Blog-Off Contest Results: Marketing and Social Media Thought Leaders To Watch

On May 6, 2009 Community Marketing Blog founder Andrew Ballenthin put the word out it was looking for co-bloggers to assist in growing our community that researches and pioneers topics related to social media and marketing thought leadership and practical advice.

Within a few days of putting the word out on LinkedIn and twitter over 40 people responded. After some pre-qualify exercises 15 people emerged as entrants of which 12 went on to compete in our Blog-Off contest.

The objectives of the contest were:

1. Provide inspiring topics and thought leadership related to marketing and social media.
2. Generate traffic to read the posted content.
3. Demonstrate the audience is engaged with the content through the quantity of comments.

What Are Some Of The Things We Learned From The Blog-Off?

- 55% (of 2350 direct referring links) of traffic was generated by LinkedIn, 13% by Facebook, 12% was twitter, 9% was Google, 6% was from emails.
- While anyone/company can compose a blog the process of generating traffic and audience participation are unique processes that require access to high quality and quantities of readers.
- There are specific topics and techniques which lead to engaging the audience as commentators on topics. Simply posting content and expecting interaction rarely happens.
- Traditional journalist and marketing copyright skills are critical to attracting readership. Title's, opening sentences and the first paragraph are essential for gaining the reader's eye and interest.

Top 5 - Traffic And Interaction  Leaders Over 14 Days
			Page Views		Comments
	Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.		1127		54
	Julie Tyios		601		50
	Megan McQ		618		40
	Jenmy Huynh		225		15
	Sara Barton		213		10
Highest Ratio of Comments to Page Views
	Paritosh Sharma		166		25
	Linda White		95		20
Thanks to the following participants for your contributions:
See biographies on all contest contributors here.
Catherine McQuaid			Chad Rothschild
Doug Hall			Dan McCarthy
Leon Op DeBeek

What's Next?

A variety of contributors will be invited to join the Community Marketing Blog as ongoing weekly co-authors. Benefits of joining this growing blog site include; sharing of techniques and industry insights to assist continued leading edge learning and growth; enjoying a blog that presently enjoys high level international ranking (within top 200,000-500,000: most blogs rank within 5 million to 13+ million globally); enjoying top Google rankings on content that frequently appears in first page returns from total search returns of 10 million to 70 million plus.

The Community Marketing Blog will continue to expand it's thought leadership community and assist leading writers, marketers and social media professionals in developing their audience and applying the principles we facilitate with our clients and respective businesses.

Comments

[Laura Bramly]

Congratulations Ellen! Very interesting stuff Andrew. Thanks for holding the Blog Off!

[Paritosh Sharma]

Congratulations guys, thanks Andrew for your effort!!

[ChefTony]

I'm interested to watch this emergence of technology...any need for your first Chef/Restauranteur Twitter and Social Media strategist?

I'll be watching...