Tip #6: Make it fun to vote for you

One of the things that make a journey fun is adding an element of excitement. You’ve got to enjoy what you are doing in order for others to get excited about voting for you. Also, I lowered my expectations for the final outcome of the Curbed competition. While I’m one to want to win, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I didn’t. This allowed me to enjoy the ride. This was the joy that I wanted those who were joining me in the ride, to experience, too.

In retrospect, there are 3 things that contributed to the fun of voting and enjoying the ride for everyone.

1. The online poll system that Curbed used was simple and easy to share with others. The online voting platform they used is the Google Chart Tools. It’s powerful, simple, and gives a visual display of voting results via pie charts.

2. As instigator of sharing the voting link, I also adopted a laid-back attitude about the whole thing. No threats were made, if they didn’t vote for me. In fact, some of my friends ended up voting for my competitor in some rounds because they became fixated with a specific color assigned to me in previous rounds. When I was assigned a different color in subsequent rounds, the voting process seemed “automatic” to them that they just searched for the previous color (There were only 2, either red or blue) and clicked on that color. The whole time, I actually found this amusing. Even one of my close friends also committed the same error.  

3. Make the process of voting an adventure. I did this by telling stories and by being flexible about the whole thing along the way. There was never a dull moment during the 7-day journey.

Here's a recap of the 7 Tips.