. There are several articles to choose from, so I am going to choose one from the showcased articles for this example.

I click:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/214045/don_imus_a_true_american_hero.html?page=1

You will notice, I left a comment for Joe there, as well as voted on his material. Now, we will head back to the home page. Now we are going to click on the Featured news articles, different articles will appear.

We will click on:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/201440/caves_found_on_mars_best_hope_for_finding.html

I will repeat the process, numerous times. When you click on each of the links, check out their comments, you will see I leave a comment for everyone, as well as a rating. I will do this for each of the featured content areas. However, I am not going to use them as anymore examples here. Instead, I want to focus on adding another element. Remember, these are featured articles. How about reading articles from the people that left comments. So we will click on one of their pictures.

I notice Murielle Stephenson. So we will click on her picture. This takes us to her Content Provider page.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/12173/murielle_stephenson.html

Now, we will select an article she wrote, leaving a comment and rating for her article.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/213703/back_from_the_hospital.html

Okay, so you see how this works. We will head back to the home page. At the bottom of the page is a content spotlight. We will click on the undiscovered content and choose an article. I click on Mike Thomas's article.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/198335/how_to_make_your_previous_job_sound.html

As you can see, I once again have left a comment and rating for his article. Yes, this process is repetitive, but you will definitely notice how it helps you out. Now, we will change things up a bit. This time we are going to head to the community forum page. As a new content producer, you want to familiarize yourself with this area. This is where you want to introduce yourself to the rest of the community. You will want to click on the Welcome to AC button, where you will find a plethura of information at your fingertips. You will see a Need An Introduction area, this is a good area to get to know people from all over the AC community. Plus, you can get all kinds of tips and techniques to help you succeed with AC.

Good luck, everyone. I wish I could have an article completely filled with AC members and their articles, alas I can only do so much.