LiveJournal recently announced the launch of a writing contest in India, in collaboration with Caferati*, a community for writers. Livejournal has a fairly small but highly involved base in India - 5000 unique visitors a month, 13000 registered users. MediaNama spoke to Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Director of Corporate Development, SUP and Rajesh Lalwani, founder of BlogWorks, the social media consultancy LiveJournal is working with, to get an sense of why LiveJournal chose to focus India, and how they're planning to grow the user base. Why A Writing Contest, instead of a celebrity blog, rewards program or an ad campaign? Ben: We thought a lot about the first thing to do when we came to India, with the team from BlogWorks; we came back to first principle -LiveJournal, anywhere is the world, is a platform for words, generally the written word. Of course, there are many different things to do - and we may well do them later, but we wanted to start with engaging with what we know our community is most comfortable with. This also allows us to engage with those already on LiveJournal, and potential new users. What are you expectations from the contest? Ben: We would like significant boost in the number of people who are reading LiveJournal, more signups and obviously, as many people to enter the contest. At this stage, it's very difficult to put a number on it, but this is a project that has long term value, and can grow of its own accord.…
