Well, that's not really what I'm going to focus on here. One thing is to win a "Become a Problogger" contest. Actually building a sustainable community is a completely different game. The contest was great fun (actually, for me personally it was more fun while Feedest community was holding the second spot) and I've met many interesting people in the process.

Let's dissect this entire experience and see what lessons we can learn, so everyone can benefit from it. These tactics can be applied to building communities not just on MyBlogLog, but, with variations, within any social network. But first - a little link love to the top 10:

Site (community members added between 11/8 - 11/30)

1. Survival of the Feedest (477)
2. SEOlogs (424)
3. GorillaSushi (225)
4. Buen Amigo (213)
5. Collective Thoughts (177)
6. Crayon Writer (169)
7. A Blog about Nothing (156)
8. Linkbait Me (143)
9. Joe Tech (131)
10. TSP Blog (130)

Qantity vs. Quality

The contest was a numbers game - whichever community gets the most new members between November 8th and November 30th - wins. Came as a total surprise, so everyone was in the same position - no planning, no prep work, no countdown. Just a green light, and the race is on. Initially, there were some legitimate concerns, expressed by MyblogLog members. Will this contest generate a tsunami of spam within MyBlogLog messaging system? What about cheaters? Does MyBlogLog have a mechanism in place to track people opening multiple accounts? IP addresses, proxy servers? Is the contest rigged? In the end none of these concerns realized, and the credit goes to MyBlogLog team and its front man Ian Kennedy (no, I'm not kissing up).


I wasn't aware of the contest until November 10th when I logged into my account to check the stats and saw the announcement. Clicked to the leaderboard. It was reather a slow start, so I entered Feedest community. None of the Top 50 communities were in the Top 100 contest runners, which led me to believe that small communities actually have an advantage since they have a larger pool of potential new members while the large ones already have all MyBlogLog regualrs in their ranks.

Eyeballs

So, you want people to join your community? Tell them! Take a look at the evolution of my avatar and Feedest community pic.

My original approach was to use MyBlogLog to promote Feedest.com, so I was focusing on getting the brand out (as opposed to having my handsome face as an avatar). A few tweaks later I ended up with this setup. Joe sees my avatar with big "JOIN" on it. Intrigued, he clicks it and arrives to my profile page where Feedest community pic greets him with open arms and "Thank you for JOINING!".

One-two punch. This stunt alone worked really well, and instantly, there were other members plastering "JOIN" on their avatars, which only validated my point (I'm sure people figured that out on their own, but please allow me to inflate my ego by thinking they're copycats). Your avatar becomes a hook and you need to multiply the effect by delivering it to as many eyeballs as possible. This is no rocket surgery, right? Just visit as many profiles as you possibly could. When you stop by someone's profile, they will see that.

But wait... Before starting your wild profile hopping rampage, save yourself a few clicks and think. Which profiles have the best odds of generating a lead? Obviously, if you visit a profile with a few month old "last login" date - you're wasting your time. There are two "hot" categories of users: those showing "Last login: Online now", and newly registered members. Fresh meat. To understand a newbie, you must think like a newbie, browse like a newbie, be a newbie. You were a noob once, remember your first day? Your profile is empty, you feel lonely, you want to be accepted. Then all of a sudden - someone's avatar popped on your page! Let me take a wild guess... You clicked to check out who that is. Now put two and two together - to maximize your click, you need to hunt down new members who are online now. Head over to the members area and look at that "Meet the New Members" box. I don't have to tell you what to do next. Happy clicking. If you're too busy (or lazy) - consider hiring your 8-year old nephew Josh to do this for you. Just don't forget to keep your promise and take him to the best ice-cream joint in town. Or he will never work for you again.

Spreading your avatar by visiting profiles will obviously become less effective as more members start doing this. The profiles show only the five most recent visitors, so five hits after yours will knock your avatar out of the page. The member will never know you've stopped by. So use other options as well - internal messages, adding people to your contacts, joining communities. They tend to reply and reciprocate.

Gimmicks

It's very tempting to boost registrations by offering a reward for joining your group. Personally, I wanted to challenge myself and see how far I can get with no incentives whatsoever. I admit - seeing "Join this community and WIN $100" all over the leader board was making me nervous. According to my rough calculations, the contestants have, combined, given away over $4000 in cash, goods and services to promote, essentially, MyBlogLog. Whoever in Yahoo/MyBlogLog's marketing team came up with this contest - should get a bonus and an "Employee of the Year" plaque at the Holiday party. BRAVO! Brilliant!

