After six weeks of nice content material, social sharing, dialog, community constructing and a few severely fierce battling from the contestants, the 2011 Conversion-Fest Running a blog Contest has come to an in depth. On this submit we’ll acknowledge the winners, the insights and a few behind the scenes particulars from a severely badass group of selling bloggers.
The Outcomes Are In!
Every contestant had 2 weeks to amass social scoring factors, after which the judges had their probability to vote. I’m delighted to announce the highest 5 Conversion-Fest winners and discuss somewhat about what they dropped at the competition.
Gold Medal Winner – Kristi Hines
Kristi’s submit “Measuring Social Media ROI & Goal Conversions with Google Analytics 5” was an extremely detailed and helpful exploration of one in every of advertising’s hottest subjects – Social Media ROI. Together with actionable steps for tips on how to obtain this with the newest Google Analytics options made it an prompt basic – as proven by the overwhelming response and it’s rank within the high 5 in Google for the time period “Social Media ROI”.
Congratulations Kristi, a nicely deserved victory.
Kristi’s Prizes
- 64GB iPad 2 with Verizon WiFi
- The Unbounce Premium plan free for a 12 months
- Alternative of two free 6-month subscriptions from our prize sponsors
Silver Medal Winner – Angie Schottmuller
Persistently known as the most effective posts on QR codes “ever” #TrueStory – Angie’s entry on “10 Ways to Use QR Codes for Better Conversion Rates” makes sturdy enterprise circumstances for the usage of QR codes. For those who had been in any doubt of their usefulness or you might be considering of utilizing them, there’s no higher place to start out than this right here.
Angie’s submit was the inspiration for Unbounce’s very first QR code – and the blistering tempo that she set, by being first out of the gate and setting the bar so excessive, was an enormous issue within the success of the competition (regardless of scaring the crap out of many writers additional down the listing 🙂
Properly completed Angie.
Angie’s Prizes
- 32GB iPad 2 with WiFi
- The Unbounce Premium plan free for a 12 months
- Alternative of two free 6-month subscriptions from our prize sponsors
Bronze Medal Winner – Yomar Lopez
Not solely did Yomar write 185 feedback throughout the entire Conversion-Fest entries (which in itself is sufficient might be sufficient to rival Conflict and Peace) – however his real enthusiasm and keenness for creating private social connections confirmed how a smaller social community can nonetheless be leveraged to generate sufficient buzz to drive group interplay by way of the roof. His submit on “The Adaptive SEO Approach (And How To Get More Conversions)” introduced new concepts, constructed bridges between completely different disciplines and possessed a refreshingly sincere method to writing.
Has been an absolute pleasure having you be a part of the competition Yomar. Congrats.
Yomar’s Prizes
- 16GB iPad 2 with WiFi
- The Unbounce Professional plan free for a 12 months
- Alternative of two free 6-month subscriptions from our prize sponsors
4th Place: Jen Gordon
Jen’s submit “8 Ways your Landing Page Design is Sabotaging your Click-Thru Rate” mentioned the significance of design and conversion. This was undoubtedly the most effective entries when it comes to offering inspiring examples and a few actual takeaways and motion objects that you need to use to enhance your workflow, design and finally your conversion price.
The submit continues to be highly regarded – being shared typically on the Twitter-sphere – and ought to be thought-about required studying for anybody concerned with touchdown pages and conversion. Thanks for the good content material Jen, I actually want we might hand out a iPad to everybody.
For ending within the high 5 Jen will get a selection of two free 6-month subscriptions from our prize sponsors.
fifth Place: Mike King
“The Cat in the Hat Teaches SEO (and a lot more)” was a stand out submit for a lot of causes – most of all of the sensible creativity that Mike dropped at the competitors. Mixing his skills as a rapper with an entertaining writing fashion and actually superior cartoon design components, Mike produced a submit not possible to neglect.
Except for the submit itself, Mike went all Outdated Spice on us by producing a customized video response to the submit feedback (sensible).
For ending within the high 5 Mike additionally will get a selection of two free 6-month subscriptions from our prize sponsors.
The One That Received Away: Anna Sawyer
I’m going to provide a shout out to Anna, as a result of she got here so shut the the highest 5, however primarily as a result of her submit on “More Conversions Than a Kool-Aid Cult: Using Mind Control to Boost Your Lead Gen Conversion Rate!” was simply so rattling humorous. Particularly the video, which gave her most X-Issue factors.
