My last blog contest
The recently concluded Lonely Planet Blog Awards is the last contest with open internet voting I will ever participate in. I'm not faulting LP because they are not the only site that holds these competitions. However, I've had it with contests where anyone can vote and there are no restrictions on voting. If there is a contest where people can vote without ever having seen the blog they are voting for, I'm not interested.
The fact is, these contests have nothing to do with blogging, having an audience or a community. It has everything to do with getting people to click. If you are part of an active forum, you can get people who have never seen your blog to vote for one of their "group". Likewise, nationalism often crops up in the contests when you get a large group of people to vote for one of their own. I think the high vote totals for the Spanish language blogs is sort of indicative of this. I don't think the Spanish blogs are any more popular or have more readers than any other blog, but they were able to get tons of votes because they were in Spanish. Likewise with the huge vote totals for an Indian blog, most of the votes came from a popular Indian website, not the actual blog.
What bothers me is the constant expense of social capital with your audience you have to spend to keep getting votes. Several times in the last month I was away from the internet for several days. When I wasn't online, I would fall seriously behind because I wasn't online trying to drum up votes. I know the Uncornered Market folks had the same problem. One other nominee postponed their travel plans just because of the contest. The actual act of traveling, was an impediment to winning a travel blog contest. Ironic, huh? That is what happens with open internet voting, especially when the contests lasts a month.
If internet voting really represented anything, Ron Paul would be President of the United States and Snakes on a Plane would be the highest grossing movie of all time. Needless to say, there is a big disconnect between reality and internet voting.
I made this same mistake last year with the Bloggers Choice Awards. I tried to get my audience to vote, only in the end to lose to a guy who got guests at his hostel/restaurant to vote, and never visited his blog. I know there are other awards that are even worse. They have daily voting, which is even more stupid. The only people who benefit from these contests are the sites which host the competitions.
Despite my complaints, I think it is great that LP took the time to do this. It was a wonderful gesture to the blogging community. It is certainly much more than any other large company has done. I hope they do it again next year and build off of lessons they learned this year.
As for me, I'm not going to actively campaign for these type of contests anymore. I might make a mention of it, but nothing beyond that. It isn't worth the cost of constantly bugging my readers, when in the end readership really doesn't have much to do with winning. I think there are only so many requests you can ask of your readers, and I'd rather save mine for something which matters, like donating money to a non-profit, buying my book, or driving traffic to a friendly website.
If you want to give me an award, I'm honored, but I'm not going to jump through hoops anymore to try and win them.
The fact is, these contests have nothing to do with blogging, having an audience or a community. It has everything to do with getting people to click. If you are part of an active forum, you can get people who have never seen your blog to vote for one of their "group". Likewise, nationalism often crops up in the contests when you get a large group of people to vote for one of their own. I think the high vote totals for the Spanish language blogs is sort of indicative of this. I don't think the Spanish blogs are any more popular or have more readers than any other blog, but they were able to get tons of votes because they were in Spanish. Likewise with the huge vote totals for an Indian blog, most of the votes came from a popular Indian website, not the actual blog.
What bothers me is the constant expense of social capital with your audience you have to spend to keep getting votes. Several times in the last month I was away from the internet for several days. When I wasn't online, I would fall seriously behind because I wasn't online trying to drum up votes. I know the Uncornered Market folks had the same problem. One other nominee postponed their travel plans just because of the contest. The actual act of traveling, was an impediment to winning a travel blog contest. Ironic, huh? That is what happens with open internet voting, especially when the contests lasts a month.
If internet voting really represented anything, Ron Paul would be President of the United States and Snakes on a Plane would be the highest grossing movie of all time. Needless to say, there is a big disconnect between reality and internet voting.
I made this same mistake last year with the Bloggers Choice Awards. I tried to get my audience to vote, only in the end to lose to a guy who got guests at his hostel/restaurant to vote, and never visited his blog. I know there are other awards that are even worse. They have daily voting, which is even more stupid. The only people who benefit from these contests are the sites which host the competitions.
