5 Point Checklist to Running Blog Contests

Have you ever ran a contest on your blog before? Here is a quick and dirty checklist which you may want to follow.

1. Internally identify the goal of the contest

If you work for a blog network, you may have had performance reviews with your editor. The usual topic of review is strategy to building traffic. Net of discussion, you need to build community and this usually can be defined through links, more unique visits, and comments more often than not. As giving away stuff usually works to bringing in the bacon, you need to tailor your call to action to the goal.

You can do it the Kevin Rose way by putting serial numbers to software up for grabs, but this won’t always guarantee community.

2. Be specific with contest deadline

If you have an international audience, make sure that when you say “contest ends at midnight on November 19″ make sure you specify what part of the world you are referring to. Tailor fit the end time to the respective time zone of your audience. It’s a simple thing, but yeah, sometimes people miss out.

3. Make sure your raffle qualification entries are well understood.

If you’re asking for comments, make sure that they include their email, at the very least. State how you are going to draw the raffle. Most draws are usually done with a randomizer application such as Luck of the Draw for the Mac. There are also web apps available such as Random.org.

4. Be clear about the prize and conditions for delivery

Especially when giving out software, make sure that you disclose the system requirements, even with a simple link. Don’t make the mistake of giving out an application that only runs on the Mac, for instance, and forgetting to tell your participants. Don’t assume your readers are the smartest people on the Internet.

When giving out hardware, specify if you are answering for shipping charges. Usually, sponsors do so, and a good number ship internationally as well. Again, be very detailed.

Also, disclose the net value of the prize.

5. Provide a post event report to your sponsor

Never forget to thank your sponsors. Provide them links to the contest you held after it ends. Provide a summary if you must — number of comments, number of link backs even. If the winner is a blogger, try to ask for confirmation of the prize — maybe a “money shot” with the physical product at hand.

Funny Headline Writing Contest

Perhaps the single most essential skill for online writing is the art of headline writing. Over at Glamorati, I’m co-sponsoring a headline writing contest in the month of June with a grand prize of $500. Plus, each published headline from all contestants will receive $5.

The basic idea of the contest is to re-write headlines for already existing stories, giving them a funny/witty/snarky/sarcastic flair.

For all the rules and details, go here.

Lessons from an SEO Contest

I don’t know all the ins and outs of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but I hope the ‘lessons’ our team of three learned from two consecutive Philippine SEO contests can help fellow bloggers here at Performancing. (One of my teammates was J Angelo Racoma, who now helps manage sites for Splashpress Media – Filipino bloggers like to tease him “blog overlord”.)

Without further ado:

Don’t be content with your rank, changes happen fast – You’re number one in the search results for “fake petunias” today, with your competitors nowhere in sight…but tomorrow they’ll overtake you. We learned this the hard way when our first contest entry grabbed 1st place in Google, only to end up in 5th weeks later. Even more painful was the second entry – from 2nd to 11th.

Don’t go overboard with the keyword density – There has been much talk and debate as to what is the right keyword density for each of the three big engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). It is all right – imperative, actually – to conduct keyword research and inject keyphrases into your articles, but don’t be too generous in dishing them out. If the blog content sounds inhuman already – “Fake petunias can be bought at fake petunia shops by people who love fake petunias” – then you’ve probably gone overboard with the keywords.

Here’s good advice from Pholpher’s Perf post: “Don’t spam by stuffing your posts with too many keywords. Three to four times should be enough for blog posts between 400-500 words.”

Don’t forget the images – As mentioned in this earlier post, inserting images and adding alt and title attributes to your posts can give you an SEO advantage.

Link exchanges still matter – One contestant diligently did the rounds of the Philippine blogosphere (IMO one of the friendliest and link exchange-hungriest blogospheres around)…and he placed high in the results. For your link-building efforts, Ryan’s 5 Ways to Diversify Your Links is a heavyweight resource.

Feed scrapers pay the price – One of our contest observations was that most blogs filled with duplicate content (mostly feed scrapers) languished in the SERPs. The same was true for blogs that relied on article directory content, though those that had a good balance between unoriginal and original content did fairly well.

Releasing a Wordpress theme can do wonders – Especially if it becomes popular! Getting a free PR 5 or so link from Wordpress is simply too good to pass up (not to mention the links from blogs using your theme). Once you’ve crafted a great theme, changing the colors and releasing them as spin-off themes can net you more links. With this tactic, one contestant who entered the competition quite late shot up blazingly fast through the rankings and finished among the Top 5 (if my memory serves me right).

Watch out for hackers – Hackers a.k.a. your competitors? Possible. It happened to us. Don’t let your efforts go for naught; always run regular backups so you can bounce back with a vengeance, and bounce back fast.

Google’s the easiest, Yahoo the middle guy, MSN the hard-to-get – It’s my opinion that Google is the easiest search engine for a new blog/domain to break into. Barely a week with scant content and we were already there. On the other hand, it took us a month or so to appear on Yahoo. As for MSN, well, our entries didn’t appear even after three months.

Of course, there’s a big difference between an SEO contest and a ‘rivalry’ among blogs in the same niche: the former has a deadline. The latter just goes on and on until the warriors fall one by one by the wayside. Just like in every business, ensuring that your blog outperforms its rivals in the search engine wars requires perpetual vigilance, research, and experimentation.

Comment Contest is a Winning Idea

I love contests and competitions as a way of bringing in readers, links and in this case comments to brand new blogs 451 Press have a bunch of new blogs going out and Chrispian Burks was nice enough to ask me if it was ok to post that thread in the forums — absolutey! More details on the 451 press site.

Above vs below the fold ad pricing

Today we set in place a way to detect Partners blog ads that were showing “below the fold”. The term comes from print advertising and literally means below where a newspaper is folded, making it a less valuable position. The object was to better price Partners ad spots.

From around lunchtime today (european time) we’ve been detecting ad blocks placed below the fold and adjusting their price accordingly. The figure we came up with as a starting point was 50% of what an ad above the fold would be worth, and if you’ve had a dramatic price drop today, then that’s almost certainly why.

How to Stay above the Fold

We judge position based roughly on a 1024×768 resolution, so of course adjusting your resolution and checking your ad placement is one way of making sure your ad is correctly placed. But by far the easier method is just to take a look at where you’re putting your ads from an advertisers perspective. Is your adblock placed where it will be seen by all?

And what if you dont want to be above the fold?

Ad placement below the fold is fine, it’s just not as valuable as above the fold. And if you disagree with the auto pricing of your ads in relation to position or anything else, you can always switch it off and choose your own price.

The goal of AP is to set the optimal, fair price for an ad on your blog, but ultimately you decide the price right?

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High End vs. Low End Content

In most topical niches, there is an “expertise range”. Some bloggers will try to appeal to the masses by making just about every post “n00b-friendly” (e.g., ProBlogger does this well). Other blogs seem to be written for other experts (e.g., Signal vs. Noise).

The issue as I see it is this: writing for the low-end is going to have a much wider appeal and usually get you more traffic, simply because most people aren’t experts. On the other hand, if you write for experts, you’re more likely to get links, since other experts are more likely to have blogs in the niche; it’s also usually better in terms of building your personal reputation and authority. Bloggers who try to do both (i.e., expert post today, n00b post tomorrow) will usually end up annoying both audience segments with the inconsitency.

Of course, the optimal kind of content is probably the type that appeals to both the masses and other experts; People like Copyblogger and Chartreuse seem to do the balancing act quite well.

Whom do you write for in your blog(s)? N00bs or experts? And why?