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5 Tips to Protect Yourself from Blog Contest Losers

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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

How Gravity Forms Can Rock Your WordPress Blog

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love musicI’m in love with a WordPress plugin. Let me stop right now and tell you that I’m not a WordPress plugin floozy. I don’t dive in and try every WordPress plugin I hear about, and I definitely don’t jump on the bandwagon and pay for WordPress plugins. Nope. I’m usually late to the WordPress plugin party and try plugins after other people test them out and share their thoughts about them.

So why am I telling you this?

It’s simple. I wanted to make the point that it takes a lot for me to get really excited about a WordPress plugin. However, Gravity Forms (*) has achieved what few other WordPress plugins can in my mind. It got me really psyched and I want to create more forms with it!

A single-user license of Gravity Forms is just $39, but you definitely get $40-worth out of this WordPress plugin. You can create highly customizable forms using a super easy click-and-drag tools. You can also set up custom notifications, easily add forms to any page on your blog, and more. It’s so cool! There is even a support forum at GravityHelp.com.

With all that said, I have yet to tell you about the coolest part of this plugin. If accept guest posts or other types of content on your blog, then you know it can be a hassle to reformat submissions, upload them, and publish them on your blog. It sounds like it would only take a few seconds to publish a guest post, but depending on the format the guest blogger sends it to you in, it could be a big time investment. Gravity Forms takes that headache away by allowing people to submit posts quickly an easily.

As an example, check out two pages on my blog for women in business. The first link takes you to a page where I used Gravity Forms to set up a guest post submission form and the second takes you to a page where I set up a press release submission form. Both took me just a few minutes to set up, and now the process of receiving content submissions is so easy! I get an email when new content is submitted, so I simply have to log into my WordPress account to approve it. If you want, you can set up submissions to publish automatically, so you don’t have to approve them before they publish. It’s up to you.

If you’re still not convinced that this is one cool WordPress plugin, watch the video tour and try the demo on the Gravity Forms website to see how it works.

So that’s why I’m in love with the Gravity Forms WordPress plugins. It makes my life easier, saves me time, and it’s easy to use.

Have you tried Gravity Forms? Is there a WordPress plugin that rocks your blog? Leave a comment and share your can’t live without WordPress plugins!

Image: stock.xchng

(*) Big mean affiliate link!

The Secret to Creating Shareworthy Content

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shareworthy-contentI often refer to the term I use to describe amazing content that people want to share online as shareworthy, and today, I’d like to dive a bit deeper into the concept of creating shareworthy content, so your blog and online reputation can benefit from the compounding effect of blogging, attract more visitors, and grow organically over the long term. In other words, shareworthy content leads to sustainable growth, and I’m going to tell you how to do it.

What is shareworthy content?

It’s simple. Shareworthy content is amazing content that people like enough to want to tell their friends about it and share it with their social media connections. They can share that content by blogging about it on their own blogs, tweeting it on Twitter, linking to it on Facebook or LinkedIn, and so on. Therefore, shareworthy content is not necessarily viral content that explodes across the Internet. Instead, it’s a tangible form of the world-of-mouth marketing of the social web that businesses covet.

How do you create shareworthy content? [Read more…] about The Secret to Creating Shareworthy Content

Stake Your Claim on Your Blog Niche

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blog-nicheIt seems like everyone is trying to find their niche on the social web, particularly when it comes to blogging.  In simplest terms, a niche is a very specific area of focus, and a niche blog is one that is tightly focused on one specific subject.

The web has become a very cluttered place, and it’s hard to compete for traffic for broad keywords (such as parenting or business) against larger, well-established sites with deep pockets.  However, you can stand out from the noise by choosing a niche and offering authoritative, reliable, and shareworthy content and conversations related to that niche on your blog.

The first step is to define your niche by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What subject can write about frequently?

Define your area of expertise that you want to use as the core of your online reputation.  Your niche should be a subject that you can write about a lot and that you actually have something worthwhile to discuss.  Once you identify the subjects that you can write about extensively, then break that topic up into smaller, more focused subjects.  In other words, define the niches within that broader topic.

