Three Blogging Lessons We Can Learn From Public Relations

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how blogging can benefit from public relations

Blogging is a practice that can draw from a series of different ways to get your companies name out there. By learning from other channels the best ways to connect with your customers, you can translate these lessons into blog posts and strategy.

Public relations is one of these areas where there is a lot of information and strategy that can be translated into blogging. From events to creating buzz about your company’s action, public relations capitalizes on telling your target audience what you want them to know. Successful blogging can do the same by aiming to educate and provide information to your customers, without seeming overly pushy.

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Cellphones.Org Announces Blogger Appreciation Contest

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blogger-awards

Cellphones.org has announced a call for nominations for its 2009 Blogger Appreciation Awards. Noting that most bloggers are probably feeling the worldwide economic crunch, the prizes at stake would surely be a big help, especially if it would cover for a year’s worth of mobile phone bills up to $1,000, free cell phones and discounts.

Do you actively blog? Do you use a cell phone like most people? How would you like to have Cell Phones .org pick up the tab on your cell phone bill for a whole year? We at Cell Phones .org want to make your life a little easier and show you our appreciation for hard work you do. Interested? Read on:

Nomination closes on the 28th of February, after which the winners will be selected through voting.

HP Giving Away Gadgets Through Blog Contests

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Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft are giving away $300,000 worth of computers, laptops, netbooks, PDAs, printers, software and accessories through a blog-oriented promotion called the HP Magic Giveaway. HP is not directly raffling off the prizes, though, but has left this task to 50 bloggers, who will run different contests on their blogs to determine the winners.

The prize package includes:

  • HP TouchSmart IQ816 PC with Windows
  • HP HDX 18 series Premium Notebook PC with Windows
  • HP MediaSmart Connect
  • HP Pavilion dv4-1145go Entertainment Notebooks with Windows
  • HP Mini 1000 series with Windows
  • HP Photosmart C6380 Wireless AIO
  • HP 564 Series Photo Value Pack
  • Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007
  • Corel VideoStudio X2
  • Kung Fu Panda widescreen DVDs

You can visit the list of participating blogs, and readers are eligible to join all 50 contests for better chances of winning.

Submit Stories and Get Money with Glamorati

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Glamorati is having a headline writing contest, announced in the News from the Glamorati blog. In June, all you have to do is submit stories to Glamorati, and you’ll receive $5 for each published story. Here’s how it works:

Participants will receive $5 for each published submission and the grand prize is $500 which goes to the contestant with the most number of points (published submissions = 10 points and comments on the site = 1 point)

So what you need to do is find a funny, interesting, or weird pop culture story to submit, which shouldn’t be so hard since pop culture is all that by itself. You’ll need a Glamorati account, but that’s no biggie.

So that’s it? Find a story, submit, it gets published, you get $5 and the chance of the $500 grand prize? Ryan Caldwell of Glamorati, won’t this be expensive?

Yes, but probably not as expensive as developing the site in the first place. ;-)

Ouch. Or not. On a more serious note, Ryan explained:

Since headline writing is so important to blogging, I thought this contest would be a natural fit for the blogging community.

Good luck on the contest, Ryan. Be sure to check out Glamorati and the contest post in the News from the Glamorati blog.

Disclosure: I did the Glamorati design.

Celebrating Blog Birthday Parties

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Have you given much thought to your blog anniversary this year? Some don’t celebrate the passing starting dates of their blogs, but for many, blog anniversary celebrations are getting bigger and wilder every year.

Some have hosted huge contests with a lot of giveaways. Many review their previous year with lessons learned and goals set for the next blogging year. Others have gone quietly into their second and third years of blogging with a post reminiscing about the year that has past.
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Performancing Announces 2007 Blog Award Winners

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Performancing has announced the winners of the recently-concluded 2007 Performancing Blog Awards.

With over 61,000 votes in one week of voting (Readers’ Choice) and ongoing behind the scenes deliberation (Editors’ Choice) we’ve selected the winners of this year’s Performancing Blog Awards.

In some cases, the Readers and the Editors selected the same winners. However, more often than not, the Readers and Editors selected different winners. In those cases, it’s for you to decide who made the better choice;-)

The 2007 Performancing Blog Awards granted cited the top blogs in 28 categories, with each category having a winner for the Readers’ Choice (voted upon by readers) and Editor’s Choice (chosen by the Performancing editors).

Readers picked Zen Habits as the 2007 Best Overall Blog award, while the editors chose TechCrunch as the top overall blog. Meanwhile, readers voted for Darren Rowse as most influential blogger while the editors chose Brian Clark.

You can view the winners and runner-ups of these and all the other categories over at Performancing. Our congratulations go to the winners, runners-up, nominees, and the Performancing team for making the blogosphere a better place!

Performancing Announces Blog Awards

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Performancing Blog AwardsPerformancing’s Ryan Caldwell has recently announced the 2007 Performancing Blog Awards, which aims to highlight the very best that the blogosphere has to offer. Starting December 17th, bloggers are encouraged to nominate blogs and/or bloggers for various fields and categories.

