While contests are very much a part of the mainstream, contests have not been an especially frequent event in the blogging community.
A few quick ideas could change all of that in an instant.
Blogs often gain extra visitor traffic through viral marketing and memes. As everyone knows, if you can get many other blogs to link to an idea and pass it around, that thought can build up your blog.
Why not turn a contest into a meme. What better way to get a bit of viral marketing happening for your blog.
Ideas for blog contests are virtually (in more ways than one) unlimited.
You could ask for blog posts, and judge the best one.
You could ask for blog posting topics, and select the most unusual, or the one best suited to your blog's theme, or any combination.
You could have people guess some hidden number, similar to counting jelly beans in a jar.
Maybe you could have the contestants guess the secret blogs in a pre-written and hidden list. The winner is the person with the most correct answers.
As you can see, these are only a few rather crude and simple suggestions. Since your imagination is better than mine, you can create more and better contest concepts.
Prizes could cover a huge variety of possibilities.
Consider offering the winner 25 posts written by you and posted at their blog.
You could write a review of the blog contest winner's blog, and give them a permanent link from your blogroll, as a part of the prize.
Perhaps the winner could have their posts, or their winning entry from a judged event appear on a select group of blogs.
Maybe an arrangement could be worked out with an author, or even several authors to provide books as prizes.
Maybe a blog hosting company might sponsor a year's free blog hosting.
Other businesses might offer prizes for your contest. All you have to do is ask them.
As with the number of contest ideas, there is no limit on the prize award possibilities either.
Simply sit down and write a list of some possibilities. Those ideas will trigger other ideas, and so on, and so on.
In short order, you'll have ideas for literally dozens of blog based contests, and countless prizes for the winners.
Contests are a wonderful meme, and a classic form of viral marketing.
Get some contests working for your blog today.
