@daniloebs I have been organizing blogging contests for the last couple of years, and I admit that contests helped my blog to grow rapidly.
The best prize? I think people need to feel they succeeded in making money blogging, so the best prize I could think of is cash, also that’s not really my personal opinion, I ran a poll sometime ago and I asked my blog readers, 57% voted for cash prize. (the reason is they choose what to buy, easily!)


However, an iPad is always welcome

The most common and working way to organize a blogging contest is to do a popularity and writing contest, participants write a relevant topics, you publish it on the host blog, and pick winners based on social media shares, comments, and human judges.

You can check out my latest contest here:http://www.famousbloggers.net/contests

P.S. I can help you out with promoting the contest and share it on my blog when you are ready. Just let me know.

Fantastic info @hesham ! Thank you for sharing the results of your survey, and for your generous offer of help. I will keep in touch to let you know how things progress.

And thank you too, @iamconsulting ! Great pieces of advice to attract serious bloggers, and definitely something easy for the contest hosts to give as an incentive.
While I have both of your ears, I’d like to explain the goal of the blogging contest from the perspective of the brand and their for-hire social media specialist (me). Although communicating that engagement is more important than large numbers of fans is a daily ritual for me, my job performance is still measured by fan growth alone. Since I know full well that fan growth on any platform will increase more rapidly when the existing fans are engaged, I’m trying to tap into related niches of bloggers and their fan bases. These communities will already be engaging around the topics in which these brands are influencers, so I consider them a bit easier for conversion.
If the finalists of the blogger contest were showcased on the brand Facebook page (specifically on a tab where users who have liked the page the ability to vote on a winner) do you think that the bloggers would still be willing to participate? Further, would they galvanize their communities to Like a brand Facebook page in order to gain votes?

From the perspective of a blogger, I don’t know if I would be willing to participate in this kind of contest unless it was directly related to my field.  I would be hesitant to join a blogging contest that was not in line with my usual writings. I also would not I wish to write a post specifically for a blogging contest if I did not feel passionate about the topic.

What are your feelings and experiences on this subject?  Thank you again for your responses!

@daniloebs

Offering an incentive, like a prize, will most likely break down some of those barriers for bloggers that may not regularly write about the subject.  The greater the prize, the better the response.

I’ve held (and seen) several contests where likes, retweets, shares, etc., counted as votes and people would turn to their Facebook/Twitter friends to get more votes in a way that can only be described as complete madness.  It’s nice because it really presents the opportunity for exponentially more people to be exposed to the blog/website.