Take a second to re-enjoy a slice of superior:
The Secret Sauce of Weblog Publish Promotion – Insights & Classes Realized From the Contributors
As I discussed, the most effective components of this contest was attending to learn the way folks with completely different community sizes and communication types went in regards to the means of spreading the phrase and producing buzz for his or her weblog submit entries. So I figured I’d go on to the supply and ask everybody for some perception and ideas.
Right here’s what the crew needed to say…
“The most important factor I discovered is how a lot social media promotion adjustments. I wrote an eBook on this very subject again in April, and now I’ve an entire stack of updates for it with the issues I did in a different way between this contest and the final one I participated in.
The three new promotional methods that I attempted out this time round included having a customized RSS feed for my off-site posts so they may get promoted in my social profiles that related with an RSS feed, selling posts much more with Fb & LinkedIn teams, and including it to my e-mail signature so everybody that I emailed for 2 weeks bought a pleasant reminder that I wanted their help. I’d say the one technique that labored finest out of all of them was spending 4 hours in a lab ready room dedicated to direct messaging everybody I knew to ask for a tweet (in the event that they preferred the submit, after all). That was one thing I noticed instant outcomes with, and it additionally led to extra feedback and Fb shares.
Rocking social promotion actually boils all the way down to taking off with it on day one as quickly because the submit goes stay (or earlier when you’ve got the URL for it), and never stopping your promotion till the final second attainable.”
— Kristi Hines
“Suggestions for weblog submit promotion:
– Apply on-page search engine optimization to your submit (title, picture URLs, picture alt attributes, headings, hyperlink textual content, and so on.)
– Share the submit with folks that may hyperlink to and write about it; counsel hyperlink textual content for search engine optimization. (Unbounce now ranks third for “qr code conversion”.)
– Have a a number of related, high quality picture thumbnails out there in your submit to offer various, enticing picture choices when sharing on social networks.
– End your submit with a robust call-to-action. (i.e. “Which ways would you implement? Please share within the feedback!”)
– Embrace some sort of partaking remark with social posts; don’t simply share the title and hyperlink.
– Ship a message to a couple viral seed planters to allow them to know of the submit. (RT one thing of theirs first to entice reciprocation.)
– Tweet the submit with completely different titles (i.e. query format, completely different hashtags, highlighted steps/ideas, and so on.) I picked up respectable site visitors/tweets by tweeting the social media and native search steps in my submit.Classes discovered from this contest:
– Promote your submit sturdy from day one. Don’t cease, even when the numbers look nice.
– Somebody at all times has an even bigger social community.
– Don’t write off the potential of much less lively social networks/instruments. (Sphinn, Reddit, Feedburner, and so on.)
– Making LinkedIn “high information” or igniting StumbleUpon buzz is extraordinarily troublesome after day one.”— Angie Schottmuller
“The way you promote/market your content material actually will depend on the way you interact folks. It’s a matter of viewers, timing, and momentum too, after all.
I knew I needed to be persistent however I additionally needed to keep away from exhausting my pure market. Right here’s what I got here up with!:
- 10x10x10 – Broadcasting works when you’ve got huge numbers and might play the numbers. Previous to moving into the competition, my Twitter following was round 400/500 and it soared to 800 then 1000+ just lately. That stated, I needed to “go deep” as an alternative of going extensive. My method, 10x10x10 (or inform a buddy) is easy: ask ten pals that basically such as you and are influential in their very own methods to do X, Y, and Z. On this case, I had them like and tweet my article. Then I requested them to inform ten pals to do the identical (and have them inform ten pals). The potential right here will be wonderful if everybody follows by way of and the hot button is to offer a easy name to motion. On reflection, I ought to have caught to “likes” when selling through Fb and “tweets” when selling through Twitter since individuals are already there and it’s a simple alternative.
- Sneaky search engine optimization – As soon as I knew what the URL to my article could be, I included it on standing updates, profiles, feedback (as a clickable hyperlink in my identify), and MORE. I additionally used some instruments to search out out what the highest canine within the contest had been doing (and what NOT to do). That is how I discovered about Twylah and Trunk.ly which basically makes Twitter right into a search skilled’s moist dream, so to talk. Whereas the site visitors generated from these backlinks didn’t essentially convert, it helped get my article on high Google SERPs throughout the first 24 hours. Pinging your web page and submitting to some lively directories (to not be confused with Microsoft Energetic Listing) didn’t harm both.
