How To Leverage The Most Cost-Effective Blog Advertising Method: Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is one of the most effective methods of increasing your brand awareness, attracting visitors to your blog and learning from the best bloggers in the field; thus helping you to fully grasp what your niche wants and needs. Its a blogger’s special tool for launching an effective advertising campaign and the only thing that will be spent with this method is time.

It is a proven method that I see many bloggers use to make strong connections in the blogosphere and grow their online presence to respectable heights. So let’s talk about how blog commenting, the right way, can give you that nudge you’ve been waiting for. [Read more]

5 Tips to Protect Yourself from Blog Contest Losers

Nobody likes a sore loser, but they’re out there, waiting to complain about your blog contests.  Don’t set yourself up for trouble.  Instead, be sure to protect yourself by writing explicit rules for your blog contests.  Believe it or not, even if you’re just giving away a stick of gum in your blog contest, it’s possible that people could complain about the results if they don’t win.

Additionally, you should publish rules with your blog contest post to protect yourself.  For example, are you willing to pay shipping costs to mail your blog contest prize to the other side of the world?  This is just one thing you need to think about before you publish your blog contest post to make sure the entire process goes smoothly and you leave no loopholes to participation.

Following are several suggestions for writing your blog contest rules to protect yourself from potential complaints or legal trouble:

1. Clearly state the entry time frame.

Make sure your contest has a start and end date and time and include the time zone!

2. Clearly state prize delivery restrictions.

This is where you can communicate where you’re willing to ship prizes and what delivery method you’ll use.  For example, if you live in the United States, you might want to set a restriction saying that only people living in the United States can enter to avoid large overseas postage fees.

3. Clearly state what qualifies as an entry.

You need to make sure people understand exactly what they need to do in order to have a qualified entry into the contest.  Don’t just assume people will “get it”.  Instead, spell it out for them in no uncertain terms.

4. Clearly state how winners will be chosen.

If your blog contest winner will be chosen randomly, include that information in your blog contest post.  You might want to use a tool like Randomizer.org to select the winner, and mention this in your post.  If the winner will be chosen using a subjective selection process, clearly state the steps necessary to submit a qualified entry and explain how winners will be chosen from those entries.

5. Clearly state how the winner will be contacted, the prize acceptance rules, and the alternate winner selection process.

Believe it or not, your blog contest winner might not respond to your attempts to contact them to obtain their mailing address or other necessary information to send their prize to them.  Therefore, it’s important that you tell people in your blog contest post how the winner will be notified, so people are sure to include accurate contact information with their entries.  Also, explain how long winners have to respond to your attempt to contact them before an alternate winner will be selected, so you’re not holding a prize indefinitely for a winner that never responds to you.  Finally, describe how the alternate winner will be selected.

Blog contests are a great way to reward your loyal readers and drive a short-term traffic boost to your blog.  However, they can cause problems, and by following the suggestions above, you can protect yourself from some of those dangers.

What rules and information do you include in your own blog contest posts?  Leave a comment and share what works for you.

Image: stock.xchng

Explaning Niche and Community using the Reverse Maslow

I sat in a series of sessions of a co-professor who projected stuff from the Authenticity Book for his marketing class. Part of it had to do with understanding new media, the Internet — that sort of stuff, really. So I borrowed it. And it’s been a “formula” I use to introduce or summarize “new media” from a different perspective. Let me share this.

You may be familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Before aiming for higher and more profound functions of self actualization, the basic needs need (food, clothing, shelter) to be addressed first. Today however, with the advancements of technology and the “fast paced lifestyle” seem to push people to want to be “accepted” first in order to function properly. An argument here is that every human being ideally needs to belong to a family. With new media, it becomes easier for individuals of similar niches to find one another: Star Wars forums, Macintosh zealots, Trekkies, Trekkers, food bloggers … the list goes on and on. There seems to be a community for everything. Seth Godin refers to this social structure as “Tribes.”

With that mindset, it becomes more apparent how communities work, and how authentic messages can be distinguished from those that are canned from press releases or below the line gimmicks. Authenticity is still key, and this is where the machinations of A-listers, authority figures, conversion and credibility come along. Forums, blogs, microblogs … these are all manifestations of this.

If you’re a marketer, do you believe you are treading on sacrosanct grounds when you wish to involve communities?

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So What Should the Performancing Hive be Really About?

We’re currently in the process of revamping the Performancing Hive, Performancing’s paid subscription community. Like the current sign-up page says, Hive “exists to provide you the help you need to increase the performance of your blog.” As we take steps to improve Hive and re-examine the focus of the community—not to mention Performancing itself—we would very much like to hear from you. [Read more]

Case: Measuring Word of Mouth via Bloggers

Back in 2007, I partnered with a PR agency that handled a french inspired fast food company serving mainly breads and pasta. They were looking into doing a “blogger meet up” and experiment with the idea of measuring word of mouth. They were in the process of launching a new product, which happened to be a special blend of spiked coffee; one of those amaretto or Bailey’s infused mixes.
[Read more]

Blog Comments: Do they still bear the same weight?

