Blog contests have become the fad today and rightly so, as they do a world of good to everyone. The most important thing, is to get the blog noticed and in this world of millions of blogs, publicity and recognition is everything. A contest is one sure way of getting linkbacks, readers, publicity and also make friends. In fact, you stand to gain far more than what you giveaway as part of the contest. With that in mind, I’ll be discussing a few useful tips on how to set up and run a great contest on your site.

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There are 3 aspects to keep in mind whenever you decide to run a contest on your blog:

  1. The Prize
  2. The Concept behind the contest
  3. The Publicity

The Prize:

The prize that you are giving away is probably the most important aspect of the contest as this is the sole reason a majority of new visitors are making the way to your blog. So, its your job to make the prize as attractive as you possibly can within the limits of your affordability. Finding a prize to give away may be as easy as looking around your house. You may never know what may come up!

Consider the following ideas when you are selecting a prize:

Relevancy

Ensure that the prize you give is related to the topic or niche your blog deals with. If you are running a technology blog and you give away a teddy bear as a prize, you won’t be getting long term readers to your blog. Instead try something relevant like a Flash Drive or something which attracts people interested in the niche of your blog. These are people who will stay if your blog is interesting.

Remembrance

Try coming up with a prize that would be something to remember your blog by even after the contest is over. Something like a ebook for all participants with simple tips labeled with your blog’s name could work wonders in promotion of your blog.

Worldwide Acceptance

If the prize is an object then consider offering worldwide shipping for free. This would most definitely bring a whole new dimension to the visitors of your blog. Also, if worldwide shipping is not possible, offer a prize equivalent like a PayPal deposit to encourage others to participate. Remember, the more the participants, the more the linkbacks and the more the exposure.

Runners-up and Sponsors

Offering only a single big prize may turn off some bloggers as they might think they wouldn’t have much luck against a huge turnout of participants. So, offering runner up prizes (like $10 for the 3 runners-up) would go a great way in encouraging people to give it a shot.

If your blog is popular, try requesting your sponsors for prizes and offer them extensive publicity (like linkbacks) in return. This would mean, less out of your pocket and more out of it for your blog.

 

Conceptualize:

Now, that you are ready with the prize, you need to choose the best way to promote it. A concept is basically what you are expecting in return from the participants. Here are a few tips to come up with a good one:

Uniqueness

The “review my blog for a linkback” concept has pretty much gone stale these days. So, when you come up with a concept, try to ensure that it hasn’t been used much before and is innovative. This would certainly create a buzz around the contest and result in increased traffic if it gets noticed.

I would point out Blogrrl’s contest here where you had to send a picture of yourself downing alcohol to get an entry. This sort of idea is what gets your blog noticed, not the run-of-the-mill sort of contest.

Ease of entry

There are busy people out there and everybody doesn’t have time to make a 200 word review about your site. So, offer simpler and quicker methods of entry into your contest. Some of them include,

  • Commenting for an entry
  • Digging, Stumbling, Bookmarking etc. for one entry each
  • Commenting on another blog for an entry
  • One entry for adding a link to the Blogroll
  • An entry for subscription to the RSS or Newsletter

There are many other ways, so just think, explore and find better avenues of entry. Just make the rules simple to understand!

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Publicize:

When I say publicize, I mean publicize the contest and using it, indirectly publicize the blog as well. Publicizing is all about getting the right links in the right places and driving traffic to your blog.

You may find the following tips useful to publicize your blog:

Submit to Exclusive Contest Sites

These are blogs that deal exclusively in mentioning about contests around the web and by getting yourself featured on these sites, you most certainly can bring home a ton of visitors. The more popular ones include Contest Blogger and The Prize Blog.

Request mentions from friends

Ask your blogger friends to make a mention about the contest on their site whatever their niche may be. If your contest is really over the top, requesting a plug from top bloggers would do you some good as well. Any traffic is good traffic. It’s all about how you use it.

Invites and Linkbacks

Offer linkbacks to all the participants of the contest. Depending on the popularity of the blog, people would participate atleast for the linkback. Also, invite your blog subscribers to participate and offer them an incentive to participate (like a couple of extra entries). This way, you recognize their subscription to your blog and gain yourself a loyal subscriber base.

Does it Work ?

I would cite the example of the contest running here at Contest Radar. It is being done to promote this new site. The entry requirements are pretty simple as well and you can enter with or without a blog. Over the last 8 days that its been running, I’ve gained around 20 Feed Subscribers, that’s more than 2 a day. For a new blog, that is something phenomenal.

Something as simple as what I am doing could get you great benefits over time. You could have a look at the contest to see how it’s done.

Recap

What you should not do when running blog contests?

  • Don’t make the contest duration too long or too short
  • Don’t make too many demands or place too many restrictions
  • Don’t give away too cheap and too useless a prize
  • Don’t change contest rules after the contest has started
  • And finally, never ever make the Mortal Sin of not living up to your word.

If you ever fail to live up to your word then you certainly will lose any and all reputation that you’ve built on the web. So, when you offer a prize, make sure that you can certainly give it away before going ahead with the contest. If you do decide to pull a Ashwin Khanna, then be prepared to never return to the blogosphere again, atleast not with the same name!

If you do everything just right, the you’ll see the results pouring in. Contests are a win-win situation for the you and the participants. They get the chance to win and you promote your blog. Thich is the exact reason why you see atleast a dozen contests everyday. So, have you ever hosted a contest before? How did it go?

I hope you enjoyed reading this post. If you have anything to add, I most certainly look forward to hearing it. Do consider sharing the post, if you find it useful. Thanks for reading!

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