blog contests

Boost Your Blog Awareness With These 6 Tips for Successful Blog Contests

February 17, 2011 by Guest Blogger

Running a popular blog contest is a powerful weapon to kick your tired old blog into overdrive. Not only will you attract a ton of new visitors – who hopefully become subscribers – but you will likely have a lot of fun. Blog contests have graced the blogosphere for years, ever since blogs became the buzzword of the 21st century.

Savvy bloggers run several contests throughout a calendar year because it always revs up their readership, hence paying them a healthy ROI on their time and in some instances on their money.

The following success tips will make your next blog contest a raving success – one that the blogosphere will remember for months to come.

1. Prize It Right

When picking a prize for the winner(s) of your contest you should look at your industry first. What is it that really gets people’s hearts all warm and fuzzy? If you are a web designer holding a contest for fellow designers and wanna be professionals you could organize things like free content from freelance writers for the next five projects (saving them money they would otherwise have to pay), free software to simplify their lives, free tutoring to help fellow professionals reach the next milestones, etc.

If all else fails and you can’t think of something useful, consider offering a popular gadget; think iPhone, iPad, and Android tablets or a smartphone, or if the budget can stretch that far a trip always goes down well. However, this is likely too expensive an option for most
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How to Get Massive Traffic to Your Blog Contests for Free

July 12, 2010 by Susan Gunelius

Blog contests are a great way to drive short-term traffic to your blog, and hopefully, if your prize is relevant to your blog topic, some of those new visitors who come to enter the contest will poke around your blog, enjoy what they see, and return! Even better — they might tell their friends about your blog, link to your content from their own blogs and social web profiles, and more.

In other words, a blog contest can kick-off the compounding effect of blogging and help your blog grow in the short term and long term.

How do you get massive traffic to visit your blog and enter your blog contest? Fortunately, it’s very easy and only takes a few minutes thanks to several websites that allow you to promote your blog contests for free!

Following are five websites where you can promote your blog contests for free. All you have to do is register for each site and enter the information for your contest to get it in front of huge audiences of people who are actively searching for online contests to enter. I have used all of these sites to successfully drive traffic to blog contests except SweepsAdvantage.com, so I can attest to the fact that they work!

1. Online-Sweepstakes.com

This is the best site I’ve used to drive traffic to blog contests. Just create an account, login, and click on the Sweepstakes Directory tab in the top navigation bar and then the Add-a-Sweep link in the sub-navigation bar that appears. Complete the provided form with accurate information, and your contest will be added to the directory.

2. ContestBlogger.com

This is another site that successfully drives traffic to your blog contests. It’s actually a forum that you can register for and then post a new message in the forum to promote your contest.

3. About.com Blogging Forum

The About.com Blogging site has a forum that includes a folder dedicated to blog contests where you can register for a free account and post your blog contests to the forum at anytime.

4. About.com Sweepstakes Forum

The About.com Sweepstakes site also has a forum that includes a folder where you can register for a free account and add your blog contest to the list of contests and sweepstakes.

5. SweepsAdvantage.com

To publish a contest on the Sweepstakes Advantage site, register for a new account and click on the Add a Listing link in the left sidebar.

Blog Contest Promotion Quick Tip: To boost traffic to your contest, make sure the heading/title of your contest sounds really great when you submit it, because that might be the only information people see before they click through to enter your contest. Make it impossible for them to resist by enticing them with a great title.

And don’t forget to write clear rules in your blog contest post.!

Where do you promote your blog contests to drive traffic to them? Leave a comment and share your tips!

Image: stock.xchng

5 Tips to Protect Yourself from Blog Contest Losers

July 5, 2010 by Susan Gunelius

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.