This is a guest post by Akira who loves earning money online and dreams to be a successful Internet Marketer.
Blog promotion can be done by mean of paid promotion or free promotion. Example of free promotion includes guest blogging and blog walking. Meanwhile, paid promotion can be done by direct advertising, pay per click etc. But, there is an effective way of blog promotion that only a few blogger know about it or try to do. The promotion technique is called contest.
Contest is an activity where you provide an award to the lucky participant who did what you ordered. We cannot put contest in either paid promotion or free promotion category since the prize of the contest might be sourced from our own pocket or from sponsors. But instead of discussing it here, I would like to discuss the effectiveness of contest to promote your blog.
The Power of Contest
The effectiveness of contest depends on the purpose of the promotion. Are you promoting to move your Google page-rank up, to multiply the amount of comments, to increase the total number of incoming visitors, or to look for a word of mouth promotion for your website. Thus, selecting the type of a contest is very important. Before we talk about how to create a good contest, let’s take a look at illustration below:
The above illustration is an example of one of contest information organized by a blog about movie review. What can you conclude from the above illustration? The contest in that blog is organized for the purpose to produce word of mouth of that blog. The result is very effective. The indicator of the result is the total of 715 incoming comments.
Ok, if you have not understood, I will try to explain utilizing the above example. In the illustration we can see that the total number of incoming comments is 715 comments.
Do you know that the article is a contest where the participant has a chance to win Apple iPad 64GB with a condition that they have to create tweets or facebook share about that blog. Let’s say that not all of the incoming comments come from people who are interested to participate, so let’s take only 20%.
We can imagine that with a contest, this blog has got 20% x 715 = 143 tweets or facebook share directed to that blog. At the end, certainly it will affect the popularity of our blog or even increase the rank in terms of Google Pagerank. I call it as “The Power Of Contest.”
Will Every Contest Achieve Its Purpose?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. I frequently see forum posting contests or blog promotion contests with very few participants. It is because of the lack of knowledge in creating a good contest. Below are some brief and secret tips so that any contest you arrange will successfully achieve its purpose…
Brief And Confidential Tips To Create Successful Contest
1. Select A Type Of Contest That Suits Your Promotion Purpose
The above illustration is an example of a blog who creates a contest with an intention to get word of mouth for that blog. Contest of tweeting and facebook share is the right choice to incredible viral marketing. When Smartbloggerz hold Commenting Contest, the incoming comments to this blog was in the amount of thousands. Therefore, selection of the contest type is very important.
2. Offer Attractive Prizes
The bigger and more the prize offered, the more people would get enthusiastic to participate in your contest. The prize offered should not always come from you. You can find a sponsor who is willing to provide the winning prize for the contest concluded in your blog or forum, of course by returning a benefit to that sponsor, such as by providing sponsorship credits etc.
FIRST SECRET: Contest with a cash reward is more appealing than other type of reward.
3. Promote Your Contest At The Right Spot
Promoting your contest is crucial to let a lot of people know about the contest, so that they are interested to participate. Promoting a contest in other blog or forum that has few visitors is a waste of time. Promote in a forum that has a lot of member or other blog that is having a lot of visitors.
SECOND SECRET: Do you know that on the internet, there are some people who actively participate in online contests? I call them “Treasure Hunter”. Typically they have a specific blog that publishes information about contests in the internet. You can contact them, and they will gladly publish the information about your contest in their blog.
4. Completeness Of Information About Your Contest
Ensure that all the information about your contest is complete. People will get less enthusiastic if the information about your contest is not clear. What I mean by information is: how to participate, the prizes offered, the deadline of contest, when and how the contest winner will be announced. By providing this information completely, people will think that you are serious in executing the contest.
Last Words…
By adhering to the above-mentioned tips and secrets, I am sure that your contest will be an effective one and will achieve its purpose. I have seen a blog that organized a promotion contest. That blog had a page rank of 0. But, after the contest ended and Google updated its Page Rank; that blog got a Page Rank of 2. It is incredible, isn’t it? Hence, promote your blog through contest in an effective using the tips mentioned in this post.
Top 10 Search Terms:
• promotion
Akira07, sorry I did not know before I made a comment but in the local language. Okay, this is my opinion about the contest as a promotion technique. Ok, maybe the contest will attract lots of participants if the prize is cash money. But what about me who do not have paypal? I have a problem of verification. So please give me an idea, what other gifts that are not less interesting?
Something which make people can choose their prize ownself, and that is voucher. For example is Amazon voucher.
About this, i just wanna ask if someone know how to make amazon voucher?
