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The Adverse Effects Of Running On-Blog Contests, How You Can Actually Lose Readers

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Blog contests and ‘contests‘ in general have become an increasingly popular way to generate buzz; and boost popularity for web-sites which are seen to be ‘below the radar‘. One of my biggest frustrations to date is the fact that bloggers and webmasters alike spend enormous amounts of time running these on-blog contests (on-blog meaning the contest appears as a physical post on the blog). Less quality content is produced as a result and some part of your readership may be affected by this, and they may, in turn leave.

I believe that webmasters develop and launch contests for two main reasons. The first being, to get links for better SEO and the second, to boost popularity and generate buzz (as mentioned above). If you have developed a steady flow of readers over time, it’s probably because they enjoyed reading your content; they didn’t come as a result of your contest, but they might leave as a result of your contest. Quick anecdote: If a supermarket sells high quality products one day and sells a cheaper brand the next…You go to another supermarket. It’s as simple as that.

This time spent running these contests means less premium content and more garbage stuff which, if a reader hasn’t followed from the beginning, will make them lose interest in the particular blog. This is the basis for this post, you may gain readers from a contest but you may have also left twenty or so regular readers behind or in the dark…You’ve lost them because they were not there from the start. I’m not just pulling this stuff out of a hat, it’s proven knowledge, when I go to a blog running a contest and I wasn’t there from the start, I don’t go there for a couple of months…What do you do? The problem with a contest is that you have to keep track of it, something many people don’t have the time to do.

Using a newsletter to manage your contest has many positives and virtually zero negatives, it allows you to stay in touch with your community, whilst also maintaining high readership numbers because the blog stays clean and content rich. Newsletters have the added benefit of being able to track the behavior of your readers with statistics provided by some email marketing software such as Aweber, GetResponse and iContact. I believe that using a newsletter is a more personal and is a much less intrusive way of running a contest. Email Newsletters are a more logical and structured way of generating contests to send to your active readership and they usually yield greater results.

Save your readers, every single reader counts. Contest posts look messy and sometimes reduce the overall quality of your blog; I’m not saying ‘Don’t run contests‘, I am saying if you do want to run a contest make sure it does not interfere with the blog’s content quality and its daily proceedings. You can have on-blog contest posts, just make sure they are clean and they are quickly followed up by quality posts about your blog’s topic. Even then I still highly recommend opting to the email marketing solutions I provided you with earlier, it just makes life less of a hassle.

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Posted on July 17, 2008
Filed Under Blog and Site Improvement |

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6 Responses to “The Adverse Effects Of Running On-Blog Contests, How You Can Actually Lose Readers”

  1. no imageBubbles (Check me out!) on July 18th, 2008 3:46 pm

    Great idea to use newsletter.
    However, I believe some blogs can increase thier readership through their blog contest. It depends on the type of contest and the prize . GoSmelltheFlowers is one site where their blog contest is always very popular and has lots of comments. This could be because trying to come up with funny or zanny captions is fun. Having a chance at $60 of flowers could have also made the blog contest more popular.

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    		1.7 (1 person)
  2. no imageMatt S (Check me out!) on July 19th, 2008 10:29 am

    I’m not a fan of running contests. If you have to employ that sort of technique to drive traffic / gain readers perhaps you’re not blogging for the right reasons. Content should always be the most important thing in a blog and running contests attracts the wrong sort of reader and also disrupts your content, spoiling it for the other readers.

    I prefer newsletters every time, they reward all the loyal readers and no-one loses out. It could also remind your old readers who have drifted off to come back. It’s a great way to keep up communications with all your readers, in fact I should look into setting on up, what’s the best way to do that?

    Great, thought-provoking post Fabien.

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    		3.5 (1 person)
  3. no imageFabien (Check me out!) on July 19th, 2008 1:11 pm

    :arrow: BUBBLES: As much as I understand where you’re coming from, I think contest is a cheap and rather ineffective way of attracting a large readership. The big blogs don’t get readers by doing contests, they get readers because people link to them and generate buzz for them. Why do they do this? They do it because their content is top notch flagship or authority content.

    If you’re using a contest for whatever reason, don’t distract potential subscribers, use an email management system; anyone online should be actively building a list; because it’s a vital point of communication, more personal communication between reader and writer. Contests can sometimes prove to be very expensive and have many shortcomings. Thank you for sharing and I hope to see you again soon! :grin:

    :arrow: MATT S: I agree with you Matt, content should always be at the core of any blog. Traffic should come relatively naturally alongside very effective marketing techniques to promote your blog. The best way to set up a newsletter is via Aweber, iContact and GetResponse as I pointed out. I’ll cover it in a future post or we can chat about it sometime soon. Thanks for your comment Matt, they are always very much appreciated. All the best with the Modern Student and I’ll speak to you soon! :mrgreen:

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    		3.5
  4. no imageFrank C (Check me out!) on July 20th, 2008 2:18 am

    I think for a contest to work it has to fit well within your blog’s monetization and promotional strategy. Readers of certain blogs expect it and it’s part of the overall atmosphere of the site. Using newsletters to do it is certainly a good option too.

    Unfortunately, most people do it as sort of a lame “me too!” in an attempt to get what usually turns out to be a temporary boost in feed numbers and traffic.

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    		2.8 (1 person)
  5. no imageLouis Liem (Check me out!) on July 30th, 2008 5:43 am

    I think contests are good for generating buzz for your blog. But you need to follow it up with quality posts.

    You can make contest post visible only on your feed or your blog and invisible in your feed. Find out how on my link. This way, you won’t annoy readers who are not interesed in contests.

    If you worry that your contest won’t spread in the blogosphere, you can ask for contest blogs to post about it without harming your readership.

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    		3.2
  6. no imageBlogging Buddha (Check me out!) on August 2nd, 2008 2:00 am

    True. I ran a blog contest last month. Although readership increased for a week, it then came down to level that was lower than traffic that existed before the contest.http://smallfishbigmoney.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_cry.gif Thanks for this post!

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    		3.4

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