As we discussed in an earlier post, organizing or sponsoring a contest is a very effective way to pull visitors to your blog. We also discussed that contests could be divided into two broad categories — based on the nature of human involvement — Content-based contest and click-based contest.
We will take that discussion forward in this article, and we will talk here about 3 content-based contests that could help you skyrocket your blog’s readership.
This is one of the best contests to host. The idea is quite simple. Ask your visitors to post a comment in the comment box to get a chance to win the prize. Also remind them that each comment will get one entry into a lucky draw, so they can enter more than one comment to get more than one entry. At this point, do not forget to tell them just one-line generic comments will either get filtered out by your spam filter, or will be weeded out by your staff. Remind them that the comment that will add to the discussion will only get accepted. Comment done just to get multiple entry and which does not take the discussion forward, even a bit, will automatically get disqualified.
This is another form of contest that you can run. Ask your readers to write a review for your website on their domain, in Facebook, or wherever they want, as long as it is written on the websites talking about topics like pornographic, abusive, racism, etc. make an e-mail ID, and ask them to send the URL to that mail ID. Promise the announcement of the result on your blog, and tell them that 3 best reviews will get the prize. To win the prize, it is important for them to include two links to your website in the review — one to the home page, and another to any other page. For deep lining, you can provide some options from your blog posts.
The third form of content-heavy contest is guess post writing contest. Ask you readers to write guest posts for you. Announce that the best written guest post will get the prize, and the second and the third ranked guest post will also get prize. To motivate them to write a guest post, tell your visitors that each guest post will be published, and writer will get the byline for the guest post along with 2 links back to their website, Facebook page, twitter, etc.
Content-based contests are time consuming, so the prize should be good, otherwise people will not get motivated to spend time on your blog.
Tags: blog, Contests, Deep Lining, Domain, E Mail, Facebook, Human Involvement, Lucky Draw, Mail Id, Racism, Readership, Spam Filter, Writing Contest
Writing is writing is writing is writing. How the hell one article is different from other?
Right?
Wrong!
All types of writing are not cut to be equal. The style, mood, tone, use of words, arrangement of paragraphs, objective, target audience, and even length of different types of articles are different. The article that may work for one medium may not work on another. For example: the article that you post on your website will not be same as the article you posted last night on ezinearticles.com.
Talking of ezinearticles.com let me explain how you should write for article directories.
No one likes reading text-heavy articles, not at least in article directories. Make your article visually scannable through the end by adding bullet points, and making the important keywords bold. The things that you have highlighted should give away the central meaning of the article.
An article between 250 and 800 words work like a charm in article directories, anything shorter or longer than that gets overlooked by the reader. I will recommend using 350-400 words articles.
None of the paragraphs should be longer than 3 to 4 lines, and no sentence should be too long. Short sentences and simple words are easy to understand, which help you increase the readership of the article. Do not write complex sentences.
I am not among those who are strict about the grammar usage, yet I recommend reviewing the article for obvious grammatical and punctuation mistakes. You must review it before submitting to the directory.
Do not take guidelines set by article directories lightly. By doing so, you risk rejection. Read the guidelines carefully and follow them.
Follow these principles and you will get desired results from the articles.
Tags: Brevity, Bullet Points, Complex Sentences, Directories, Grammar Usage, Hell One, Paragraphs, Proper Grammar, Punctuation Mistakes, Readership, Reading Text, Risk Rejection, Target Audience
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