One way of generating more buzz and traffic for your blog is by running a cool contest and telling people about it. Remember those count and guess the number of jellybeans contests?

If you have an outrageous prize like lots of cold hard cash or some fancy gadget like a certain type of cell phone, you can generate a lot of interest and other bloggers will write about your blog and link to you.

A word of caution

However, be careful that you don’t ask people to link to you using a specified anchor text or you could be seen as trying to manipulate the search engine rankings. Anything that looks unnatural to the search engines will raise red flags. Imagine that your backlinks suddenly increased by the hundreds within a few days and they all have the same anchor text. That can get you penalized and your site may drop in the rankings or worse still, be totally de-indexed.

Some bloggers focus primarily on contests as the theme of their blogs. Others run contests from time to time to grow their blog readership and build a brand. You can also run a contest with a specific goal. For example, a contest to give away Entrecard credits or a contest to give away some ad space on your blog.

Examples of blog contests

To get some ideas, check out a few of these blog contests:

$5000 Search Marketing Scholarship Contest

Tutorial Writing Contest

Affiliate Summit Passes Contest

From these examples, you should be able to get a good idea of how to set up your blog contest, the rules to have and prizes to offer.

Getting people to participate

Once you’ve set up your contest, it’s time to get the word out!

1. Contact other bloggers that you know that have closely related blogs. Chances are their readers will be interested in your contest as well.

2. You can also ask other bloggers to contribute prizes. The more prizes you have, the more people will participate as they feel that their chances of winning something are greater.

3. You can submit press releases.

4. Spread the word in forums related to your niche.

5. Buy advertising. You can buy ad spots on popular blogs in your niche to advertise your contest. Buying PPC traffic is another option. But you’ll want to set a specific budget for that.

Finally, once the contest is over, you should gather all your data and analyze your results to see if you met your original goal for the contest.

Good luck!

Image credit: the 10 cent designer

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