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

We are pleased to announce the winner of the “subscribe to the Invesp blog Rss” contest that we held last month: Congratulations JASON BILLINGSLEY of Elastic Path! Thank you everyone who participated and we wish you luck during future contests through INVESP.

Khalid will be sharing an analysis and the thoughts about this contest very soon. We will also be posting new contests so keep looking out for more.  Happy Friday.

Tags: blog-contest, blog-give-away, bloggers, Blogging
Posted in Blogging, Business

I was listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR last week week. If you do not follow national politics, you would not consider the topic of that episode interesting. Neal Conan was interviewing Matt Bai, the author of “The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics.” Matt argues that democrats’ policy of presenting a unified front is affecting their ability to create new ideas that influence ideology and culture. The interesting part  of the program was when a professor of history dialed into the show and was the first to comment. He started by saying that he was shocked why none of the democratic candidates went to the LDC and instead they chose to go the some blogger convention. The professor continued to ask, “Where did these stupid bloggers come from.” Unfortunately the link on NPR’s site to the recording of this show is not working.

So here are some thoughts:

Blogging is popular. Or is it? With over 60 million blogs online in May, blogging is popular. Yet there are many people who still do not have a clue about it. I wonder how much of the population actually reads blogs regularly. So I conducted a quick informal survey. I asked the client team members what blogs they read regularly. Of a team of 20 engineers, only one of them read any blogs. But this doesn’t mean blogging isn’t popular and hasn’t caught on.

Bloggers are affecting national debate: Yes politicians are finally listening and it is our turn to do some of the talking. I am cynical by nature so I wonder how much of this will continue after the elections. Of course it does not stop with politics. Large companies are acting much faster to resolve customer complaints when bloggers write about them. Yes, I finally feel empowered.

What are you reading? This blog is about marketing. Most of the blogs I read are business blogs in nature. If bloggers who write about politics are causing such a stir, I decided that I should expand my horizons and add different types of blogs to my reading list.

What do you think?

Tags: bloggers, Blogging, blogs
Posted in Blogging, Miscellaneous

Don’t forget that before August 31st, we will pick one lucky RSS subscriber to win either $400 in cash!

All you have to do is subscribe to our RSS feed and look for a secret word that will be included at the end of one of our posts. The message will only be shown to those viewing via RSS.

So, subscribe to the invesp blog feed here.

And good luck!

Tags: blog-contest, blog-give-away, bloggers, Blogging
Posted in Blogging, Business, Miscellaneous

The winner for the comment give-away will win a free copy of ” The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” by Timothy Ferriss. The book is on Amazon 100 best selling books. Here are couple of reviews for the book:

Jack Canfield, Co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul:

It’s about time this book was written. It is a long-overdue manifesto for the mobile lifestyle, and Tim Ferriss is the ideal ambassador. This will be huge.

And

he author has convinced me to change my assumptions about worklife and personal goals. This is an easy read. Althought I am a slooooow and easily distracted reader, I finished the book from cover-to-cover in a few sittings.

Wish you all best of luck and keep these comments coming!

Tags: blog-comments, blog-contest, blog-give-away, bloggers, Blogging
Posted in Blogging

I have about 70 blogs I read regularly. But there are couple that I always start my day reading because frankly their content is unique and refreshing.

Create Business Growth: fresh, different and interesting topics every day!

If you are active on online forums, you must be familiar with Steve [a.k.a. vangogh]

And I think everyone knows Chris Garrett but did you know that he also started authority blogger forum, one of my all time favorite forums for bloggers.

If you want to learn read quality posts about online marketing and advertising, then  Muhammad Saleem at Pronet advertising is your man.

We talk a lot about conversion optimization on our blog. One of my favorite blogs on the topic is Lead optimize by Chris Denny who guest blogs with invesp as well.

Tags: bloggers, blogs, Great-blogs, link-love
Posted in Blogging, Miscellaneous

As I was going through my Google Reader blog subscriptions, I noticed that I enjoy reading the blogs that are conversational much more than those that have no personal or conversational touch.  I started to read back my own blogs that I’ve written to look at my own writing style and I realized that I could be doing much better to include readers in the blog “conversation.”