Official Categories For The 2007 Performancing Blog Awards:

  1. The Best Overall Blog
  2. The Most Influential Blogger
  3. The Best Blog Design
  4. The Best Blog Typography
  5. The Best Blog Name
  6. The Best New Blog
  7. The Best Blog Community
  8. The Most Improved Blog of 2007
  9. The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of
  10. The Best Blog Podcast
  11. The Best Use of a Corporate Blog
  12. The Best Video Blog
  13. The Best Writing/Blogging Blog
  14. The Best Science/Technology Blog
  15. The Most Controversial Blog
  16. The Best SEO Blog
  17. The Best Celeb/Style Blog
  18. The Best Business/Money Blogs
  19. The Best Photo Blog
  20. The Best Sports Blog
  21. The Best Blog WebHost
  22. The Best Family and Parenting Blog
  23. The Best Political Blog
  24. The Best Food/Health Blog
  25. The Funniest Blog

    26. It’s the people’s awards afterall…

  26. The Best Travel Blog
  27. The Best Education Blog

Performancing has also asked the blogging community for any help or tips in deciding which among the nominees are deserving enough to be awarded in each category, whether as the winner, runners-up or honorable mentions.

If you would like to make a nomination, please leave a comment at the Performancing 2007 Blog Awards page. You may also use the Award badge (direct hotlinking permitted) if you would like to help spread the word.

Disclosure: Performancing is owned by Splashpress Media, the parent company of the Blog Herald.

Shiny Media offering six-month video internship prize, courtesy of LG (again)

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Apologies to my US friends peeking over from above a turkey-laden table, but here’s some more indulgence for us Brits.

Shiny Media has launched a second competition in association with LG, this time offering two lucky people a six-month video blogging internship.

If presenting is your thing, then simply shoot some footage of you at your best. If you prefer video editing, no problem. Take some of the supplied raw footage and turn it into a masterpiece.

You’ve got about three weeks or so to submit something, with the competition closing on 14th December.

The two lucky winners will receive training by top talent in video blogging, the opportunity to contribute to videos that are watched by a daily audience of thousands, an all expenses paid trip to Barcelona to cover the 3GSM World Congress next year, a blog on which you can share your experiences, and a new LG Viewty phone.

Unfortunately, it’s only open to those in the UK (you’ll be working at Shiny HQ in London). For much more information about the competition, visit the official competition web site: LG Video Media Talent Award, or visit the YouTube channel to view the videos and vote.

Disclosure: Andy writes for several of Shiny Media’s blogs

LG searches for European mobloggers to capture “style of Europe”

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Consumer electronics company LG, who have recently started making great mobile phones, are currently running a competition in five European countries, trying to find the ten best mobloggers to capture images of people which best shows off the style of that particular country.

Mobile phone users in Germany, Spain, the UK, France, and the Netherlands, have been taking pictures and posting them, with a subject, to the City Clickers web site.

The ten people (two from each country) who snap the best photos will win a new LG Viewty phone, plus their bill paid for two months, and training on how best to use the phone.

It’s been running for a couple of weeks now, and closes at midnight CET on Sunday 25th November 2007. So you Europeans still have time to get out there this weekend and snap some stylish shots.

(Via Tech Digest)

Splashpress Media Launches Blogosphere News

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For the new media company that we are, Splashpress Media has still been focusing on contributor-driven content, and not much on user/reader-driven content. Sure, with Performancing the forum and the Performancing blog are all about the readers as contributors. But there’s still something amiss–a site where the users really get to shine.

So with this we thought of a social bookmarking/news site that focuses on one of our areas of expertise: the blogosphere. Splashpress Media is proud to announce the launch of Blogosphere News as a social news site that focuses on blogging-related content.

Blogosphere News

With Blogosphere News, members can submit their own entries, and these can be anything related to blogging–new blog launches, blogging tips, blogging news, blogger events, software, widgets, how-tos, videos, and the like. Users also get to vote on other members’ stories that they think are worth reading. Bad stories (spam, duplicates, useless stuff) can be “buried”. The more popular entries would then be promoted to the front page. You know the Digg system? Yes, it’s the same!

Blogosphere News also features a “live” view, where you can take a peek at what’s being submitted or voted on at any single moment. You can also take a look at the tag view, where keywords are listed by weight and importance.

Easy submit links

Blogosphere News also lets bloggers easily submit links to the system by adding a simple line of code to their themes. Clicking these would automatically submit the URL of the page being viewed to Blogosphere News.

Blogosphere News button

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.blogospherenews.com/evb/check_url.js.php"></script>

Would look like this:

Blogosphere News link

<a href="javascript:void(document.location = ('http://www.blogospherenews.com/submit.php?url=' .concat(document.location))) ">Submit post to Blogosphere News</a>

Would look like this:

Submit post to Blogosphere News

A chance to win prizes

What’s more is that for the next three months, we would be running a contest where the member with the most voted stories will win prizes. The following prizes are at stake:

  • $100 (payable via PayPal)
  • A free BlogHoster software package (worth $250)

The members at second and third spots get $50 each. I’m still negotiating other prizes (in kind or in cash), to make things more interesting.

As for the rules, the entries have to be blogging-related or at least relevant to new media/social media. And employees/contributors of Splashpress Media are not eligible to join the contest.