I resorted to incentives (in a way) only 24 hours before the cut-off. There was only one serious runner - Badi Jones of SEOLogs.com (check out Badi's post about his run) that had a real shot at beating me fair and square (Badi was a great sport, clean and classy. If the contest went on for a couple of more days - he would've likely won), so I wasn't taking any chances. I announced that if Feedest community wins, I will raffle away some of the prizes to community members (which was my original intent, honest). I'm still unsure which prizes are transferable. I will definitely keep three - the $500 Yahoo Search credit, the invitation to SOBcon 2008 in Chicago, and a Featured Community for the month of December (I'm curious about this last one. We're well into December, and ...?). The rest goes to the community (again, depending on sponsors' terms).


Communication

MyBlogLog has a cap of 15 messages per day to control spam, so use your 15 messages wisely. The first couple of days I kept finding myself unable to answer questions, or contact members because my messaging quota was exhausted. Missed a few good opportunities, I'm sure. And ran into a risk of appearing rude by not replying to messages.


Teamwork

Benefit of having more than one author running a community is obvious. The whole team can adopt the same avatar. Your messaging ability multiplies, as well as branding power. Just ask Collective Thoughts guys about their success.


Viral Marketing

Now to the fun part! Try to think of something that has a chance to go viral. At least locally, within MyBlogLog ecosystem (again, this can be applied to any social network). It was a perfect opportunity to reanimate one of my backburner projects - Doodlage blog that was put together for sheer fun and to learn the inner works of WordPress. The solution was literally laughing at me from nearly every MyBlogLog page.

That default grey avatar is just screaming "Mess with me!" So I did. Fired up PhotoShop and whipped together a bunch of avatars spoofing the default. Put them all into a blog post and saved it as a draft waiting for the best moment to publish. Of course, included a plug to Feedest community. And offered a PSD template, so anyone with rudimentary PhotoShop skills can easily make their own avatar spoofs. I've actually spotted a few members using my avatars later on.





Timing is essential in a contest situation, and I wanted to stay behind for awhile and attract as little attention as possible. Then strike at around half-way through the contest. Worked like a charm. Why? It's fresh, it's funny, it appeals to the target audience. Did you know that people like collections, organized lists, and bullet points? Doodlage started receiving a flood of traffic, which was spilling over to Feedest MyBlogLog community. As designed. At this point I stole the proverbial yellow jersey from Buen Amigo, which was leading uncontested from the beginning. And created a formidable gap between Feedest community and the competition. Rinse and repeat - another batch of avatars went up on Doodlage a couple of days before the end of the contest. Meanwhile, I created another community for Doodlage, and it, too, took the top 100 by storm, sharing the 10-11 spots with
TSP Blog. Collateral damage, sorry guys.

So... do something funny, something unusual, something outrageous. Let me give you a few potentially viral ideas:

• write your message with huge letters on the roof of your house, so it's visible on satellite photos in Google Maps.
• shoot a movie asking people to join your community while riding a unicycle on Times Square wearing speedos, then post it on YouTube.
• find somebody willing to tattoo your logo across their chest.

Networking

The greatest aspect of the contest (for me at least) is meeting people, making contacts, and starting productive relationships. I was really blessed by having a great brother-sister cheerleading team - Midori and Albert, who, themselves were in Top 100 with their own communities. Thank you, guys, you're the best!

It's only a matter of time - people will realize that having a quality community is a valuable asset. Think about it. The ability to mass-message the entire group is not that different from having an opt-in email list. I did approach a few members explaining my quest and asking them if they would be generous enough to promote Feedest community to their members. They did! Thank you, guys:

• LauraW68
• Cowboytf
• Skeet
• ImBloggingThat
• aFrogToKiss
• Mummifiedx5
• blm03
• JerryG
  

Wrapping up.

Thank you, MyBlogLog, for the great contest. Big thanks to all contestants - you've made this race so much fun. Thank you for everyone's support. Come back for the prize giveaway update. And if you're still not a member - do join!

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posted by feedest at 10:17 PM in: feedest

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