After doing some research and reading a lot more blogs these are some steps I’ve noticed that differentiated the more interesting conversational blogs from the rest:

1. Write a story: Every blog that I considered “conversational” included some type of story.  Adding that personal touch to the blog helped me identify with the writer by thinking of my own similar experiences.  This also helped by giving me something to comment about.  Instead of just writing something like “great tips, thanks for the advice” I was able to respond to the story and even receive a response in return, hence getting a conversation going.  In other blogs I’ve noticed people actually do build real-life relationships that have developed through blogging.  So telling a story does not only help with allowing the reader identify with you, but it also helps the reader leave a comment and build a relationship.
2. Respond to comments: Another thing that I noticed was that the blog was much more effective when the writer responds in a very timely manner to any and every comment that has been posted.  I’ve even noticed on numerous blogs where readers would respond with comments like “this reminds me of the blog you wrote a few weeks ago…” indicating that the conversation doesn’t end at the completion of the blog but is ongoing.  You can build a stronger, loyal reader base if you respond to people’s comments promptly.
3. Blog about other blogs: This helps you in two ways: first it invites the audience of that other blog to come read about your opinion and to start building a community around your website; second: it gets a conversation going with that writer.  This is important because it is not only important to receive feedback from your readers but from your peers as well, which will help improve the quality of your blog.
4. Blog in series: When writing multiple blogs about the same topic it definitely keeps the conversation going.  It also helps establish you as an expert on that particular subject, allowing readers to rely and come back to you for information on that specific topic.

Tags: blog-series, bloggers, Blogging, blogs
Posted in Blogging, Sales & Marketing

A couple of days ago as I was having lunch with some of my old work friends at Panera, one of them mentioned that she recently read an article I had written for my college newspaper.  I was shocked to say the least, because I never had considered that anyone that did not attend the university, especially a much older individual, would be interested in reading our college paper.  It got me thinking that whenever I write a blog or any document I am always keeping in mind a group of readers that I’m targeting in my writing, however it’s important to keep other readers in mind.  It’s crazy to think that your blog audience can potentially expand to over 6 billion people!

Obviously not all 6 billion world citizens are going to read your work! But even if we limit our audience to the United States there are still some techniques that can be followed to help improve our ability to write effectively for multiple audiences.  When researching on this topic I found that Stanford University and The Poynter Institute did a study in 2000 on how people read the news on the web.  They tracked eye movements and came to the conclusion that on an initial visit to any website, people paid much more attention to text on that page than graphics.  After going through this study and researching a little deeper I’ve come up with the following tips to help improve effectively writing for multiple audiences:

1. Spend time on the headlines – It’s almost always the first thing that people scan and it needs to be meaningful and interesting.  As mentioned above, based on Stanford’s study of eye movements people are more likely to focus on text on the web rather than images.  Any headline or caption needs to be interesting and tell the reader exactly what the following information is about.
2. Focus on key concepts – Help your readers scan for key concepts by emphasizing important information using bold or colored text to highlight keywords. 
3. Use lists – Lists are easy to read and easy to follow.  Using bullet points or numbers helps organize the information and allows readers to jump to the crucial part of the blog.
4. Simplify – Try to use simple and small words in simple sentence structures.  Also keep in mind that using puns or metaphors might be difficult to understand outside of your own culture, so it’s better to avoid them.  Make sure that when you go back and edit your work that the information you are providing is in an easy to understand and simple format.
5. Be accurate and credible – It is very important for your readers to be able to trust and rely on the information you provide.  Make sure to site information gathered from other sources and to always provide accurate and credible information consistently.

Tags: blog-series, bloggers, Blogging, blogs, writing
Posted in Blogging

Some writers love the idea of creating a “cult” for themselves. They’ve even gone as far as creating traits that all “members of the writing cult” share. I thought it was really funny, so I’ve compiled a list of the traits that writers should have according to ordinary Joe Shmoe writers and bloggers, and my rebuttal to each:

• Creative Expression: Every writer has a need to express themselves in one way or another. According to these “experts,” a distinctive factor of many writers is this ease of expression with words. Writers will get their point across in their own, unique, and creative manner.

