Launch An Incredible Blog Contest

Starting a blog contest is one of the most exciting things to do. Many believe that these competitions attract huge traffic. Utter nonsense! If you are one of these believers, I am sorry to say that you don’t know much about blogging because traffic is just a diminutive part of what you get out of these competitions. It involves substantial brand publicity, a steep rise in sales, and just about everything you ever wanted as a blogger.

Am I exaggerating? No, I am not. You can actually achieve these things but only through rigorous planning. A minor gaffe while planning the contest can jeopardize your vision and dreams. But don’t fret because here are few things that will not let you dreams die, if you consider them while planning.

Prize money or reward

Prizes are the most important thing, at least from the contestant’s point of view because that’s the only thing they will participate for. Hence, deciding the prize while planning is crucial. You need to ensure that you give away something that will quite useful for the participants as bloggers. For Instance, if the participants are from MMO niche, distribute Wordpress Themes as prize or free ads on various blogs. If you can provide them something useful, you will definitely get quite a lot of constants.

How to get sponsors?

Probably you wouldn’t want to spend hundreds for prizes from your own pocket. You would be fool if you do so because you can easily attract sponsors.

I agree getting sponsors for your contest is quite complicated. Most of the people aren’t able to do it. I can say this because lately many people have asked me about the technique to attract sponsors. Okay. There is not super-technique to attract them. Simply send mails asking them to sponsor. Prior to this, you need to identify and create a list of companies or blogs that you think will be enthusiastic about sponsoring the contest.

These are some of the points that you need to cover while drafting the email:

• There will be direct link to your page and a paragraph of description about you.
• The promotion of this contest will be rigorous and on a large scale.
• The participants can win entries by posting, tweeting, and commenting about the contest on their page.
• You will receive enormous traffic, brand publicity, and boost in sales through this contest.

I am sure many companies with show interest in sponsoring the contest.

The Type of Contest

This would be this most significant element of the contest. According to me, keep it uncomplicated and quite easy entry procedure. This will ensure that the number of contestants entering the competition will be quite high. The very common, accepted and popular formats of contests are:

• Posting comment:
  In this kind of contest, people keep commenting on your blog. The one who posted highest number of comments is declared winner. However, to attract so many contestants, you will have to advertise about the contest without anyone’s help.
• Retweeting:
  The post of your preference would be tweeted by numerous people (the link there directs back to the contest page). This is a great tool of alluring traffic as scores of interet users are tweeting your URL’s. Here other people are advertising on your behalf. So most of the work is done by them and you don’t really have to work that hard to attract traffic.
• Subscring to RSS feed:
  This type of contest will help you to increase the number of RSS subscription substantially. You will notice a huge amount of people subscribing for RSS. However, most of the new entries will leave the list as soon as the contest finishes.
• Posting about the Contest:
  Here, people post the details of the contest on their blog along with your link. This also, sometimes, has sponsor’s links. So you can expect a huge traffic in this kind of contest as well. However, many people will be hesitant about posting your contest on their blog. I would definitely not do it.

You can choose any of the above types, or combine a couple of them. It’s your competition, so you make the rules, right?

Just remember, planning the contest is the essence of the contest. Before releasing the first post about it, make sure you have considered all the drawbacks and planned efficiently.