2. Is my niche viable today?

Take some time to learn who else is publishing content related to your possible niches, and make sure there is an active and engaged audience already seeking information about and talking about your potential niches.  Also, use a tool like the free Google AdWords Traffic Estimator to get an idea of the traffic a niche blog might attract.

3. What keywords should I target?

Do some keyword research to further research the potential audiences niche topics could generate to your blog, and ensure your content is optimized for search engine referrals and effectively attracts your target audience using tools like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, or the free Google AdWords Keywords Tool.

4. How can I differentiate my content and make it valuable?

Niche blogs are highly focused, therefore, it’s important that you learn who else is publishing content related to your niche to ensure you add value to the online conversation.  You don’t want to simply republish the same kind of information that other bloggers are already publishing.  Take the time to create amazing, shareworthy content related to your niche to fully leverage the compounding effect of blogging.

5. Can I make this niche work for the long term?

While it’s important that your niche is viable today, you also need to make sure that you set your business blog up for long term success.  Make sure you can create enough content for your niche blog for years to come while remaining passionate about your subject matter.  Also, don’t choose a trend niche that is hot today but is likely to fade into oblivion in the not too distant future.  For example, writing a blog about a popular television show might sound like a great idea today, but if you want your blog to be successful indefinitely, then a television show that could be canceled in a year or two might not be the best niche topic for your blog.  Make sure your niche topic matches your short and long-term blogging goals.

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How the Compounding Effect of Blogging Gives Your Blog a Huge Boost

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The compounding effect of blogging is a topic I often discuss in my books, to my clients, and at speaking engagements, but in order to understand the compounding effect of blogging, you have to understand the importance of search engines in sending visitors to your blog.

Consider this…

Where do you go to find information about just about anything when you need it? Do you check the Yellow Pages? Nope. Do you go to the library and look at an encyclopedia?  Not anymore.  Today, most people have access to the Internet and they turn to Google or their favorite search engine (with Google being #1) to find the information they need on just about any subject.

Example — Imagine you have a website and you want to increase traffic to it.  Here’s how the compounding effect of blogging works:

  1. You have a website made up of 20 pages. That’s 20 entry points to your website for Google to find, index, and deliver in relevant keyword searches.
  2. You add a blog to your website, and you publish a blog post everyday for a year. Now you have 365+20=385 entry points to your website for Google to find, index, and deliver in relevant keyword searches.
  3. You publish posts on your blog and those posts offer interesting, useful, helpful or entertaining content that your audience finds value in. In other words, those posts are shareworthy.
  4. People find your blog content and realize it’s interesting and shareworthy. They share it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. with links back to your blog. They write about it on their own blogs with links back to your blog. Now, the number of entry points to your website (via your blog) has increased exponentially. Your Google search traffic increases as all of these additional incoming links to your blog and website boost your Google search rankings, and traffic to your site from referrers across the web increases, too!
  5. Your website went from a static destination with 20 standard entry points to an interactive, engaging site with hundreds or thousands (or more) of entry points and an increase in traffic from search engines and referrers! You can’t buy that kind of exposure and growth potential!

The compounding effect of blogging really is that simple. It’s about creating shareworthy content and entry points, and it’s a method of building organic search traffic that has a good chance of turning into a long-term, sustainable traffic-stream and help you build a loyal audience.

Bottom-line: any blogger can benefit from the compounding effect of blogging, but it starts with creating shareworthy content.

Image: stock.xchng

10 Things You Learned in Kindergarten that Make You a Better Blogger

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I bet you didn’t know that a lot of the things you need to know to be a good blogger were taught to you before you could even write your name.  It’s true!  A lot of the things you learned in Kindergarten apply to blogging and other aspects of your social web activities.

Don’t believe me?  Keep reading to learn about 10 of those things you learned in Kindergarten that make you a better blogger.

1. You need to be polite.

This one is a no-brainer.  If you want to build your audience, then you need to do what your Kindergarten teacher told you and be nice and respectful to others, even if you don’t agree with them.

2. You need to share.

At 5-years old, we learned to share toys, but as bloggers, we need to share each other’s content, ideas, conversations, and so on if we want our blogs to grow.

