Daniel Scocco of ‘Daily Blog Tips‘ is not only one of the most influential “bloggers who write about blogging”; he also hosts some of the most interesting collaborative blogging activities.

I had earlier participated in a collaborative blogging project hosted by him where 48 bloggers had shared their blogging mistakes.

Now, I have submitted ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ in Daniel’s ‘Blogging Idol’ contest where 108 bloggers are competing to see who can increase their feed count by the most numbers in the month of July.

If you aren’t aware yet, ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ is my year-long book-as-a-blog experiment in why we choose to consume, or not.

On March 23, tired of buying and owning too many things that I didn’t need, I decided to stop buying things I didn’t need, go off consumption for a year. Then, on July 4, realizing that not buying things was not enough, I decided to give away almost everything I own.

I have been so busy with managing the going away/ giving away logistics throughout the last month that promoting my blog has not even entered my mind.

However, the other bloggers have used a number of innovative techniques to increase their subscriber count, such as –

- Increase your blogging frequency to more than one post a day.
- Start a new series on your blog with deep content.
- Write a few longer pillar posts as linkbaits.
- Display subscription options, including the e-mail subscription box, prominently, preferably on the top right hand corner.
- Add the ‘What Would Seth Godin Do?’ plug-in to display a subscription prompt to new visitors.
- Run a contest, with giveaways (including link-backs and free e-books) for new subscribers.
- Ask your Twitter/ Facebook/ Friendfeed friends to subscribe to your blog.
- Ask the subscribers of your other blogs/ mailing lists to subscribe to your blog.
- Become active on social sites like Digg/ StumbleUpon/ Sphinn.
- Comment on other blogs and forums in the niche.
- Participate in a blog carnival or a group blogging project in your niche.
- Submit your feed to RSS directories.
- Guest blog on other blogs in the niche.

I see all these tactics as part of three sequential strategies –

1. Content: Increase the quantity and quality of your posts and mix shorter posts with longer pillar posts, or a series, or even an e-book.

2. Design: Fine-tune your blog design to prompt visitors to subscribe and make it easy for them to subscribe.

3. Promotion: Promote your blog using both pull (guest blogs) and push (request to online and offline friends) tactics.

I suggest that you head over to the weekly update posts for the ‘Blogging Idol’ contest to see which of these tactics have worked for the participants –

- Blogging Idol week one update
- Blogging Idol week two update
- Blogging Idol week three update

I have spent some time on the participating blogs and some of them are really good, so I also suggest that you sample some of them and, maybe, even subscribe to them –

