contest to generate traffic - feedback please

[juliemarg]

I'm holding a contest to generate traffic and suggestions for my website. Can anyone look at the draft of the rules and give me some feedback? Is it easy to understand? Did I leave anything out? Do you think you'll want to submit an entry? How will I convince people that this is legit and not spam?

http://thingsyoushoulddo.com/iphone-contest/

[liquidmarke]

Give away a couple of t-shirts promoting your site. Give aways are always great.

[orangemike]

Originally Posted by juliemarg

I'm holding a contest to generate traffic and suggestions for my website. Can anyone look at the draft of the rules and give me some feedback? Is it easy to understand? Did I leave anything out? Do you think you'll want to submit an entry? How will I convince people that this is legit and not spam?

http://thingsyoushoulddo.com/iphone-contest/

Bluntly, the wording you require people to use is so shamelessly artificial, unnatural and spammy that there is no way it will come across as genuine or legit, either to the people from whom you are soliciting suggestions or to their potential readers. I can only speak for myself, but I would feel like a prostitute putting something like that in my blog.

[itsdonny]

Yeah, you make it all too clear that it's promotion for you. Perhaps tone it down a bit to one anchor text link at least. Let us know how it goes.

[Calius]

Rules are much too complex. Takes too much time. I want to just dump my name in and be entered. Make it a random drawing. But then, you wouldn't accomplish your goals.

[juliemarg]

Originally Posted by Calius

Rules are much too complex. Takes too much time. I want to just dump my name in and be entered. Make it a random drawing. But then, you wouldn't accomplish your goals.

You're too funny

[elith]

Approximately once a month, Google update their index by recalculating the Page ranks of each of the web pages that they have crawled. The period during the update is known as the Google dance.

[Zhannalight]

I too agree that the anchor text requirements are too much straigtforward. You could give more space to the bloggers' creativity.

Just mention in a playful manner that a link with keyword rich anchor text would be great. Give one example, I guess that will be quite enough.

[dharrison]

Originally Posted by juliemarg

I'm holding a contest to generate traffic and suggestions for my website. Can anyone look at the draft of the rules and give me some feedback?

Try rewriting rule 3:

3. Choose one of the anchor text paragraphs listed below and post it immediately under the title.

Perhaps something like:

We would be grateful if you could include a reciprocal from our list of Anchor Text Options (Add a bookmark link)

and lose:

I’m hoping I don’t get innundated with spam.

As its not your participant's problem you'll either get spam or you won't (which I doubt).

Originally Posted by juliemarg

Is it easy to understand? Did I leave anything out? Do you think you'll want to submit an entry? How will I convince people that this is legit and not spam?

It seems OK but I didn't think iPhones were out yet (certainly not in UK). I also sound the spammy horn as mentioned in previous posts. Its nothing personal, but being an average MySpace user, I do see ads with "win whatever" on a regular basis and I am just too sceptical.

I would tone just tone it down a bit, making it a bit more participant-orientated. Why should I participate? What will they get out of it? Whats in it for me? Including a blog announcing new venues as they come in or something could also encourage regular interest.

This is just my maunderings. Hope you can make use of them.

HTH

[Akashic]

I also have just released a competition on my website to generate traffic and get suggestions from visitors.

It's had a good response so far (it's only been up 3 days). We are testing a theory that having a weekly prize for 11 weeks will work more effectively in getting return traffic (to see if they have won) than one big one would.

Our comp is not a drop your name and email address and run competition. I have tried that and have not seen enough benefits from it. We are forcing people to actually look through the site if they want to enter, but, they don't have to sign up or spend any money so it's not scary. Hopefully it will work that it's a win / win situation (literally).

Good luck with your competition. It's a little to complex for me, and I am not sure I would consider adding something to a site for a competition, but I'm not a blogger and don't have a personal site anymore.

[juliemarg]

Thanks very much for the feedback. I was most concerned about the trust factor, would people believe this was legit. I've incorporated some of your concerns and I think it sounds better now. Obviously, I'm not trying to please everyone. If you don't like the concept there's no need for you to participate.

I've got a couple more days to tweak. Any last minute suggestions?

julie

[Duncan Pollock]

I'm hoping you'll forgive me if I turn up as a devil's advocate.
But how, I can't help wondering, is the contest going to increase your traffic? I mean, it's already there if people are reading about the contest, isn't it?
At most, people may keep returning to your website to find out how the contest is going, but that's not going to do anything for you, is it?

Duncan

[juliemarg]

hey duncan

thanks for your comment. I'm no expert in this ... but the hardest thing has been getting people to link to my site. I'm not controversial, I don't post negative comments etc., so it's hard to link bait.

but, if I can get 50 or 100 or 200 or more bloggers to link to me, my page rank will rise (at least I think so) which will help me in the search engines.

Secondly, I'm trying to SEO for cool places, best restaurants, hottest night clubs, etc. and the anchor text in the posts should help with that.

Lastly, I can do some press releases on my celebrity judges. Most of them are not super famous - but famous enough to get a little pr.

I'm hoping that the contestants will see the benefit and help with the pr process too.

So, how about you, are you going to submit an entry?

Find out all the contest details at:
http://www.squidoo.com/fabulousplaces/
and the fine print at:
http://thingsyoushoulddo.com/iphone-contest/