I don’t know about your experience, but the real-time updates of Facebook and the massive Twitter community seem to have lessened the value of blog comments. Wait, scratch that. I’d be more inclined to say that Twitter and Facebook have made it easier for marketers to call for comments.

I say this under the premise that numerous PR agencies have “decided” that comments have been the most obvious sign of a strong following. Can’t blame them — as many blogs do not publish their feed count nor share stats publicly. Above the surface, it’s really just about the comments. But you’ve also noticed that ever since the social media echosphere was created, we’re seeing more engagement on these networks more than the blogs.

As a blogger, do you give a hierarchy to value depending on where you receive comments?

Of course, another way to look at it is that your social network demographic is different from your blog readership.

Do comments still bear the same weight as they did before? Or have they been saturated by the social echo chamber.

Or, is this writer approaching the question the wrong way?

Why WickedFire is a Great Forum to Learn Online Business and Marketing

Look, if you’re interested in joining a forum where everyone is polite but nobody is making serious money, try WarriorForum or DigitalPoint. Those two, for example, have very strict etiquette rules but only one “minor” problem. Simply put, lots of WarriorForum and DigitalPoint members talk the talk but few of them walk the walk.

Do you know why most people are extremely polite over there? The answer is almost obvious: it’s because a lot of them are trying to sell you something. Maybe an e-book, maybe a coaching problem, maybe some other semi-useless product.

WickedFire is different. Nobody’s there to sell you anything. Well, almost nobody and those who are just trying to sell you on something you don’t need, usually get “loved tenderly” (a commonly used WickedFire term, just like “making monies”, that represents anything but the pleasant idea the phrase conveys) by the community. This forum is what it is and there’s no other community out there that’s even remotely similar. Let’s try to look beneath the surface and determine what exactly makes WickedFire so special. [Read more]

EarnersTalk – New Community To Discuss Monetization

David Peralty who has a few guest posts under his belt here at Performancing.com has launched a new community of his called EarnersTalk. EarnersTalk.com is a community forum focused on you guessed it, earning money. The first thing you’ll notice upon visiting the forum is how great the design looks. I don’t think you can go wrong with a vanilla, blue and green color scheme. Everything from Display Advertising to Pay Per Click to SEO is covered on the forum.

There is even a marketplace where you can sell websites, domain names, or offer services to the community. I’ve recently become a member of the forum and I know that with Davids experience, I’m betting I’ll learn a thing a to concerning monetization as I don’t want to make the same mistakes he did.

David has told me that he has big plans for the site so if you get the chance, head on over and register your account. Lets help each other make some coin in this bootstrap economy.

Want To Be A Community Manager?

If so, you need to read Deb Ng’s post on Kommein.com entitled The Pros And Cons Of Being an Online Community Manager. In this article, Deb weighs in on the positive and negatives associated with being the star of your community. One thing, I’ve always wanted in my online adventure is to be the leader of a community. A place to call my own. With WPTavern.com I have finally accomplished one of my goals. I have to admit though, being a community manager is tough work.

You have to be available 24/7, need to be REALLY passionate about whatever your community is centered around, and last but not least you need to be a leader not a follower. At the end of the day though, being a community manager and having one of your own is worth its weight in gold. It’s a great feeling to know that I have a place on the web where I can hang out with like minded people to talk about the software I’m most passionate about.

So without weighing on the negatives, I’d like for you to tell me if you have a loyal community and if you do, how hard has it been for you to be the community manager?

Have You Mentioned Skittles Enough Lately?

Skittles is running a crazy marketing campaign right now, and it involves Twitter. Do click the Skittles link, and you won’t be led to a regular candy-colored website (although you’ll get a few candy-colored floating objects). Instead, you’ll see a Twitter search results page on just about any post that mentions Skittles, refreshing every few seconds.

Your Twitter profile can get its 15 seconds of fame if you mention Skittles now. Oh, did I mention you have to put in the keyword Skittles in the body of your tweet?

Twitter seems to be abuzz with Skittles talk right now. But is there any sense to their newfound popularity among the social media crowd? The mere mention of a keyword–not to mention a brand–might be enough to dilute the brand, particularly if it becomes overused. On the other hand, having it mentioned in a lot of places by a lot of people would surely be a big boost to popularity.

And now here I am finding myself craving for something sweet (and possibly a bit sour and colorful, too). Sadly, I couldn’t find a pack of Skittles inside my cupboard, or anywhere around the house, for that matter. I settle for some other piece of candy.

If you can get the attention of the likes of @Scobleizer and @ChrisGarrett to Tweet about you, then I would agree this is one way to go if you want your brand to stick in people’s minds–or between their teeth, or the roofs of their mouths.

People will *definitely* be linking to #skittles I guarantee it – absolutely works as media bait AND link bait, wait and see – @ChrisGarrett

But more importantly, if your Tweetbait is strong enough to lead the likes of myself to grab on to the nearest candy bar, mint or gumdrop, then you may have just artificially propped up demand, not just for Skittles, but for all things sweet, sour, or candylicious.

That probably beats any economic stimulus package. It’s inexpensive. It’s worldwide. And it’s sweet.