You probably already know about the competition held between John Chow and Shoemoney last month where the two prominent bloggers were seeing who could add more subscribers to their respective RSS feeds. John Chow took an early lead and it looked like he was unbeatable, but on the very last day, Shoemoney surged ahead to take the win. There was no real prize on the line for the winner other than bragging rights, but the net result is that both bloggers had huge gains in RSS readership. The idea behind the competition was to generate buzz and it worked: both blogs gained thousands of new RSS subscribers.

This goes to show you that a little friendly competition between two organizations can do a lot in terms of providing mutual benefit. With blogging, there are no physical products exchanged and the concept of a competing blog is a little different than with a conventional company. This is because by subscribing to John Chow’s blog, it does not mean that you cannot simultaneously subscribe to Shoemoney’s blog. A bigger factor here, I would think, is that subscription is absolutely free. Contrast this to the print magazine or newspaper market.

Even so, a great way to generate buzz around your blog, company, or organization is to host a very public competition with a related firm. They don’t have to be a direct competitor in the marketplace, but it helps if you are in the same industry. Seeing how the holiday season is just around a corner, an excellent competition to hold would be to see which firm can raise more money for a particular charity, perhaps based on a per employee basis (just to make things fair). This is a win-win situation for everyone involved, because both companies can get some free exposure in the media, and the charity receives a larger total donation than they probably would have received otherwise.