Blogging From Scratch

In this third part of my case study: increase your blog statistics through blog contest, I will discuss about contest mechanics. The contest mechanics are the cream of the crop of your blog contest. They must be based on your blog goals. For example, your goal is to increase your blog’s RSS subscriber count, therefore require participants to be an email subscriber throughout the contest period. Let’s face it, a few people subscribed and then unsubscribed after the contest is over.

Do not make the contest mechanics to be way too difficult for the participants to complete. It is advisable to make it as easy as possible. Contests are a give and take process.

There are a lot of contest mechanics and some maybe more effective than the other. Nevertheless, it all depends on your contest goals. Let us go through the contest mechanics thoroughly.

Subscribe in RSS by email or feed

Majority of the contest mechanic that I encounter requires participants to subscribe on the blog’s RSS by email or feed. I totally agree on this one. It gives your blog long term benefits. It does not only drive traffic to your blog every time you make a new blog posts but you tend to keep your visitors. During the span of your contest, you should write impressive blog posts and creative ideas to make the readers couldn’t wait for your next blog post.

Gotchas

• Some participants might subscribed and unsubscribed after the contest ends and you have announced the winners
• The posts that you write must not be “spammy”. Think of the reader’s interest when writing blog post. Do not make a lot of reviewed post

Goal accomplished

• Increase RSS Subscribers count
• Promote your website
• Increase blog traffic

Rave or Write about the contest

Having the participants write about your contest is a way of promoting your contest. You need to reach out to as many people as possible so they would know about your contest. No matter how huge your prizes are but if people have not heard about your contest, then you are doomed. Besides, you could require your participants to write specific text links that will benefit you and the sponsors. In this way, you are link building which is a huge factor in SEO.

Gotchas

• Remember what happened to John Cow? He was penalized by Google because of the link building he had done with the keyword “make money online”. You would not want to mess up with Google.
• The blog post about your contest would be mostly written in contest blogs. Would you care?

Goals accomplished

• Promote your website
• Link building
• Connect with other bloggers

Blog comments

I am not a huge fan of top commentator as part of the contest mechanic because people tend to spam in order to catch up with the numbers. I rather choose to give points on every “quality” comment people make on my blog on the entire contest duration. Make sure to reply on their comments when they ask you something.
The good thing is people would read your article in order to make a comment and even explore your archive posts. You have increased readership in your blog.

Gotchas

• If you chose to give points for top commentators, expect to receive spam comments made by the participants such as “great post”.

Goals accomplished

• Increase blog comment
• Connect with other bloggers

Banners/Text links

Promote your contest further by making banners or text links placement on the participant’s site one of the contest mechanics. Banner spots cost some bucks so this is like free blog advertising and link to your
blog. Make sure you give huge points in this task. Specify your banner to be placed on the sidebar not on the contest post itself to gain more exposure.

Include a summary of prizes in the contest banner to increase the reader’s interest.

Gotchas

• Have a catchy contest banner that would totally stand out in a page.

Goals accomplished

• Promote your own website
• Advertise your blog
• Increase blog traffic

Submission in social sites

According to your niche, you could require participants to let them submit your blog posts in social networking sites such as Digg or Stumble Upon. Urge them to vote for your blog posts. You will be surprised on how much traffic you’ll get from social networking sites. You are going to get a lot of new visits. Again, the challenge for you is how to keep these visitors. Make sure you have amazing posts, your blog is well designed and not cluttered with pop up advertisements.

Gotchas

• Your blog may experience an increase in your bounce rate because of the referral traffic. Nevertheless, there are a lot of ways to prevent this which you could read in my Case Study: Quality Traffic.

Goals accomplished

• Submission on social networking sites
• Increase in blog traffic

Let them sign up in your referral links

Some put together contests in order to achieve much more. For example, there’s this huge referral contest with huge prizes, what I would do is to set up a mini contest and ask people to sign up in my referral link.
Just like in Market Leverage contests, not only they are promoting Market Leverage itself, but they are also promoting their affiliate links, genius! Or you have discovered a product that pays for every referral that you make, so why not create a contest about it!
Usually blog contests are based on points system, to maximize the goal promoting your affiliate link, why not choose the winner based on how much they have earned. This is a win-win situation between you and the participants.

Gotchas

• Make sure to make a huge point in this task so people would love to join!
• Offer much greater prizes

Goals accomplished

• Promote your product
• Make more money

Other parts of case study series

• Case Study: Increase your blog statistics through blog contest
• Case Study: Increase your blog statistics through blog contest 2

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.