If you’re managing your writing or publishing blog correctly — and the jury is still out on whether I am doing it right — you’re pretty much prostituting yourself to get those uniques and Adsense hits. Like any real-life professional sex worker you’ve probably had a contest by now, either for a new book you’ve been coerced to jock or for some immaterial brownie points for networking with fellow writer-blogger-hookers. And that’s my last analogical reference to prostitution in this post.
I’ve done a few small contests in my day here and here, but not anything really elaborate — which is the point of this post. You see, people who have free stuff automatically have power to make other bloggers do stupid and pointless things, and coupling that power with the sorta-anonymous cloak of invisibility the Internet gives us, bloggers can be stupid and pointless enough to actually do them.
Here’s a few tips to inject some class into your contest, because owning a power doesn’t mean you need to use it to its fullest extent. I invite you to be a lady or gentleman about what’s been given to you. Just keep in mind this only one person’s opinion. There are author-bloggers who are much more successful doing the very same things I’m telling you not to do, so you can regard everything I say here as some dude complaining instead of writing — and you’d be pretty accurate.
I’m also going to apologize in advance for not bolding my main points or providing numbered steps so you can skim and not actually read anything, and thus is my first point. Some bloggers write their posts with only two or three short sentences per paragraph, complete with meaningless acronyms, over-formatted text, and questionable word choices. This is acceptable on contest posts in order to summarize and draw attention to the main steps, but to me it’s developing into a very generically blog-centric writing habit. I expect it from people who have a blogger’s soul, but when it comes to people who are traditional writers I would expect something more content-oriented. I like words on a page screen, not an ocular obstacle course.
So, you have something people want and are willing to do some strange things for it, but try to exhibit some restraint. Perhaps it’s best to consider it, in the words of the fabulous Kirk Lazarus, not “going full retard” in the Internet world. If your blog is unlike this and has lots of acolytes, you can get away with asking them to photograph themselves licking a dead cat’s fungal ear canal for a free hardcover of the Flirty Fictional Romance and you know by sheer statistics that a few of your readers will actually go through with it. To wit, it’s a little much to ask them to subscribe to your Twitter and like your Facebook, and ask for daily retweets or blog posts, 500 by 500 pixel graphic banner insertions, overdone guest blogging extravaganzas, calls for essays on how you’d be the best Aleutian Islander, and your firstborn’s frozen umbilical cord blood overnighted to the author’s doorstep. You assuredly can do this, but you may want to ask yourself if you should. Pulling off contests takes an even hand; a polite request for a comment or a blog subscription shows simple respect and sophistication.
The capstone of this sophistication is humility. You are doing a great service for the author, your readers, and the literary world in general, but as a friend of mine often says: we’re not saving lives here. Books are important but publishing and everyone’s existential well-being will probably still remain without our online presence. With this in mind, talking up your contest too much while it’s still running might come off as desperate or, worse, overbearing. Reminders are fine, particularly through Twitter and the like, but devoting too much time to slapping the back of our heads with “dont 4get ’bout da contest!!11” announcements will be tiresome. Another solution would be to include a sidebar or navigation item that mentions some words about the current contest, that way it’s always present but not at the forefront.
To recap: contests, good; overplaying your hand, bad. Now go forth, respect your readers, and forthwith dispense your literary baubles by the ephah.