Actually the blog wasn’t competing but I was using two posts that are currently listed here: “The 7 Worst LinkedIn Mistakes and Their Fixes” and “Are You a Lion, Turtle, HoundDog, or Alley Cat – What’s Your LinkedIn Connection Strategy”.

Here’s a press snippet:

“Blog-Off II, a blogging contest offering social media enthusiasts and professionals the opportunity to be independently assessed by judges and statistics on their capability of implementing the fundamentals of social media marketing, came to a close with the announcement of the winner on December 24th.  This years winner, Sean Nelson author of the Social Media Sonar blog, was able to beat out an impressive collection of 28 bloggers representing 6 countries.  During the 12 day contest. Sean’s two posts generated over 8,000 visits and over 200 comments, with an impressive time spent on each post of 6:17 and 5:09 (that’s minutes:seconds).”

What’s not covered in the results above are the several hundred comments that were made in LinkedIn groups where I posted a link to the articles in a Discussion Post and as a News Article.

While I’m proud of the accomplishment and think the articles were strong articles, there’s only one reason I won. I was able to use the various social media tools to tap into the communities I have cultivated over the last couple of years.

The Power of Social Media:
One of the key points that was emphasized in the contest was the power of social media to engage people and get them to take an action. In this case the action was to read the post and add a comment. This was the conversion.

Sure if there was a cost involved the response would have been lower but that would be more of a factor of what’s in it for the end user. If you have the right message, provide the right value people will respond and take action.

Communities of People:
A second key point was that all other things being equal, large communities of people offer more opportunity. Over the last two years I’ve built up a large number of connections on LinkedIn and a large number of followers on Twitter. These networks were invaluable in driving traffic to the blog posts.

Credibility:  Know, Like, & Trust:
The third key point was that Credibility plays an important part in whether someone will act on your message. I’ve been writing the Social Media Sonar blog for two years now and the people in my communities have been exposed to the value I provide in each article. Ongoing readers know what to expect in terms of value when they a new blog post.

So what I had was some great tools, to reach signifcantly large communities of people, that I have built up credibility with, to deliver a message, and to use a call to action to drive responses. This is the same process that businesses should proceed through to grow their business.

Competition:
Finally I had some great competition. You can find all of the posts at the Community Marketing blog under the Blogoff category. Two particular blogs I’d like to reference are those of the second and third place bloggers.

Sam Diener’s Stuff for Success blog

Tim Ruffners Digital Metal Laser Sintering blog

These are just two of the interesting bloggers that competed and I would recommend checking out some of the other folks who submitted articles.  The contest was created by Andrew Ballenthin creator of the Community Marketing Blog.  Blogoff III is in the planning stages so if you’re ready to put your blog and your writing to the test, stay tuned.

Thank You:
Thank you to everyone who took the time to read the posts and a double thanks to those who left a comment. As an additional way of thanking everyone I’m providing a 50% discount code to anyone who would like to buy one of my LinkedIn books or guides:

The LinkedIn MBA: Beginners Guide (regularly $4.97)

The LinkedIn MBA: Creating a Killer profile (regularly $7.97)

LinkedIn Marketing Secret Formula: How to use LinkedIn strategically (regularly $39.97)

The Insurance Brokers Guide to LinkedIn (regularly $29.97)

To purchase one or all of the books go to http://www.socialmediasonar.com/book.html USE DISCOUNT CODE:  x50blogoff

Have a great day.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 12:39 am and is filed under LinkedIn, Social Media/Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.