Blog contests, you have probably seen loads of them advertised around the blogosphere today already. But why are so many bloggers running them on their blogs?
The fact is that blog contests have many benefits for bloggers, with the only downside being that you need to arrange a prize, this can sometimes be a difficult task if you are not able to give something away from yourself or afford to offer a prize from your own pocket.
I want to share with you 5 reasons why you should run a contest on your blog:
- Community - Blog contests are a great way of building a community around your blog. It is a great way of interacting with your readers and giving them a chance to get involved with your blog. Contests keep people coming back and checking the progress of the contests and interacting with your other readers.
- Comments - Blog contest posts tend to get more comments on average compared to other types of posts. This is usually because people have to comment to enter but people also like to interact more with these posts.
- Subscribers - When people enter a contest they always want to be sure they will find out if they win, this means that many will also sign up to the blogs RSS feed to stay up-to-date with the progress of the contest. Many bloggers also like to make it compulsory to sign up to the RSS feed as part of the contest entry. This shows that contests are a great way of boosting your RSS signups.
- Backlinks - People love contests, they also love linking to contests. This is because people respond well to contests so if you point someone in the direction of a good contest then people will remember that you provided them with this valuable information. This means that contest posts tend to receive more backlinks than other post types. Also, some bloggers make it compulsory to write about the contest on their blogs including a link back to the contest post.
- Content - A great style of contest that is popular at the moment is a guest posting contest. The great thing about these contests is that they are a great way of getting more valuable content on your blog from other bloggers. The incentive for the blogger is that they have a chance of winning the prize as well as getting a link back to their own blog. This content can attract new readers and subscribers to your blog which makes this style of contest very popular for bloggers.
These are just some of the benefits of running a contest on your blog.
I have run a couple of contests on this blog in the past and they have all been well received. I am currently planning a new contest that I hope to launch next week, so sign up to my RSS feed to be sure that you don’t miss out on that, if you are interested in being a sponsor for this contest then drop me an email.
Have you run contests on your blog? What style of contest do you prefer? What benefits do you get from running contests on your blog?
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{ 4 comments }
Twitter: SuperBlogga
June 30, 2011 at 5:25 am
Hi, David:
Nice to meet you, found your lovely site via Twitter. I have run a series of contests on my blogs. Some have been caption contests, others a simple product giveaway. Like right now I have a Wordpress t-shirt giveaway to those who sign up to my email list. Expires 6/30, so just one more day left to try and win.
I believe contests and giveaways are a fantastic way to get others to perform a “call to action” on your site. Anything and everything from getting more RSS subscribers to more Twitter followers and so on. It just depends on what you seek and how good you set up the giveaway. Oh! and the prize matters as well. The better the prize, the better your outcome.
Look forward to your upcoming blog contest, be sure to mention it on Twitter.
Cheers,
Missy
Twitter: davidshawblog
June 30, 2011 at 9:21 am
Thanks for stopping by missy.
I have entered your WordPress t-shirt giveaway.
Look forward to interacting with you more over the coming months.
Twitter: SuperBlogga
June 30, 2011 at 8:31 pm
You’re in it, to win it. Did I really just say that? How lame. lol. But cheers to you for entering. Thx!
Missy
Man, your site is giving me a lot of good ideas. I’m going to have to come up with a good contest to run on my new site as well as a good way to promote it. That will definitely help with the backlinks like you suggest in your post.