- StumbleUpon – Based on Klout, I’m one of many high influencers relating to StumbleUpon. Fact be informed, even in spite of everything these years, I’m nonetheless studying new “methods”. The search engine optimization magic with StumbleUpon is just about countless. It has built-in search choices that may be contextual, randomized, or somewhat little bit of each. When folks evaluate you and/or your content material, they will tag it so people can stumble it through pursuits or key phrases (to be entered through the brand new Discover Field). I used StumbleUpon hyperlinks to seed my most lively social networks. Mixed with BufferApp, HootSuite, Google+, Squidoo, and numerous different instruments, I constructed hyperlinks and seeded StumbleUpon with extra site visitors which, in flip, result in extra natural, exponential progress.”
— Yomar Lopez
“The most important factor I discovered about selling a weblog submit through social media is how little I actually knew about selling a weblog submit through social media. Let’s simply say, I spotted I had a lot to be taught.
I believe the very best factor about collaborating within the contest was a renewed ardour for bettering my weblog, constructing some relationships alongside the way in which and reaping the good thing about the numerous experience all gathered in a single place. On high of that, I gained a brand new bud and podcast co-host in Yomar.
PS – I’ve saved this quick, as a result of I do know you’ll be able to count on a long-form response from Yomar :)”
(Ha, sure, that actually proved to be the case – Oli)
— James St. John
“Twitter was far and away my finest device for spreading the phrase after which doing the QR Code factor IRL at MozCon that labored fairly nicely. Getting tweets from different well-known SEOs was additionally look. Sphinn was cool too as a result of Matt Mcgee ended up tweeting it. The freestyle video was cool for my private model (I’m doing a rap trailer for the SearchLove convention) however I believe extra folks shared and tweeted the video than the precise submit so it didn’t work too nicely.
I didn’t have my very own weblog for inbound advertising stuff earlier than so I didn’t have a built-in consumer base that’s on this content material. For instance I’ve over 3000 fb pals however they’re my pals due to music and once I submit search engine optimization stuff they’re like “uhhhh…that is cool however however the place’s your new music at?” So I’ll undoubtedly domesticate an entire lot extra engaged customers earlier than I enter a contest like this once more and possibly coordinate with one other visitor submit on a better site visitors website like moz on the identical time to drive site visitors to it.
My high tip is do issues that cater to your strengths and set you aside. It makes issues extra enjoyable, fascinating and helps you standout.”
— Mike King
“I most likely leaned on colleagues and other people linked to me greater than I’ve ever completed beforehand.
For those who had been to run the competition once more I’d favor to do a extra targeted topic, I believe e-mail was a nasty selection.”
— Garry Lee
“Largest factor I discovered from selling a contest was my very own community just isn’t sufficiently big. I although I might depend on my hundreds of subscribers/followers alone however except you may get some viral juice, it’s simply not sufficiently big to place up sturdy numbers.
Usually, in my circles I get a few of the highest interplay numbers, particularly with social stuff. However these different peeps had been blowing by me like I used to be standing nonetheless.
Actually helped me to see how way more progress I really want.”
— Justin Brooke
“One of the best half about collaborating within the contest was truly studying to make use of social media to advertise the competition and my entry [and when it comes to social promotion] I’m soooo behind the actual execs…”
— John Ekman
“You really want to spend time to advertise [your] content material, and your community will get constructed while doing so. The competition not solely offered me with a ton of useful advertising classes, nevertheless it has additionally related me with a handful of nice entrepreneurs which have been very supportive of my work.”
— Samir Soriano
What Unbounce Realized From the Contest (together with some stats)
One of many widespread threads in discussions with the contributors was a need to know what impact the competition had on Unbounce (as a weblog and as a enterprise and so on.). With that in thoughts, I’ll share what I discovered all through the method and I’ll share some stats.
First: A private be aware from me (Oli)
Operating this contest was probably the most enjoyable, demanding, disturbing and rewarding issues I’ve completed right here at Unbounce, so I simply need to thank everybody who took half for his or her arduous work, badass social media abilities and wonderful writing. I discovered much more than simply the knowledge within the posts – watching and studying from the way you promoted your content material was inspiring and academic. Thanks all.
So what did we be taught?
- Operating a contest like that is actually arduous work: Once I began theorizing in regards to the concept, I figured that if I might get a months price of nice every day weblog posts, I’d have extra time to deal with different features of the enterprise. WRONG. My work days went from lengthy to being lengthy + 50% throughout the month that the competition was working. However I beloved each minute of it.My every day routine was one thing like this:
- Publish submit at midnight to get it out within the morning UK time
- Schedule just a few tweets for morning on the east and west coast of North America (thanks Hootsuite)
- Do an preliminary spherical of social promotion on my social networks (the objective of my night ritual was to offer some momentum for every submit, prepared for the morning – in order that there was a social proof kickstart).