Despite my complaints, I think it is great that LP took the time to do this. It was a wonderful gesture to the blogging community. It is certainly much more than any other large company has done. I hope they do it again next year and build off of lessons they learned this year.
As for me, I'm not going to actively campaign for these type of contests anymore. I might make a mention of it, but nothing beyond that. It isn't worth the cost of constantly bugging my readers, when in the end readership really doesn't have much to do with winning. I think there are only so many requests you can ask of your readers, and I'd rather save mine for something which matters, like donating money to a non-profit, buying my book, or driving traffic to a friendly website.
If you want to give me an award, I'm honored, but I'm not going to jump through hoops anymore to try and win them.
Views: 0
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by SammyK on -
"I think there are only so many requests you can ask of your readers"
Yes, I hate being bothered to vote for stupid stuff online. That's why I only sent out a few tweets, added a banner to our site and sent a single message to our Facebook fans. I wanted to treat this voting thing delicately because I know you can loose a lot of fans because of it.
I'll focus my attention on getting quality content on the site. If we lose, oh well. We've been nominated for a Lonely Planet thing which is awesome. That alone has cropped up lots of exciting new possibilities for our site and our personal future.
While the polls were coming to an official close, instead of frantically sending out last-minute requests for votes, I was face down on a table getting a 1 hour massage for $6 in Bangkok, Thailand. Hard to beat that. -
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Permalink Reply by Donna Hull on -
I've watched these contests with interest. Do you ever feel that the company who puts on the contest wins a ton of publicity via contestants working hard to receive votes? Why isn't the company out there saying, "Visit our site, cast your votes?" The contestants are doing much of the promotion work. Yes, I voted in Lonely Planet but it was painful to watch bloggers vie for votes. It always is.
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Permalink Reply by Jessie Voigts on -
i, too voted but felt bad for everyone participating - i have never liked contest based on who you know and how many you can get to vote. i think if they'd stopped asking, then (as you found out, while traveling) the momentum slowed...
i think that sammyK had the best plan, the thai massage!! THAT is a travel reward, indeed. -
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Permalink Reply by Gray Cargill on -
I don't blame you a bit. This was an uncomfortable process I think for everyone involved--those nominated who were suddenly thrown into "full campaign mode" and the rest of us who care about travel blogging who were being pulled in multiple directions for our votes. I stopped frequenting Twitter this past week as often as I normally do because as we came down the home stretch of the awards, every time I logged in, it seemed every other post was somebody asking for votes. It overshadowed all other travel-related discussion. I don't blame anyone for feeling they had to do it, because once one person starts that ball rolling, everyone else has to jump on board or risk being left in the dust. But I felt really sorry for all of you. You essentially became unpaid marketers for Lonely Planet. It does make me wonder whether it's actually an honor or a curse to be nominated for an award.
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Permalink Reply by Gary Arndt on -
I should make some constructive comments as well for how i think things like this should be run in the future:
1) have a set list of people who can vote before the voting starts. This is no different than how political elections work or the Oscars. If LP were to do it again, I'd suggest anyone with a Thorn Tree forum membership and 10 posts prior to the start of the contest be eligible to vote. That is a huge group of people. Because you have to be pre-registered, you can't create fake accounts or stuff the ballot box.
2) have a limited time to vote. A month is way too long. 1 week, maybe 2 is enough.
3) let nominations be open, but don't allow voting. just let people submit a site to get it on the list. have a panel of people from LP pick the nominees from the list.
4) have some set criteria for each category. some of the nominees in some categories made no sense at all. this is because the nomination process was open and there were no rules.
5) don't show a running vote total after you cast your vote. only show the results when the contest is done.
6) try to reduce overlap in categories. i'd put in a rule about only 1 nomination per site. there are lots of sites out there. spread it around. -
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