Unfortunately, there is no reference to whether a link from making a contest is good in the eyes of search engines or not. I already know these techniques, but I’ve never used it. Beside because of problems finding a sponsor, another problem is about search engines. I personally do not believe the link of the contest promotion will still be placed by the participants of the contest on his blog after the contest ended.
It can’t be helped. It’s their choice to keep your link or delete it. But i think not all of participant will do that. I’m sure some of them will keep the link.
I once made a contest on my personal blog, to celebrate the first anniversary. The target is a participant in the country, because this blog is targeted to local people. Gifts that I provide is money but in the rupiah, and transferred to the winner through a local bank. Contest itself quite successful, with an increasing number of subscribers as the indicator.
But I do not know that making a contest is not easy and must consider several aspects such as written in this article. If I make the contest again, I will try to apply your tips. Nice article.
Thanks for your tips about promoting a contest. About blog link of “treasure hunter”, it would be better if you contact me because the link is not just 1-2 but more than 10. So, it will be so long. But ok, i will post 2 of example :
indocontest.com
sherrycontest.blogspot.com –> Sherry is my friend. She have more than 1 blog which write about contest.
@Grand paragon : How can SEO contest increase page-rank better than promotion contest?
@4mpla : Something equal to money. Voucher is the best idea. But actually there is many ways to send cash money to the winner, even with no paypal.
@Akira07 : Nice article. I will apply it to one of my blog. Its almost 2 year, so i may make Anniversary Contest.
@All : I’m waiting for you’re guys contest. Another contest-lover is here
Yes, there is another alternative just like cheque, alertpay, etc but i think mostly people prefer to receive money via paypal. About your plan to make anniversary contest, don’t forget to tell us 😛
Very interesting article. I manage a community forum and a blog. My blog is just writing about my life journey, so I felt no need to create a promotional contest, but it would be better if I make a comment contest. Very interesting for me to see comments from people about my life’s journey. Especially after I read your article about the huge number of incoming links, if I create a contest promotion. I fear that search engines will treat me as a link farmer. And if I create a contest in the forums that I manage, I better make a “post contest”. Thanks 🙂
hai,
i have read your article,
its quite helpfull for newbies,
but can you help me who already have market,
i’m selling woman accecories, its goin’ well till now,
but i have watch my selling cycle for over past month, i saw that every 3rd and 4th week my selling is decreasing, i would use your idea for using contest, i have thought some ideas too, but i then i think it again, i cant use the same idea for every month, what do you think ?
i think giving discount or bonus (if they buy more that 2) are more successfull than contest,
anyway good job, ^^
thx
I didn’t think contest can increase your selling rate directly. But you can make “review my blog” contest. So, participant should reviewing your blog (which mean : writing about your product, price, etc), and hopefully this can bring visitor to take a look your blog and buy your product. Good luck!
I smiled when I saw the picture, because it is a contest which I participated. Unfortunately, because too many participants, the chance of winning becomes very small. However, it remains an interesting experience. I fully agree with this article but not for the part about first secret. The example you give is not a contest with cash prizes, but 700 people participated. At other places, I saw a contest that gives only the i-pod shuffle, but it succeeded in attracting many participants. Conversely, there is a contest with the prize money, but few participants.
I can explain that things. Some blog who running contest with cash prize require people with a lot of “mandatory entry”, so their get lazy to participate. That’s why some cash prize contest is failed. In other side, mostly non-cash prize contest require the participant to do just 1-2 things and their system is random-winner (note : read about random winner vs top point system in other comment on this article).
Thanks for the tips. But a little advice for tips number 4. We actually don’t always have to inform with certainty the date of winner announcement. From the beginning, we don’t know how many participants will participate. If there hundreds of participants, I am sure even a 3-4 day is also not enough to choose a winner, especially for contest with top-points system. So, you can simply inform that the announcement of winners will be made soon.
That’s just suggestion only. In the case you can’t make sure the announcement date, then it’s OK. But as a participant, you’re also prefer the one who tell the announcement date, right? 😛
I think “investments” by making the contest and buy direct ads are not too much different in purpose of increasing SERP. For example with $200 you can get 200 links from the contest participants, but I’m sure more than half of it is a PR0-1 blog. Indeed the position of your blog will go up but if $200 is used to buy direct ads, SERP of your blogs will also go up. Because actually you can advertise on some PR3-4 blog with $200. I think some of the links from high pagerank blog is same weight as with hundreds of links coming from low PR blog.
My web is under development, until know i don’t know about to use contest or buy ads.
That’s in the case if page rank is everything, so buy direct ads is more simple than a contest. But if in the case exposure is no.1, then go for contest because massive link is waiting for your blog 🙂