subject: How To Use Blog Contests To Create Buzz For Your Blog [print this page] Blogging have created great waves in internet marketing. Blog sites are dynamic websites. That means the website can be changed, updated, and deleted very easily by its owners. Sometimes, even users can do that. Blog sites are very different from a static website because users have to update them using html processors like FrontPage. Blog sites basically follow the what you see is what you get kind of principle. All you really have to do is to populate your site is to post your blog entry everyday if you wish. And doing that is as simple as typing on the text box provided and clicking on the submit button.
But another good feature of blog sites is that they can easily be syndicated and sent to thousands of interested subscribers. So to put it simply, the popular your blog is, the higher are the chances that you are going to attract new visitors to it on a regular basis. As such, you now have a powerful advertising medium. You can then use the site for promoting your own services and products. Or if you dont have those, you can easily promote others for a fee, of course.
Putting up a blog is very easy. But finding regular subscribers to it is the harder part. Here is where blog contests come in. A lot of bloggers are current using this method to create buzz for their website. Here are the ways on how you can use blog contests to create buzz for your blog:
1. Think of a very exciting contest.
Before you start anything, you have to first think of a concept that you can integrate with a contest for your blog. Make sure that the contest is related to your articles or blog entries. You want your blog site to be remembered by the many people who joined for the contest. Plus, you want a more targeted audience. You want a group whose line of interest is well within whats your blog is all about.
2. Plan out how your blog will benefit from it.
A nice and exciting contest would do you no good if your blog site wont benefit from it directly. Change the contest rules as necessary so that your blog will get promoted as the contest progresses. For example, if the main object of the contest is to create thousands of subscribers to your blog, you might want to include in the contest rules that they need to click on the subscription icon of your blog in order for them to qualify.
3. Give away nice prizes.
A contest is not a contest without prizes. For one thing, people want to join because they want to get the prize you are giving away. Prizes create motivation. And it follows that the bigger your prizes are, the better the results would be. But even that is not going to be a guarantee. You still have to work in promoting the contest so that people would join.
4. Advertise your contest to the right group.
Reach out to a lot of people. If you only invited 10 people to join, only 10 people, or sometimes even less, would join. You should blast out invitations to your contest on all legitimate avenues available. You can do it through other blog spots, forums, email invitation, and similar places.
5. Use the word of mouth concept.
Word of mouth referral is a very viral concept. Applying it in your blog contest scenario, you can ask every participant to invite their friends to join. And if they do, they would get additional points that correspond to bigger chances of winning.
6. Update the contest regularly and build anticipation.
Dont start your blog contest and leave it in the air hanging. Regularly post updates to it, as to who is winning, how many entries are made, and the length of the time the contest is going to run for. Doing this would allow your contestants to work more to win your prizes.
7. Award your winners as necessary.
Whether the contest is a success or not, you should be ready to award the prizes you promised. Dont leave your winners empty handed because they are not going to like it. Besides, the publicity you have created with your blog would turn into a negative one if you dont deliver what you had promised.
