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Content Careers in New Media

Published: Mar 10, 2009

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Content Creation: Writers, web producers and community managers are primarily responsible for the creation of content, including articles, interactive applications and community-generated material. Most content-based web sites' business models now depend on a mix of advertising and subscription, so new content is always needed to keep them growing.

Marketing: Marketers work closely with both the sales force and the creators of content to think of new creative and cost-effective ways to market a web site's content and services. Successful marketing campaigns are based on Return On Investment (ROI). The return in sales has to exceed every dollar spent on marketing.

Selling: This function is not left to the sales force alone. Since the collapse of the dot coms in 2000, surviving web sites have made sales the supreme priority for all positions, because the company's survival depends on it. No, this does not mean web producers or designers are making cold calls, but sales is in the forefront of their thinking. When choosing between two different pieces of content, web producers will always favor the one they think will attract more users to the site.

Community Research: The beauty of the web lies in immediate feedback from the community. Comments, traffic to different parts of the site, surveys and discussion boards are all constantly monitored to tailor the content to the target community's tastes, enhancing the overall marketing and sales efforts.

Design: Creating web pages is probably not part of your job description if you are a writer or a sales rep, but learning basic HTML and Photoshop will help make you more self-reliant, vastly expanding your opportunities and making your content or sales efforts that much more effective.

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