Writing for a Cause and Getting it Read

When I started writing for Associated Content it was because I had a story to tell, come to think of it I had many stories to tell, and so I did that. I also experimented a bit with writing for various assignments which was a fun new challenge, though still not quite as fulfilling. Here is my story about how I increased the readership of a certain cause that I write about frequently, which is Multiple Sclerosis.

Choosing A Worthy Cause
For me this was an easy but hard step, I do a lot of fighting for or spreading awareness about different causes. Most of these causes affect me in some way, for instance as a survivor of a "Brat Camp" type facility as a child I am passionate about regulating and exposing the abuses of these places. As a woman who has had an abortion at some point I am very passionate about Women's Rights as well. As a Mother I care about Parent's Rights and so forth. For me what rose to the top cause-wise though was my being a "Mom with MS". I chose this cause because it is the biggest one in my life right now, though I was diagnosed more than eight years ago I have had the toughest year yet in the last 12 months with dreadful relapses, and that led to my exploring the topic and finding resources.

Finding Like Minded People
Connecting with the community, in this case especially the online communities for your cause is crucial. I looked and looked for a community consisting of Moms with MS that was active and where I could discuss things with other moms and I came up empty handed. While I was looking though I signed up for a huge number of Multiple Sclerosis related sites which fell short but I was able to find a way to use these that I will tell you about later. I was lucky because as I was looking for this kind of community I realized that certain opportunities were opening up before me and I was able to get the domains MomsWithMS.com as well as .org and use them to attract other Moms with MS to join me. On the .com domain I created a "Ning" community which I was able to direct my domain toward for a small fee. I also promptly registered a twitter account dedicated to this cause.

Collecting & Spreading Resources
When I was looking for a community, it was because I wanted to hear what other people had learned, where they got their information and how well it worked for them. I find myself constantly being directed to wonderful resources, and since I have a twitter account called 'momswithms' which is very obvious in it's focus I use it to subscribe to a very wide range of Multiple Sclerosis sites and information resources that often have really good information which I retweet. Doing this has already started a chain reaction because other similar organizations, who are hungry for up to date research and first hand experiences in this area, subscribe to, and retweet the content that I provide. I collect the information to disperse the information in other words.

Write Relevant Articles
I hope this is an obvious point, but make sure you are writing articles that are relevant and interesting to someone who is into your cause. Find interesting connections others haven't identified and/or share experiences you have had which bring human interest to your articles. More on what to do with them coming up.

Make Connections Everywhere
If you do create a site, blog or community like I did finding relevant sites to exchange links with is important as well. Go to all of the sites for the resources and communities that had information relevant to your cause and add their site to yours, then kindly ask them to do the same. It will improve the SEO for your site and identity as the founder as well as attract members who might not have otherwise known you existed. Don't just link with any site though, pick the relevant ones. Likewise subscribing to relevant twitter accounts and facebook groups is a great way to get good content to mix with yours for the next step.

Remember To Spread Your Articles Around
Like I mentioned before, any and all articles and case studies that I find relevant to "Moms with MS" get tweeted which includes articles I find or write. I post a link to my article that usually has a title including the phrase "Mom with MS" or "Moms with MS" so that it gets good SEO recognition both in and out of Associated Content and of course the other articles tend to come up in the nearby content queries at the upper left and bottom of the screen leading to more clicks as well. Also I encourage other Moms with MS who I have met through the community site to also write about their experiences if they are so inclined and this helps them to make a few extra bucks as much as it does me because the more people you help, the more people are watching what you do leading to more exposure for everyone.

Become a Featured Contributor
I highly recommend applying to be a Featured Contributor in the areas you write in most frequently. I have only recently done this and am already seeing a great increase in the exposure of my articles especially since the section I chose first "Diseases and Conditions" has been getting attention because of the recent Health Care Reform and more assignments come up that are exclusively offered to the contributors in different topics.

Last but not least...
Remember to follow people who you admire, I like subscribing to other people's article feeds by becoming a fan of people who write about things I'm interested in (like homeschooling) and find myself more and more motivated to keep writing when I get little alerts on my phone all day that something has been published.

I mentioned before how I used the profiles for the communities which were close but didn't quite have what I needed earlier, and those came very much in handy when I edited the profiles. I updated my email, website, and about me information to mention the community I had created and this led to a huge number of recruits to my site. Please understand this is not meant to be a way to steal sites members but a way to provide them with another complimentary resource. In my case there was no site that I could find anywhere, even sub groups of forums which were exclusively dedicated to the peer-support of Moms supporting Moms with MS. Once you find your niche and it is something that excites you enough to put this much effort, it will grow. In my case it has already reached close to 400 members on the site, 18 local teams under our 1 national team for the National MS Society walk that is coming up, and at least a couple of members streaming in every few days.

So to put it in one rambling sentence; write, title it well, tweet it, then follow and retweet other relevant content so that people will subscribe to your tweets and read your articles too.