Writing a blog for your company is an outstanding method for disseminating your message to the world and to attract new loyal customers for your brand.  

Blogging efficiently and wisely creates a conduit of information for your audience (potential customers) and there are few methods available either on the Internet or in traditional media matching the speed or effectiveness of this outstanding method of advertising. 

I could go on and on about the many reasons a blog for your firm is an initiative worthy of consideration, but this article is more about promotion of the blog after it is up and running.

When a blog is initially launched it is sometimes quite difficult to find readers for your message.  Making regular posts on the blog is the best method to get your message out because ultimately, good relevant content is king in the eyes of the search engines and your potential viewers.  Posting interesting and informative information with less of a sales pitch and more of a helpful and understanding tone is your best weapon in the blog arsenal for attracting and maintaining regular readership.  

There are other weapons available in the blog promotion arsenal.  Today we will discuss blog contests.

What is a blog contest?

A blog or blogger contest is a method used to attract other blog authors to post articles and links from your blog or about your blog, company or event - on other blogs. 

These links and content ultimately add "authority" to your blog.  In the eyes of Google, Technorati and other search engines such as Yahoo or MSN, the fact that your blog was mentioned - or a link to your blog was added to another blog or website with similar content - makes your blog more valuable, and therefore it becomes ranked higher in the search engines. 

When your ranking is higher, your content gets noticed faster. 

Another more immediate benefit is the almost instant increase in traffic from the blogging community. They place posts in their blogs about your site and you quickly see the increased traffic from the readers of these other blogs.

How do you get other blog authors to write about you or your blog?

With an incentive, a prize or an outright lotto... Cash is always good, but may be seen a payment for links and therefore considered somewhat of a taboo in Google's eyes.

An artful and creative contest can inspire other bloggers to write good material for your benefit, but only if your incentives are interesting and sincerely delivered.

How will you find these other bloggers to enter your contest?

When you first initiate a blog for your company, the first task after launch should be a systematic campaign to join and be accepted by social blog networks. These subscriptions will take time to develop, but once you are accepted in the communities like Mybloglog and BlogCatalog and others, you can begin to form relationships with the other members of the community. 

Over time, a certain amount of these other bloggers will join your neighborhood in the community because they want you to join their neighborhood.  Some bloggers do this for a sense of community, while others do it more to spam the other members with a daily barrage of linkbaiting.  I suggest your goal is to remain far to the left of linkbaiting and somewhat to the right of the social butteryfly...

Save your messages to the community for attaboys and sincerity until your have a serious reason to use the collateral you may have built up in the interim.  Do not start out your relationship with the embers of these communities with an instant "Hi - Nice to meet you - HERES MY PITCH"....

Be calm cool and casual until you have a contest to offer.  This approach will be more effective because the other members of your community will have more interest in your contest if you do not band them over the head every day with a pitch for your blog, your latest article or your best product.

Blogging is a more social way to market your business goals and ideals.  You can not apply the old tried and true mass-marketing tactic in a blogging environment.  "Easy does it" is the way to attract readers (or hits) which increases your rank and then can ultimately lead to sales.  Using a blog as the open end of your long tail sales funnel to direct your readers to links of your products - without selling them with an obvious pitch - is an art which can take time to develop. 

Using blog contests to jump start the stream of readers into your funnel is a very good weapon in the blog promotion arsenal. Use it wisely and judiciously...

Sample Blog Contest: (Running now on our Trading Assistant Journal Blog)

  

Announcing a special blog contest... Write & Win!

Simple & Safe to enter!

If you own a blog,  you may enter.  If your blog topic is eBay or eCommerce related - even better!

What is it?

A simple contest with judging based upon the most original and entertaining yet clean post written.

What to Write About?

The contest is based upon new and original posts describing TAWC - The As Was Conference

Main Page Here: TAWC Registration Link Here: TAWC Registration

Write about why eBay sellers and/or small business people should attend this conference. Include links to the main page, the registration page and/or my post describing the conference.

There is a great deal of content available recently regarding all of the changes in the way eBay is doing business so you should have plenty to work with.  TAWC conference attendees will get the best and most accurate information concerning these changes and how to adjust to them.

What Do You Get for your Words?

