I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed and that we’re already approaching the entry deadline.
The contestants presented with some awesome posts and have been doing an impressive job with promotion. This contest has exceeded my expectations.
I wanted to chime in and let you know about some extremely important updates that have come about.
- As mentioned in the last update, although the deadline for entries is set for May 31, 2011 – I’ll continue publishing posts until all of the entries have run out. Then I’m going to allow at least one additional week for promotion to give everybody a fair shot at winning. So far that pushes us into the middle of June to finish publishing and then add time for last minute promotions to finish things off before the final judging begins.
- So far, I’ve got Ileane and James (sponsors) on board for judging and anticipate a few others to join.
- I’ve recently been made aware of promotional guidelines that concern Facebook that will impact this contest’s judging guidelines. I wasn’t aware of this when this contest begin – it looks like this Facebook announcement was last revised on May 11, 2011 – so I believe this is fairly new information. This is what it states:
You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.
What does this mean for our contest?
This means that regrettably, I will NOT be able to give points for FB Shares or Likes in the judging of this contest. I realize many of you have worked hard to build your numbers in this area, so to compensate, I’m going to do the following:
- Give 5 additional points for Tweets – total 15 Points per tweet. Note: to keep this fair, I will give points only up to 200 tweets and will only count contestants retweets of their own posts, once per day. They may retweet as many times as they want, however, only 1 self-tweet per day will be counted.
- Give credit for Pageviews if a post was aggregated by a reputable site such as Social Media Today. I will only count the views there – not comments, not retweets, or anything else. Remember each pageview is worth 2 points. Again to keep this fair, I will give points only up to 2,000 pageviews.
- I will only count incoming links that are true links – not spam trackbacks. A true backlink will be a mention of your post on another site – not a scraped or autofeed copy. If a post has been published on BlogEngage, Blog Interact, Blokube, etc – that will constitute a link.
So these are the changes that have been made – I hope rather than being viewed as disappointments, these changes are viewed as a means to preserve the fairness of this contest. I don’t want anyone leaving this experience feeling slighted or cheated. I value each and every one of the contestants and hope to continue working with all of you.
As always, don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions or if you have concerns.
About Kiesha Easley
Nice post here about guest post contest update.
A good presentation about the contest.This contest has created a good environment in the blog sphere.
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Twitter: melaniekissell
says:
Fair is fair, Kiesha, and it doesn’t surprise me (in the least) Facebook has implemented this “rule”. Since it’s a free social media platform, the powers-that-be have the right to make the rules and have full control over how the site is used.
Thanks for the heads up – much appreciated!
Holly and Hajra mentioned a “queue” for the upcoming guest post entries (mine included). Would you be kind enough to direct me to the queue? I didn’t know there was one … or perhaps I missed that memo. :)
Thanks again,
Melanie
Twitter: bbrian017
says:
I always embrace change. I think the new rules allow the guest bloggers to focus more on engaging the reader and that’s the point many have been missing. It’s not always about winning! (though winning is cool haha!)
I’m really struggling with the contest. Between finishing up the May contest, Lunching the June contest, guest blogging here, iblogzone and famous blogger it’s been a crazy month.
Kiesha how much longer do we get to promote the guest posts to generate points for?
Thanks,
Brian
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Twitter: weblogbetter
says:
Hi Brian,
I’ve still got posts to publish for the next two weeks, so that plus maybe an extra week for additional promotion. So we’re looking at like the 3rd week of June. Do you think that’s enough time?
Twitter: bbrian017
says:
Oh yeah I think that’s plenty of time for Holly J to kick all out buts haha! Thanks for the hard work and great contest Kiesha.
Your going to have to get into contact with me and tech me your secrets to getting people to enter! I have away 500 USD and we had 18 guest articles this May! I’m hoping June will be better!
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I think since they affect all of us, Kiesha, and are prompted by another site’s rules and not under your control, the change is not only necessary, but quite fairly compensated. (I say that without even knowing HOW to count up the current scores. I just seems that what you’ve taken away, you’ve given back in other areas, and it’s not some arbitrary, last minute thing. Sure, it’s a bit disappointing, but no one wants to get banned for life by Facebook. :)
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Twitter: weblogbetter
says:
Hi Holly,
I’m so grateful for you and your support! You’ve been awesome and I wish all the best to you :)
And I’m glad to have sort of rediscovered this blog, Kiesha. This has been fun (although my own blog’s regular readers are getting restless and expecting payment in iambic pentameter for their patience when it’s all over). I’ve made some new friends, dragged in a few new readers – all in all, I already feel like a winner. :)
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