If you want to stand out, to be chosen over your competitors, then your prospects have to be clear how your offer is differentiated. The best way to differentiate is to change the rules of the game. Rather than be one player amongst many, be the leader of an entirely new category.

We see this play out in the market over and over, everything from “Lite Beer” to “Bag-less Vacuum Cleaners”, the company that creates a brand new category and owns it wins. You look like a leader while your competitors scramble to follow.

One way to create your own category is to simply find a phrase that describes what you already do differently or a trend you see growing.

I’m sure you have heard of Link Bait, while I can not be sure if Nick invented the term, for a while he was the best known authority on the tactic. Liz completely owns the phrase “relationship blogger”, it is not a persona she adopts, that is how she is in truth. Michael gave the name “Gateway Blogging” in this video to his tactic of using blogs to funnel attention. I did this by describing my approach to blogging for credibility, trust and reputation as Authority Blogging. Another concept I developed, and dedicated a whole ebook to (download it free here) was the idea of Flagship Content.

The key is to be authentic, base your category on something authentic, original and beneficial. This is not about simply talking about “green widgets”, find something worth talking about and that works as a spreadable idea.

How can you create a new category for what you do?

Tags: blog-promotion, conversation-marketing, link-baiting, writing
Posted in Sales & Marketing

It has been over a month since we concluded our blog contest. Many had emailed asking me how well the contest went and if I would recommend doing something similar with other blogs. I wanted to wait a little while before I posted an assessment of what worked and what did not work during the contest to carefully consider the results.

Goals

Prior to June the blog was not a main focus of ours. Posting was sporadic at best.  Although the blog had daily traffic of around 100 visitors, I do not think we had any RSS subscribers. As part of our push to engage with the online community a bit more, we decided to make couple of changes to better utilize our blog as a means for communication. First, we decided to post at least three times a week. Second, switch our blog to a more search engine/ visitor friendly platform.

I have always believed that RSS membership is a cornerstone of a good blog. It gives a great sense of a community around the blog. So the goal of the contest was to increase the number of RSS subscribers between 50 on the low end to 300 on the high end.

RSS membership

Our rss membership level jumped up by 130 during the month we ran the contest. Many had warned that the membership level will drop down after the contest.  It is natural to assume that people will subscribe until the end of the contest, and then unsubscribe. That was the main reason I held off on writing this post to get a better idea of how well the contest worked. I am glad to share that our membership did not drop down since the contest finished over a month ago. As a matter of fact the number of RSS subscribers is steadily increasing.

Links

Although generating links to the blog was not one of the primary goals of running the contest, the blog received close to 40 links as a result.

Daily visitors

I am not sure if I can relate this directly to the contest or if it is a result of the regular posting schedule that we decided to stick with. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, our daily blog traffic was around 50 visitors per day. As of writing this post, our average traffic is between 300-500 visitors per day.

Comments

This is the other indicator of how well a blog is working. I have always said that a blog without comments is a very lonely place. Prior to the contest, there were too many days were blogs did not receive any comments. Since we ran the contest, we had a total of 60 posts with 354 comments on them. The community engagement has been tremendous and very rewarding.

Conversations

This is probably one of the best results of the contest. Our team members including myself became much more involved with the online community. Whether it is via forums, blogs or social networking sites, we have established very valuable relationships. There is no way to put a value on these relations.

Lessons Learned

•  Setting up a contest with a large prize is not enough to market it. I can here people say duh! The response to the contest was not strong during the first week. Marketing and promoting the contest for a new blog takes a lot of effort.
• If you want to run a contest, consider setting goals that must be met before prize is given away. I was very pleased with the increase in the RSS membership we received. But I have seen other blog where the RSS level needs to hit a certain level prior to the giving the reword.
• Consider adding other rewards to the contest besides the monetary value. I liked what Ben did by getting Chris Garrett to write for blogging experiment contest winner. How about paying for a review me post for the contest winner from a big name blogger?

Would we run the contest again?

This is the question that truly determines the success of the contest. And the simple answer is, (drum roll please) YES we will.

Tags: blog-contest, blog-promotion, bloggers, Blogging
Posted in Blogging

Note from Khalid: The following post was written by Matthew who was instrumental in helping us promote the invesp blog contest. I asked him to give us some ideas about ways to promote a blog contest. Make sure to chat with him if you need help in something similar. My review of the results of the contest will be published next week.

Some bloggers think that they can just post a cool prize for their contest and traffic will flow. That is along the same lines as the myth “create good content and they will come”. Many bloggers and website developers overlook the fact of how important marketing is.

Tools at your Disposal

When marketing you want to think of many different possibly ways to promote your contest. There are many websites out there to use, it’s become a lot easier to do promotion.

Forums are your Friends: Don’t overlook forums! By making a short, simple, and sweet post describing your contest you can gain lots of exposure. Would you pass up the thread stating “Subscribe to INVESP and win $400″, I wouldn’t. There are many forums that you can promote your contests on, such as PayPerpost, Digital Point, Bloggerforum, and more

Use Your Network: Websites like MyBlogLog have become perfect for promotion. If you have spent time building up your network, like I have, MyBlogLog is perfect. They have a great new tool where you can send a message to everyone in your community. By doing so, I can alert nearly 600 people of a new contest in 1 minute.

Ask Your Blogging Friends: It’s important to branch out and communicate with other bloggers. If you plug their promotions, they will do the same for you. ‘Scratch my back I’ll scratch your back’ type of thing. If you are having trouble with that, offer them incentive. “Hey promote my contest and I will give you a linkback”. It helps both parties involved.

It’s Not as Easy as it Sounds

Okay, It’s not that easy, it does take work. I have the advantage over some bloggers because I have been blogging for almost a year now. I have had time to build relationships with other bloggers and extend my network. When the guys here at INVESP left a comment on my blog about promoting their contest I jumped at the chance. Soon after accepting the “job” I got 17 links to their contest as well as several forum posts. The results have been great and they are very pleased with my service (which is why I am writing this post!).

Tags: blog-contest, blog-promotion, Blogging
Posted in Blogging, Sales & Marketing