Promoting a writing project

Idea for writing project promotion - mind map

Promoting a writing project nowadays requires more promotion efforts than usual. This is partly attributed to numerous developments happening online and offline where becoming prioritized is a major challenge. This is especially true if a writing project intends to attract a global audience and the blog organizing it is unknown to the majority.

For the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs writing project, I usually do the following. Some of them are already in motion while the others are on its way:

• Submit to social media sites (Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Facebook) with the intent of spreading the word. The key to success in this area is getting more folks to do the same.
• Advertising is one way of getting attention from target participants. I am using Entrecard and Google AdWords for this purpose. 
• Giveaways are also an important attraction to any writing project. For now, 10 winners of US$100 each was created for entries who submits an entry citing 10 qualified blogs. 
• Updates about the writing project are done on a weekly basis showing a summary of entries and blogs cited. An entry masterlist and blogs cited masterlist also gets created.
• Announcing the writing project and its summary is also done through Twitter. A big chunk of entries outside of the Philippines came through this medium. 
• Interact with fellow bloggers by visiting various blogs is something that I make time for once to twice a week. Sending email to fellow bloggers is also something that I make time for once a week.
• Will also be using Empire Avenue for this purpose and hope to attract participants from there this year (added: February 28, 2012)
• Events can help boost writing project participation. Last year, entries were dwindling in the latter weeks but upon announcement of an eyeball event, there was a surge of entries. Tying it up to a conference is also another option to ensure maximum exposure of club members.

There are more ideas coming in that I haven't included in that mind map yet. However, I will update this soon once I've executed all the ideas above and be ready to share newer ones.

Additional suggestions are more than welcome too. Cheers!