Blog Voting and Popularity Contests Online
Today I wanted to take some time out of my busy day to explain to all of our blog readers why you will NOT see the Two Classy Chics participating in various blog voting campaigns and popularity contests online.
Before I tell you why we feel the way we do on this particular topic, I want to tell you about a recent experience that I had.
Back in June I was asked to participate in a foodie review, recipe creation and recipe contest and I accepted the challenge. After I participated and published my review and recipe, I was then asked to DRIVE traffic to the hosting company’s Pinterest board for a voting contest. The company was using bloggers who participate to drive traffic to the contest. The problem with that is this…
Many of these bloggers were bribing their social media followers and blog readers with extra entries in all kinds of other “non-related” giveaways if followers/readers went over to the company’s Pinterest board to vote for that bloggers recipe. Wow! We will NEVER hi-jack a sponsor (company’s post) here on our blog to drive traffic to another company’s web site for the purpose of winning a dang contest!
The objective of the recipe contest was for people to VOTE on the BEST RECIPE from those that were pinned on the company’s Pinterest board. Well, I was greatly disturbed by the tactics that some bloggers were using to get folks to go over there and VOTE for “their” recipe. It didn’t matter if their recipe was the crappiest or the best, just as long as folks voted for it.
How is that fair? It’s not! What it really boils down to is this…It wasn’t a recipe contest but was a popularity contest! Yup, that is what it was! I was greatly distrubed by this and swore that day that I would never participate in another online “popularity” contest like that!
I feel that this is the same thing that goes on with all of those “Vote for the Best Review Blog” or the “Vote for the Best Mommy Blog” type of things too! I see all kinds of bloggers giving extra entries or other incentives to their readers to go vote on such and such site for their blog.
Frankly, If any of our followers or readers vote for us or our blog, I want it to be because THEY wanted to do it, They believe we deserve it and they got NO extra incentive to do it. That is how it should be!
The reason I am fired up today is because…another PR Pitch rolled into my email box today offering me the chance to review a foodie product, create a recipe and my recipe would have to participate in their MANDATORY popularity contest (oh, I mean recipe voting contest). I would be responsible for driving traffic to “my recipe” on their site by bribing and using my social media followers and blog readers. Huh? Yes folks, that is how some companies are rolling these days.
Well, I am here to tell you all who read our blog and/or follow us on social media, We will NEVER ask you to go vote for us on any site or for any recipe that we may or may not create. We will NOT bribe, blackmail or coerce our readers/followers to go play the online popularity game.
If you love/like us for what we do…great, by all means go vote for us somewhere online. If not, that is cool too! We hope you all understand our position on this and why we will not participate or ask any of you to participate in something like that.
We are not “damning” the blogs and bloggers who participate in this type of thing and we are not pointing fingers, but we did want to explain our position on it.
We hope you all have a great weekend and thanks for reading and following our blog!