3. You need to take your turn.

In Kindergarten, we learned not to cut in line, and as bloggers, we can apply that lesson to allowing others to have their say.  While you might not agree with a comment left on your blog, let others have their turn to share their opinions, and then enter into an adult-conversation to discuss the issue further.

4. You need to say thank you.

This goes without saying, but showing your appreciation is extremely important to helping you build relationships across the social web.

5. Don’t run with scissors.

Be careful what you publish on your blog and follow the written and unwritten rules of the blogosphere to ensure you don’t put yourself in a bad situation.

6. It’s not nice to take other people’s stuff.

Don’t scrape content, don’t use images without permission, and don’t try to pass off any kind of work that you did not create as your own.

7. It’s really hard to get gum out of your hair.

Your words live online.  Once you publish them, you might not be able to remove them.  Always think about how the content you publish will affect you and others now and in the future.

8. Don’t hang upside-down on the monkey bars while wearing a skirt.

Avoid getting too personal on your blog.  It might seem like a good idea to publish those funny pictures of you doing a keg stand at a frat party on your blog, but if a hiring manager sees them a year from now, you might think differently about putting those pictures out there for the world to see.

9. I’m rubber, you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.

People will say mean things about you online.  It’s inevitable.  You need to have a thick skin to be a blogger.

10. Raise your hand.

Write about what you know and don’t be shy about it.  Be confident and don’t be afraid to share your knowledge, opinions, and yourself on your blog.

Image: stock.xchng

How to Encourage People to Read Your Blog Posts

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Image by The New Fine Arts Lab via Flickr

This is a guest post by Phyllis Zimbler Miller,s co-founder of the social media marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com, where she also writes a blog.

All bloggers share one main goal – having as many people as possible read the blog posts. Leaving aside search engine optimization, links from others blogs, etc., what is the number one way to encourage people to read blog posts?

Make reading those posts as easy as possible, which isn’t always as automatic as it sounds.

The truth is that bloggers are often unaware that their posts need to be served up with elements that encourage people to actually read the posts.

Here are recommended steps on which elements should be used to encourage people to read your blog posts:

Step 1: Make the font size large

No matter what a website design book says about how big the font size should be, you should choose a font size that is easily readable.

I once had trouble reading the content on someone’s blog and politely emailed the site owner suggesting larger type. I got a nasty reply saying that 11 to 12 pt. type was recommended and her type was 11 pt. and it was fine.
In truth, what is fine is font size that is easily readable, not a size that a reader has to work to read. [Read more…] about How to Encourage People to Read Your Blog Posts

How to Find Guest Post Opportunities For Your Blog

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Guest posting is a great way to increase traffic, network with other bloggers, and build links. But how do you know which blogs are good guest post opportunities?

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of guest posting for various blogs so I thought I’d share what I learned from my experience.

Check Blogs For Previous Guest Posts

The strategy that worked the best was checking blogs to see if they published guest posts previously. If a blog had published them in the past, then there was a really good chance they would publish my guest post.

You can search for “guest post” if the blog has a search box. If not, you can type in “site:example.com guest post” on Google to search the blog.

This strategy also helps because you can get an idea of the kind of guest posts that are published. You can then use that information to create similar content.

Investigate Forums

Blogging or internet marketing related forums can be a good place to find guest post spots. I had success finding some opportunities on the ProBlogger forum.

My Blog Guest forum is another good option. I like it because it’s caters primarily to guest bloggers. It was recently created by Ann Smarty, a prominent search expert, and she’s attracted a good number of quality sites looking for guest posts. I’ve already gotten a post published on a PageRank7 blog.

In forums, you’ll find many off-topic blogs so you might have to do some digging to find a blog in your niche. To save time, you can create a thread saying you’re interested in guest posting and hope that a relevant blogger finds you.

Also, if your niche is relatively obscure, you may not find a related blog. Still, you can get good off-topic links, which is fine for SEO just as long as you get them from trusted sites and you don’t overdo it.

Over to You

How do find guest post opportunities for your blog?