This article follows on to my general introduction to Incentives which you can read here
If you offer a competition it is important to structure it in such a way that it minimises the hassle of running it, and maximise the positive effects to your blog. The following are some of the common tips given by many websites (for a more in-depth guide to competitions see Problogger)
Sane (KISS). As I have alluded to before in many blogs on designing content for the net, the average surfer is a person of very short attention span. This is no insult to you, constant reader, it is because of the information overload on the web, the Human Brain makes sub conscious judgments millions of times a second, and the gestalt effect of ideas, images and sounds all determine in a short space of time whether or not our brain deems something important enough to read. This has always happened but the coming of age of the information superhighway has multiplied this effect tenfold.
Therefore anything which at face value appears too complex or time consuming to be worth the effort will be edited by the brain, and clicked away by the finger. Simplicity of design is a beautiful thing, think about the old business maxim of ‘build a better mousetrap.’ Simple questions followed by a A) B) C) answer style is fine, and about all that needs to be done, remember you are not challenging the intellect of your reader in the competition, if they want a challenge then they will apply to Mastermind (I don’t know if the Americans have an equivalent of this program, answers on a postcard…) Remember to KISS.
Maximise the Potential
If you are running a competition, it is important to remember that you expect to gain some benefit from doing so. The use of a competition as marketing tool is not a new thing. It has been happening for many years. With a ‘hard’ product, an item or similar that is physically purchased, the incentive is simple, ‘buy me, and you will get the chance to win this.’ With promoting your blog or website, the incentive is to read me, or subscribe or click these links. Effectively it is the same ploy and there are a number of ways with which you can maximize the effectiveness of this. Make your competition open to new RSS subscribers, or for those who leave a comment or URL link on your site. If you are after content, make the competition a writing competition or similar. A highly cunning, but bordering on transgression of the above KISS rule from ProBlogger is to hide clues in archived posts and holding a treasure hunt (increasing page views at a stroke)
However you do it, and whatever method you arrive at for your competition, think about the inputs and outputs carefully.
Branding used to be when a cowboy would burn his mark into his cattle to identify which he owned. It was a simple mark, unique to the rank which owned the cattle, and was instantly recognisable when the cattle was being driven across country, along with other herds, or when it was taken for slaughter.
The modern concept of branding is not different to the old concept. It is a means of differentiating your product from other, often similar, products. It is also one of the most powerful business constructs you will ever have. A brand has value far beyond any of the other assets you own, and yet it is intangible. There are many books and sites on how to build a brand, one that I can personally recommend is Creating Passion Brands by Helen Edwards which you can buy here at Amazon.
This book focuses on build emotional connections to customers, and as such is suited to the web based branding which we are predominately interested. Also there are many sites which have loads of information on Branding; one great site is utalkmarketing which has a great section on online branding here.
Do some wider research and you will begin to see that there is more to the branding process than a cool name and great logo (although these are important) To explore the brand as a construct a bit more I am going to use two very well known brands, one old, Hoover, and one new Google.
Hoover makes vacuum cleaners, not Hoovers, but we call them Hoovers anyway. The brand is so synonymous with vacuum cleaners we naturally refer to them as such. The word has, by dint of Hoover dominating the market from an early stage and a consistent marketing campaign, entered common usage. There can be no more powerful brand than this, it is all that a brand should be, when we think vacuum cleaner, we think Hoover. How does this happen? Many experts agree that the cultural linking of a products name with its general product area, like Hoover, takes a consistent and lengthy process, but many detractors argue that the web has changed this and now it can be managed in a matter of years, and not decades. This is due to the sophistication of the consumer, we can distinguish between products because there are simply more products, but also we are more used to marketing than two generations ago. We are Brand Sceptical, and we accept trusted brands quickly, but also discard them quickly if they fail to meet our specific needs.
Google built a brand on excellence, they were simply the best product available to the mass market, and as such Google has become the big player. The name (in fact a spelling mistake) is synonymous with internet searching, and this was achieved in less than a decade. However they only stay on top due to continued improvement of their services, if a diligent programmer were to hit upon a better way to search the internet, it is entirely feasible that Google could be dominated by it (Think Internet Explorer and Firefox, IE looked unassailable from a conventional business standpoint.) Brands, although potent, do not command the same loyalty as even ten years ago and the only way to maintain the superiority of your site or product is by through constant innovation.
If you use twitter, you will know that it is a platform designed to capture information in small bite sized chunks and present them for search to users. Twitter is the epitome of the lack of attention generation of internet viewers. We all of us spend far less time viewing and evaluating information on the internet than in any other media. Twitter is designed specifically to cater for this phenomenon. Its name, the sound of bird chatter, provides a good clue to how its use feels, it is distracting and at times irritating. It is also well used and has a large community.
Increasingly, Twitter is being used as a tool for marketing (there are those who would argue that it is the purest marketing tool there is as it is the home of the soundbite.) Actively used for self promotion, Twitter will deliver your opinions, links and products to a user base which is actively searching for them. Generate a following, and create a no cost mailing list that is immediately updated, and as Twitter is available via mobile device, you are in constant contact with your list.
Twitter is fast becoming the Loop with which people want to connect, users feel that they are on the cusp of the information highway, instantly sharing and reading many bites of information.
For those few of you who are completely new to Twitter, the following is a very good general intro to the site
Branding used to be when a cowboy would burn his mark into his cattle to identify which he owned. It was a simple mark, unique to the rank which owned the cattle, and was instantly recognisable when the cattle was being driven across country, along with other herds, or when it was taken for slaughter.
If you use twitter, you will know that it is a platform designed to capture information in small bite sized chunks and present them for search to users. Twitter is the epitome of the lack of attention generation of internet viewers. We all of us spend far less time viewing and evaluating information on the internet than in any other media. Twitter is designed specifically to cater for this phenomenon. Its name, the sound of bird chatter, provides a good clue to how its use feels, it is distracting and at times irritating. It is also well used and has a large community.