- Get up at 6am and examine my cellphone (which lies subsequent to me in mattress as my alarm) in excited expectation – hoping to see the submit take off on Twitter.
- Proceed to submit updates to social networks all through the day (this turned extra loopy as there have been extra posts to advertise – though I tapered them off in a reverse staggered technique, so that every bought the identical consideration from me).
- Examine Google Analytics on a regular basis to see how site visitors ranges had been being affected.
- Get house round 7pm. Take just a few hours off.
- Replace the leaderboard by counting social scores and wading by way of the feedback (thanks Yomar 😉 to determine remark scoring.
- Transfer onto the following submit.
Weekends had been just about the one time I didn’t have the #ConversionFest hashtag in my mind 24/7. (That’s a lie – I considered it on a regular basis).
- Private networks had been created: By e-mail conversations, submit feedback and social chatter, I noticed sturdy private relationships being constructed, for me and plenty of others. This was wonderful to see. The primary signal that we had been on the verge of making a brand new group of pals was seeing folks selflessly touch upon every others posts (figuring out that this is able to contribute to the recipients social scoring). Lesson right here? You get what you give.
- Scoring methods for subsequent time: I selected the three social scoring classes (Twitter, Fb and submit feedback) based mostly initially on visibility. I positioned double weight on the feedback for 2 causes: A) to encourage extra folks to get a dialog going and B) as a result of it’s a real signal of engagement. In hindsight, Fb was the weakest of the three because the votes forged through this technique are invisible (whereas tweets will be see and looked for). I assume as a part of this reply I’m additionally saying that YES, there will likely be a 2012 Conversion-Fest (new and improved – and far greater). I’ll most likely add and take away some scoring mechanisms and have already got some concepts for tips on how to make it extra thrilling for everybody.
- Judges scoring: I actually needed to depart nearly all of the voting as much as the readership and the advertising efforts of the contestants – whereas permitting for some stability from a judging panel. On the finish of the day, the judges scoring aspect didn’t have a lot actual have an effect on on the end result – however that was not possible to foretell. Once more, a lesson discovered that I’ll rethink subsequent time round. Nothing’s excellent first time round.
- The content material lives on: The social sharing and feedback proceed to develop each day as posts get picked up by completely different folks, this is likely one of the largest takeaways for me – how we collectively created a financial institution of wonderful content material that helps and conjures up folks – and let’s be completely sincere – drives site visitors to Unbounce (which was clearly one in every of my targets). Segue into some stats…
- Stats: I’ve added some particular person weblog submit stats within the leaderboard under for private reference (numerous you requested for that, so I used to be joyful to oblige. In a extra normal sense, I can say that due to the competition we had our largest month ever when it comes to site visitors (near double a mean month). The first objective for me was to increase our attain and get the Unbounce model in entrance of as many individuals as attainable. I needed folks speaking about us and to have a loopy quantity of persistent buzz. This labored superbly! During the competition social networks had been overflowing with Unbounce dialog and I’m assured we’ll reap long-term rewards consequently. To reply questions on whether or not this produced an upswing in new clients? Not instantly, however the model publicity is a type of intangibles that simply makes issues higher. As Rick put it – “there’ll by no means once more be an web advertising convention the place Unbounce isn’t talked about”. We’re on the map on an even bigger scale and we achieved a carry within the synonymous relationship between touchdown pages & nice content material and the identify Unbounce.
- Retargeting: What I ought to have completed was guarantee we had a retargeting plan for the competition. Weblog site visitors at all times has a comparatively low variety of # of pages seen (folks come to learn the content material then depart – maybe after visiting the homepage to see who we’re). With some good retargeting in place we might have drawn extra of that site visitors again to hopefully turn into clients – one other lesson discovered.
- The AdAge Energy 150: Because of the huge improve in engagement, inbound hyperlinks and social interactions, we jumped method up the ranks on this listing – and are actually near poking into the highest 50. Actually superior.
