Pick one place to dole out your major announcements. This will help you build an audience. In the ReBoot contest, all four team members had our own blog accounts, but we chose to blog only through the producer's account. This allowed the audience to follow our progress and kept everyone on the same page. As of writing, the Z2H blog is your best weapon for generating support.

Make sure you blog fairly often. This will keep your audience coming back. However, don't post unless you have something interesting to say... see #6.

When you make a blog post, be sure to respond as quickly as possible to questions and comments. That way, active fans will return for more and will communicate to prospective fans that you enjoy involving them.

Being a pompous jerk is a death sentence online. Make sure you always treat people kindly while maintaining a sense of self. Don't pander to their requests; doing everything they say or complimenting them unduly will brand you as a patronizing weenie. Fans can smell when you're lying or condescending. Fanboys and their friends may declare war on you if you treat them poorly. If compelling negative criticism is presented, acknowledge it, thank the fan, and promise to fix it in a future version. Also, don't hack on your competition. That's just lame.

Using the criticism you receive, improve your concept through updated versions of your idea. Make sure you announce the arrival of your new version and make sure that everyone knows what has changed. For an added bonus, post the names of fans that offered solutions to your pitch's weaknesses and thank them for helping out. This will illustrate your approachability and will invite more fans to engage.

Every blog post you make must be intrinsically interesting. Don't just blog for the sake of it - you need to make sure you've got some kind of centerpiece that draws the whole thing together and is interesting in its own right. In a way, your blog is a part of the pitch too (see Megabyte's Marketing Tactic #2). Also, don't make your posts too long (five 4-5 line paragraphs is a good limit). People hate reading online. You can sometimes get away with lengthy posts but only if the content is highly fascinating.

Make a logo that incorporates your concept's title and use it everywhere - especially in the first paragraph of your blog posts and on your artwork. This projects professionalism, distinguishes your posts from others', and creates an "atmosphere" for your pitch. A good logo can go a long way towards generating excitement. Think of how you feel every time you see the Autobots' logo... you need that kind of emotional response. Also, make sure to include the name of your pitch in the title of your post. People need to be able to find your posts easily.

The best way to win votes is to market your idea - but the way to crush the competition is to flood your chosen marketing medium with compelling content. Everyone does this, from Apple, to Party Poker, to the Church of Latter-Day Saints. In the instance of this contest, you must make sure your idea grabs people's attention - and grabs it first. The best way to do this is to be one of the top five "popular blogs" (or the most popular, preferably). This will immediately tell other people that you are the cream of the crop even before they've read your pitch.

The CCN contest will likely include very strict pitch content limitations (no more than 100 words for character descriptions, for instance). You can use the blog to flesh out and explain your ideas - and to add more ideas. We used the blog to pitch an entire b-plot for Arrival, generating a great deal of interest, discussion, and buy-in. We also posted pencil sketches and then invited people to do their own colouring jobs. This plays into #7.

In the Reboot contest, this proved to be the most dangerous marketing tactic. We almost got in some serious trouble for doing it. In the CCN contest, it shouldn't matter. Market your idea on Facebook, MySpace, other comic sites, on your own blog (if you have one), and even in RL (real-life). I put this in the Viral section because I'm not entirely sure Z2H likes this behaviour. :)

If you find that hecklers are beginning to congregate at your doorstep, ready to mug you every time you collect the morning paper, try to figure out how to defuse them. A single heckler can be very damaging to your popularity, especially if they post regularly. Stand up for yourself - you and your fans should offer a defense every time they attack you. This will tell newbies and the 133ts that the hecklers' ideas and opinions are not universally shared. If you can convert a heckler entirely, do it.

Ask all of your friends, family, old schoolmates, and co-workers to vote positively for your idea - even if they've never read your pitch and/or hate comic books. In the instance of the Z2H contest, you'll likely need to send out instructions on how to vote since not everyone will be net-savvy. People who design online contests hate this behaviour, and Z2H has a fair system for limiting the effects of crowdhacking - but it still works. Really, this is just another way to use your network to your advantage.

Without bashing your competition's ideas, display your idea's strengths in a way that exposes your competition's weaknesses. This will increase support for your idea while simultaneously reducing support for the competition. One good place to do this is by commenting on other people's posts that are discussing the concepts in an objective manner. Don't bash anyone's opinions - just state yours as intelligently and compellingly as possible. If you do a good job, people will draw their own conclusions.

Even if you blog every day, your posts will get lost in the sea that is the Z2H blog. You must find a way to compel others to post about your idea so that every page of the blog has one or more posts about your idea. This will make sure your idea "floats to the top". For Arrival, we ran two contests, each requiring the fans to post fan art and fan fic on the blog. This resulted in a swarm of Arrival-related posts. Obviously you need good buy-in already for that to work, but there are other options...

When the ReBoot contest was explained to us, we immediately saw many loopholes that could be used to our advantage. After the ReBoot contest, Z2H will likely take steps to tie-off these loopholes, but others will surface. The guys at Z2H are SUPER COOL AND DESERVE OUR UNDYING RESPECT for putting their livelihoods on the line to even try something as crazy as Z2H - but this is your future too. Timidity and an over-developed sense of fair-play won't get you anywhere.

Good luck in the contest, and remember - with great power comes great responsibility. ;)