Rebuttal: Yes, writers can express creatively; but what may seem like a creative expression to someone could be nonsense to another. My point is this is vague and could be applied to anyone, writer or not.

• Finding problem: Writers traditionally are creative individuals that are able to think “outside of the box.” Even when it comes to common matters, they will distinguish possible problems that will arise and try to consider various solutions for each.

Rebuttal: Not necessarily. Actually, I’ve encountered many writers that do not know to “think outside the box.” Writers are individuals that vary because of experiences they’ve encountered in life. So yes, a writer that has been exposed to situations that force them to “problem-solve” will be “excellent problem-solvers”. But if not; they most likely have not developed the skills to starting viewing things from a separate angle. So again, determining that all writers should possess this trait is nonsense.

• Intellectual Flexibility: Writers commonly have a complex and distinguished way of approaching problems or issues. Their creativity allows them to see things in ways that others may not consider.

Rebuttal: Writer or not, everyone has a unique perspective when looking and considering different issues. So why is this a specific trait to writers or creative people?

• Acceptance of Failure: For writers, it’s commonly acceptable to accept failure and embrace the opportunity to improve. Failure is not seen as a negative hurdle but rather a new chance to flourish, learn and grow.

Rebuttal: I think this is something that any successful person should possess, I don’t know why it is specifically dubbed a trait for writers!!

• Taking risks: Writers love excitement and stimulation and will go to many lengths to try and accomplish that. They do not confine themselves to one specific type of writing or activity.

Rebuttal: What kind of risks? Writing risks? I don’t even think you can determine that! I mean writers, like all people, come in various shapes and sizes. Some are risk takers, but many like to stay in their comfort zones. Are the risk takers better writers? I think not.

• Open-minded: Open-minded is a very subjective matter. But a lot of times, because writers are exposed to a lot in the world through reading, freelancing, or researching; they have an objective outlook on the world.

Rebuttal: Open-mindedness? Actually, many successful writers aren’t open-minded AT ALL!! That’s what makes their writing so appealing! They are so polarizing that it completely attracts a specific reader of their column, book, blog, etc.

• Motivated: Writers are motivated to excel in their creativity. They don’t write to reap rewards, yet they do it simply for the pleasure and growth they gain. Of course, this does not mean that those people that write for a living aren’t doing it for the money; yet they still gain the satisfaction of loving what their work because of the challenge and creative reward.

Rebuttal: Actually, when you look at the rates that some of these writers are charging you realize how much they are truly in it for the money! In the end everybody loves the cash. Now, that doesn’t mean that writers do not love what they do. But if they aren’t getting paid, trust me, they aren’t loving it!

The conclusion is that there are no traits that can truly define writers into a single group. We can try, but many great writers have come and gone; and each writer had their own great traits and lived by their own rules.

Tags: bloggers, Blogging, blogs, writing
Posted in Blogging, Copy Writing

I was inspired by my blog about “the highest paying jobs” to search for the real highest paying jobs in the US. As I mentioned I was disappointed with the results provided by both Career Builder and Monster. But then, I stumbled upon www.payscale.com. The site builds itself as “a trusted market leader in online salary.” Surely a trusted market would have accurate data. When I did a search on Neurosurgeon pay, here is the data the site gave:

Median Salary by Years Experience - Job: Neurosurgeon (United States)

Compare your salary: Get a free Salary Report

I spent few minutes trying to make sense of the data. Here is what I came up with:

1- If you have less than one year of experience as neurosurgeon, you will make an average of 258,000 per year.

2- If you have between 1 to 4 years of experience, your pay will go down to 200,000 per year. So, more experience = less pay.

3- If you have between 5-9 your pay will go up to 250,000. It is still not as good as your first few months of work but things are getting a little better.

4- Things improve when you have between 10-19 years of experience because you will make around 284,000 per year

5- You would think that experience counts for something but after working for 20+ years  your pay will actually go down to a level below the years between 10-19 of your practice.

I think you get my drift. The data does not make any sense. It makes me wonder if it is too much to expect the “trusted market leader in online salary” to have accurate data.

Tags: blog-contest, blog-series, bloggers, Blogging, link-building
Posted in Blogging