The Closing Contest Leaderboard
The stats proven beneath every submit are based mostly solely on the two week interval of social scoring for that submit. That is to permit for the staggered begin technique so we’re evaluating apples to apples. I understand that a few of the analytics may not be 100% helpful – however hopefully it helps to reply some questions.
| 1 |  |
Kristi Hines @kikolani Measuring Social Media ROI & Goal Conversions with Google Analytics 5 |
1,929 | 300 | 2,229 |
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| 2 |  |
Angie Schottmuller @ASchottmuller 10 Ways to Use QR Codes for Better Conversion Rates |
1,250 | 300 | 1,550 |
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| 3 |  |
Yomar Lopez @yogizilla The Adaptive SEO Approach (And How To Get More Conversions) |
966 | 265 | 1,231 |
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| 4 |  |
Jen Gordon @ItsJenGordon 8 Ways your Landing Page Design is Sabotaging your Click-Thru Rate |
896 | 290 | 1,186 |
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| 5 |  |
Michael King @IPullRank The Cat in The Hat Teaches SEO |
588 | 295 | 883 |
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| 6 |  |
Anna Sawyer @AnnaFSawyer More Conversions Than a Kool-Aid Cult: Using Mind Control to Boost Your Lead Gen Conversion Rate! |
259 | 295 | 573 |
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| 7 |  |
Samir Soriano @SamirSoriano Forget About The Conversions: Give Value to Get Value |
358 | 180 | 538 |
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| 8 |  |
Justin Brooke @JustinBrooke 7 Proven Ways To Increase Your Email Open & Click-Thru Rates |
375 | 155 | 530 |
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| 9 |  |
John Ekman @Conversionista Why über-Optimised SEO Titles Kill Click-Through & Conversion Rates |
249 | 205 | 454 |
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| 10 |  |
Naomi Niles @NaomiNiles How to Have a Gorgeous Website Design AND Great Conversion Rates at the Same Time |
252 | 200 | 452 |
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| 11 |  |
Ryan Kelly @pearanalytics How To Set Up and Track Keyword Origination from Multiple Sources in Salesforce |
135 | 250 | 385 |
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| 12 |  |
Garry Lee @GarryLee316 Using Behavioural Email to Re-Engage and Convert Your Customers |
160 | 205 | 365 |
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| 13 |  |
Dave Gallant @DaveRGallant 5 Ways to Get Your Client To Say “Yes” to Conversion Forms |
221 | 160 | 381 |
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| 14 |  |
James St. John @stjohnmarketing Swinging for the Fences: Turning Singles Into Home Runs With Retention Marketing |
217 | 145 | 362 |
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| 15 |  |
Stephen Croome @FirstConversion The money has been spent, what now? 5 steps to iterate content development for results: Research, Community, Media and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) … and interns |
116 | 195 | 311 |
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| 16 |  |
Jessica Eballar @Bill4Time 3 Invaluable CRO Resources You May Be Missing – No Fancy Tools Required |
127 | 160 | 287 |
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| 17 |  |
Aaron Bradley @aaranged Bad Landing Pages? No Landing pages? Then Do Something About It! |
131 | 150 | 281 |
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| 18 |  |
Igor Belogolovsky @CleverZebo 5 Ways to Screw Up Your A/B Test |
132 | 145 | 277 |
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| 19 |  |
Stephan Wiedner @noomii The Non-Designer’s Swiss Army Knife of Free Tools to Make Sweet Landing Pages |
118 | 155 | 273 |
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| 20 |  |
Kevin McCaffery @ConversionRate_ On the Origin of Customers – Evolution and Marketing Compared |
75 | 150 | 225 |
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| 21 |  |
David Fothergill @fothergilld “It’s not a popularity contest…oh, wait, it is!” – Measuring and Optimizing Social Engagement |
83 | 110 | 193 |
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Due to our Prize Sponsors!
I’d wish to acknowledge our contest sponsors once more, for generously supplying free accounts for the highest 5 winners. Observe: to gather these prizes – select the two you need (that you just’re not already a buyer of) – e-mail me at oli(at)unbounce.com and I’ll hook you up.
For take a look at these nice conversion oriented merchandise, go go to their web sites under:
- SEOmoz: 6-months of the PRO account FREE – the world’s finest search engine optimization instruments, for actual (price $594)
- KISSinsights: 6-months of the PREMIUM plan FREE – so you may get consumer suggestions through surveys (price $174)
- SlideDeck: A SlideDeck PRO account – so you’ll be able to create slide decks just like the one above (price $99)
- UserTesting: 5 consumer checks to get actual consumer perception into your web site (price $195)
- Olark: 2 months of the GOLD plan FREE – so you’ll be able to run stay chat periods in your web site (price $88)
- Attention Wizard: 6-months of the BRONZE plan – get heatmaps to optimize your pages courtesy of Tim Ash (price $162)
Thanks once more to everybody who spent their time writing nice content material and selling the crap out of it…
Cheers,