Here’s a clever idea that solves two problems at your blog: too few people pitching decent ideas for guest posts, and too little traffic.
Sponsor a contest for guest bloggers like the first Career Confidential Guest Blogging Contest that’s starting soon. They’re not even requiring entrants to have their own blogs.
Create a text or video post on the topic of finding a job. Example: “Find a Job Using These Strategies on Twitter.” Then drive as much traffic as possible to your post during a 10-day period, using social media and other marketing methods.
I love the seven-question survey they’re offering, to help them know what kinds of prizes would motivate you to enter. The three bloggers who drive the most traffic will win.
They say their site gets about 400,000 visitors every month. If you’re a career or job expert, winning could bring lots of traffic to your own blog or website, and give you exposure to a target market that doesn’t already know about you.
Would you enter a contest like this? Have you ever sponsored one? If so, comment below. And share this URL with your own friends, followers and fans.
For about a year, I moderated a Blog Challenge Contest on a VA website, Virtual Assistant Forums. The prizes we gave away were advertisement on the site, a restaurant.com gift certificate, ebooks, regular business books, coaching, WordPress set up and free subscriptions to VA directories. The contest ran every month. Sometimes I would select a topic but most times, the most popular topic was to blog about anything at all.
The blogs were posted in a community blog forum.
I gave away image badges. If someone participated in the blog post contest X number of times, they would receive a badge that they could display on their website. I also had a badge if they were winners. These were, of course, linked back to the website for some back link action.
It was great fun! And I really enjoyed congratulating the winners.
Janine
Janine, what fun! I’m so glad you shared this. I’m going to sponsor a blog contest within the next few months, and you’ve given me some great ideas on how to expand on the contest. Thanks for stopping by.
Thanks for sharing this information, Joan. I answered the survey questions and I definitely want to write a guest post for this contest. It could be great promotion for my ebook HOW TO SUCCEED BEYOND COLLEGE — http://www.amazon.com/How-Succeed-Beyond-College-ebook/dp/B008IOCAK8
Great topic, Phyllis. I’m glad you’re guest blogging for the site. And I hope it brings you lots of new fans!