#1 Standout Blogger
#2 Stock Market India
#3 The University Kid
#4 Crenk
#5 Winning the Web
#6 Girl Robot
#7 Tech at Hand
#8 Home Design Find
#9 Phat Mommy
#10 Rose’s Life
#11 The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption
#12 Economics Help
#13 Groovy Vegetarian
#14 Big Marketing Online
#15 Final Dog
#16 Rajaie Talks
#17 The Paparazzis
#18 Techie Buzz
#19 Concholakeaz
#20 I’m Blogging That
#21 Absolutely Bananas
#22 Shed Blog
#23 Everything Everywhere
#24 Umar Siddiqi
#25 Dev 102
#26 The SW Geek
#27 Techie’s den
#28 DSP Log
#29 Winning Startups
#30 Book Club Classics
#31 Trying to Blog
#32 Indian Devs
#33 Inspiredology
#34 Talking With Myself.com
#35 I Blog to Blog
#36 You Are Living
#37 Kia World
#38 Back-links
#39 Sellotape and String
#40 Work Happy Now
#41 Catch the Posts
#42 Distilled Rose
#43 eBook Informant
#44 Viper Chill
#45 Melvin Blog
#46 And Another Thing
#47 Web Master Plaza
#48 Job Mob
#49 Pinoy Webstartup
#50 Apocalypse Picture Book
#51 Neo Blue Panther
#52 Learning Nerd
#53 Get One Billion Euro
#54 Jungle of Life
#55 Ad HD Guide
#56 e-Book Informant
#57 Love Reads
#58 Tech Treak
#59 Dancing About Architecture
#60 Monkey Blogger
#61 Mr. Javo
#62 Review of Web
#63 Teen Blogger
#64 Ward on the Web
#65 Abundance Highway
#66 Romeuy
#67 The Net Fool
#68 Log Home’s Cabin
#69 Crime and Crooks
#70 Eavesdrop Writer
#71 Debit versus Credit
#72 Roshan BH
#73 40 Redux
#74 Digital Photography Blogs
#75 Marketeer
#76 Adam Pieniazek
#77 Solid Smack
#78 WP Theme Designer
#80 60 Mile Walk
#79 Debby Banning
#81 Money Bites
#82 Coffee Sage
#83 Web Dev Lounge
#84 Theme Playground
#85 Techno Tip
#86 Techno Diary
#87 Elite by Design
#88 Revenue Reservoir
#89 Historical Side FX
#90 Free Birthday Treats Blog
#91 Mommy Meryl
#92 Pursuit of Your Boyfriend
#93 Ledgerpad
#94 Rue the Day Blog
#95 Benson Bear
#96 Shake the Salt
#97 Hoei
#98 Asio Groups
#99 The WM Blog
#100 Protycoon
#101 Discovering Dad
#102 Debiz Blog
#103 Apple Quack
#104 Life with Harper
#105 Stock Market Guide
#106 Messaoud
#107 The Serendipity Effect
#108 Blogging is Not a Crime

Finally, if you haven’t subscribed to ‘The Marketer Who Went Off Consumption’ yet, please do subscribe, either in a feed reader, or by e-mail –

Posted on Gauravonomics Blog

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Microsoft India is running a really cool web 2.0 (-ish) contest called Makeover My Office, where the first prize is a free home office makeover package. The makeover package will include one Office 2007 Professional Edition, one Tablet PC with Vista Ultimate, one All-in-One Printer and (depending upon the winning entry) design services, flooring, paint, furniture, fixtures, and minor remodeling. There are also attractive prizes for the other entries.

But the prizes are not the only interesting thing about the contest. The contest’s web plus mobile plus television multi-media reality show format is also unique.

The contest runs in four stages –

Stage 1: Contestants upload an image of their cluttered home office and submit a 50-200 word essay describing how a makeover will improve their personal productivity and help their business. The last day of submitting entries is March 7th.

Stage 2: A panel of judges will evaluate the entries and shortlist five semi-finalists.

Stage 3: Viewers will then vote on the shortlisted entries via web and mobile. The winner will be decided on the basis of the judges’ score and the viewer votes.

Stage 4: The makeover of the winner’s home office will be telecast on a business news channel.

I find the format very exciting from a brand manager’s perspective. It uses a website to reach a target audience (home office owners) which is anyways likely to be active online. It taps into the wisdom of crowds via the web/ mobile viewer voting element. Most importantly, it lends “sex appeal” to an otherwise niche product-user combination (software for home offices) by putting the makeover on national television.

Of late, I have been approached by “branded content teams” at TV channels quite regularly, and this contest is proof that branded content has truly arrived in Indian television. The contest is also part of a larger trend of reality shows in India, hitherto seen only on television, becoming visible on the Internet (Live Mint).

By the way, it will be interesting to know how Microsoft India is promoting the contest, especially if it has an offline component Microsoft India is promoting the contest across online, radio, television and print. I’ll wait for the day when Internet penetration in India has become deep enough to make an online contest like this viable without offline advertising support. Incidentally, we ran the Xeta Shootout Contest without any offline advertising support and got a good number of entries.

Disclosure: Digital advertising agency Webchutney has developed the website for the contest. I first heard about the contest from friends in Webchutney.

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