Can Contests Hurt Your Blog?
Filed in Building Traffic (Blogging 201)
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This morning I noticed that well over a dozen different blogs on my regular reading list are running contests. All sorts of contests, too, from naming someone’s new dog to guessing the gender and arrival date of the blogger’s unborn baby. One’s even offering a free banner ad to the blogger who sends the most commenters their way (with the requirement that the commenters must say they came from that particular blog).
It’s annoying, really. Why? Because all morning long I’ve been looking for things to read. I didn’t have a chance all weekend long to pay attention to the news, and I’ve fallen behind on much of my blog-reading, so I’d hoped that by going through my various blogrolls I’d run into some well-written, linkable entry that might just spark my own creativity. Instead, I ran into contests, one after another.
Meanwhile, there’s a backlash going on against contests, and I have to say that I fully sympathize. Hence, this Morning’s Must Read: Should contests run your blog?
The short answer: not if you want people to think about re-visiting your blog once the contest has ended.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 11:43 am and is filed under Building Traffic (Blogging 201). Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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Man am I glad you wrote this, I couldn’t take it anymore. Everybody and their mother is running a contest right now going a-whoring after every backlink they can get.
I ran a contest once offering a $100 gift certificate for Amazon. I got a total of 6 backlinks for my efforts. Never again.
It’s driving me nuts, too. Yes, contests are fun but they don’t make up for good content. I’ve run into so many blogs where it seems like all I’m seeing are contests and memes these days — I can’t click the X button to close my browser window fast enough!
I have only been blogging since Nov. ‘07. I have been invited to many contests and tagged several times. First, I don’t know how to put a link into my wordpress text yet. Second, I have thought these things to be tacky. As a newby, I haven’t liked sites that were having all these contests. I am picky about advertising as well. I think that is what I like about your site. There is very little “bling” and you actually have some thing valuable to say. Also, I get very dissapointed when I reach the end of a post and realize it was not written by the author of that blog. To me that is laziness and it gets under my skin. I usually won’t go back to their site.
Rachael, welcome to blogging! I’m very flattered that you like this site, and I hope you find it useful as you grow your blog.
To that end, let me see if I can help quickly explain how to do a link using WordPress:
Of course, you may also want to learn a bit more about linking so you can understand basic link theory, and you’ll also want to know about how and why to send trackbacks to help publicize your blog.
As far as entries not written by the blog author, sometimes people have guest bloggers either to add new perspective or to cover for them while they’re sick, on vacation or just out of things to write about.
Or were you referring to the “Sponsored By…” buttons that sometimes appear at the bottom of entries? Those are still written by the blog author: the button simply reflects that the blogger was paid to write the entry.
At any rate, feel free to ask questions here or to contact me. I’m always happy to help, although I may for convenience respond to your questions with an entry here if I think other people might also have the same questions.
Thanks again for visiting!
Thanks Kate, I will try it.
Hey Kate, This info is great except I do not have those options above my post box. I have often wondered how I could underline things and make things bold print. I just thought wordpress didn’t offer that option. Obviously I am missing some thing. Any ideas?
Ah, you’ve probably got the WSIWYG editor turned on. I don’t use that. Can’t stand it, as a matter of fact.
If you want to turn it off go into your Dashboard -> Users -> You -> Edit. At the top of the screen you’ll see a checkbox with “Use the visual editor”. Uncheck it and save your changes.
The buttons should show up next time you try to write an entry.
I type so quickly that I don’t bother with the buttons most of the time. To format text manually, you’d just type in the appropriate html.
For instance, to do bold, use < "b"> (without the quotes) before the next and < "/b"> (again without quotes) afterwards. To do underlining it’s < "u"> and < "/u">.
Guess what it is for italicizing?