Here are the latest Best Construction Blog competition results. (This table is updated in real-time, so you can keep pace with new votes.)
Yesterday, close to 200 people voted with many contributing enlightening comments. Devon and Michael Stone encouraged their Markup and Profit newsletter followers to vote — and this encouraged Bobby Darnell (Building New Business) to communicate again with his extended network, inviting even more votes. Meanwhile, late in the day, we received a surge in votes supporting Burgin Construction in Orange County, CA.
As the day progressed, I began forwarding the votes with comments to respective participants (I can’t imagine anyone would have a confidentiality problem in sharing favorable comments with the blogger for whom they are commenting), creating some positive connections, notably between Devon and Michael Stone and Tim Klabunde’s Cofebuz, who remains in fourth place. I also had a rewarding phone conversation with Bobby Darnell as he confirmed that he will push further into his extended network if necessary to stay in the lead. He likely will retain that position because the other contenders including Devon/Michael Stone and Tim Nagle (RemodelBuddy) have drawn the line at encouraging votes from people who really don’t know them.
Obviously, a question arises: If the winner of this competition achieves success by connecting with extended networks or by aggressive marketing to encourage support, does this say more about blogger’s marketing/communications abilities than the blog’s actual quality? Well, the theme of my blog/website is “Construction Marketing,” so the competition process is part of the story and marketing success is clearly relevant to the contest’s outcome.
Some people, rightfully, have expressed wariness that this contest is an email harvesting exercise for me and now my database has several hundred emails. The voting form allows participants to request information about feature profiles in the Design and Construction Report and free subscriptions to the Construction Marketing Ideas newsletter. These are “opt in” requests, so they follow Permission Marketing principles.
In this regard, Michael Stone’s “get out the vote” initiative has been the most effective, with many wonderful comments and requests for my newsletter. I erred a few weeks ago in sending a communication to all voters (at the time) with a message not purely related to the competition. A question I haven’t resolved is whether it is okay to send a concluding message describing the results and inviting readership in the relevant Design and Construction Report issue about the competition to voters who didn’t specifically opt-in for further communication. My sense is this will be okay, but if you think otherwise, please let me know.
Can you apply the viral marketing methods explored in the Best Construction Blog competition for your own business? You may find some clues in the success of this competition, which still has 10 days until it concludes on Feb. 28. If you can create a good-natured competition and engage your clients/colleagues and extended network in the process, with an activity that requires little effort, no money, and has the potential for some worthy rewards (including good-will and publicity) for the participants, you may be able to extend your marketing reach and effectiveness without breaking your budgets. And that means, you as well as the competitors will win from the competition.
If you haven’t already voted, please feel free to choose one or more of your favorite blogs/forums, but you can only vote once.