1st Prize Winner receives choice of:

• Auction Bytes.com 25k impression ad space ABAdvertising Link Donated by Debbie Levitt of As Was
• or Registration for 2 to attend The As Was Conference in Orlando (Travel and Accommodations Not Included)
• Plus 125x125 Advertising spot for your blog (restrictions apply) On this site for one month.
• Plus:1 hour of eBay marketing consulting time from your choice of experts (Debbie Levitt or Scott Pooler)
• Plus a Link to your blog of choice on As Was and All Business Auctions Or The Trading Assistant Journal blogs. (Restrictions Apply - No Links provided for unacceptable format or negative content sites)

Second Prize:

• Full Site/Blog review with recommendations for SEO improvement and graphic design element improvement or adjustments if necessary.
• or ... One Free Registration to attend TAWC (Airfare & Accommodations not included)
• Plus 125 x 125 ad spot on the ABA blog for one month. (Will not run concurrent with first prize winner)
• or 1/2 hour of eBay marketing consulting time from your choice of experts (Debbie Levitt or Scott Pooler)
• Plus a Link to your blog of choice on As Was and All Business Auctions Or The Trading Assistant Journal blogs. (Restrictions Apply - No Links provided for unacceptable format or negative content sites)

Third Prize:

• Reduced price registration to TAWC (1/2 price) - (Airfare & Accommodations not included)
• or 1/4 hour of eBay marketing consulting time from your choice of experts (Debbie Levitt or Scott Pooler)
• or 125 x 125 ad spot on ABA blog for 14 days.
• Plus a Link to your blog of choice on As Was and All Business Auctions Or The Trading Assistant Journal blogs. (Restrictions Apply - No Links provided for unacceptable format or negative content sites)

Details:

Posts should be a minimum of 250 words

Posts must be clean and original

No Copy and Paste of previous articles or other blog posts

Posts must include links to the main page, the registration page and/or my post describing the conference.

Posts may include graphics and or video

Posts must not be on a explicit or pornographic site

Contest is only for bloggers who post the most unique (and clean) post describing TAWC and promoting registration...

Post the TAWC review/write up/article in the next 5 days. Deadline Monday Jan 28, 2008 at Noon GMT

Send a link to your review/write up/post to: service@allbusinessauctions.com

Judging will be based upon originality, quality and uniqueness of each blog posting and will be reviewed/judged by three experts in Internet marketing and copywriting.

The winners will be notified via email. (So send in your email address please)

Get The Word Out!

Get the word out about the conference and we will reward the top three bloggers with the prizes listed above. Prizes will be awarded to three different people posting on three different URLs so make your post count!

We appreciate any participation and will be pleased to discuss the contest or prize package details with you.

Contact Scott Pooler 727-596-6900

Skype: allbusinessauctions

Yahoo Messenger: allbusinessauctions

email: service@allbusinessauctions.com

eBay Stores Designed for Cross Selling and Conversion: eBay Store All Business Auctions
eBay "me" pages designed to drive traffic to your website - Custom eBay "me" Page

Technorati Profile

I happen to be entering Technorati code into this new ABA blog/website to list this new blog with other older blogs we have already ranking on the Technorati site. Technorati gives rankings in the form of an "Authority" rank to blogs and it is a very interesting gauge of the level of interest from real readers and other bloggers/websites.

Our Wordpress.com version of this blog has climbed up rather quickly in the Technorati rankings. Not high enough to really get "noticed" but certainly an encouraging amount of attention considering we have only had that blog listed on Technorati for less than a month. We went from a level of below 4million with no "Authority" to a level now in the one million area with a Authority of 7.

This may sound like gobblygook to most readers but it means we have been noticed by 7 other sources of information on the net and those sources quoted our blog and placed links to our blog in their web pages somewhere. It also means we leapfrogged 3 million other websites in the system within a matter of weeks, not months.

This inspired me to get cracking with our installation of this blog on our own server and attach it to our website http://www.allbusinessauctions.com . The reason being that while our trial of the blog on the "free" service at Wordpress.com has been quite successful and it has generated a great deal of quality traffic. We want all of that traffic to find our website and we want the blog hosted on our server so we can add features not available on the free Wordpress.com site.

We will be inserting a new theme here soon and new features in the blog. The older wordpress.com blog will eventually just point to this blog and we will move forward from there.

So, YES we use and enjoy Technorati - What about you?