Since when did we have official blogging coaches?? This is an interesting phenomenon that has spawned only recently. There have been a plethora of “how to” blogging blogs out there for a while, but since when did it turn into legitimate business?
Project Blogger, is a contest that was started by Jonathan Washburn & Jim Cronin that is a essentially a contest between blogging coaches. Each coach will pick a blogging beginner, and coach them into blogger-stardom.
The “potential” list of judges includes:
* Matt Heaton, CEO ActiveRain
* Robert Scoble, famous ex-Microsoft blogger: Scobleizer
* John Battelle, Federated Media – Author of The Search
* Errol Samuelson, new president of Move, Inc.
* Rich Barton or Lloyd Frink, CEO or President of Zillow
* Galen Ward, Shackprices.com
* Matt Mullenweg, Founding Developer of Wordpress
If this can actually be pulled off…it could be huge. It could potentially catapult the “real estate” blogging category into the limelite. I personally think that it is going to be nearly impossible to get judges like Rich Barton or Matt Mullenweg, but you never know.
The criteria for judging also seems to be ambiguous at best. I mean, it’s one thing to judge the quality of a blog post a-la Carnival of Real Estate, but it’s another thing altogether to judge the effectiveness of a blog. I mean… that’s what we are all going for is it not??
Blogging effectiveness is a very difficult thing to judge because everyone has different expectations and goals. One real estate blogger might focus on national RE news, while another may focus on hyper-local news, and yet another on RE marketing. How do you judge something like that?? I guess the goal for most real estate agents is lead generation, but even that is hard to get a handle on.
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I’m going to predict the front runners here:
Jim Cronin is a natural pick as one of the starters of the contest, but also as an experienced coach. His Tomato Blogs coaching and design service has been up and running since late last year. The guys over at the Sellius Blog also have an edge as very experienced bloggers that really think outside of the box.
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I’m amazed at how many gimmicks are out there to drive traffic to blogs. Maybe “gimmick” is too strong a word… I mean, there is the RE carnival, the AR carnival, the Yankee Blog Swap, the 101 Challenge, the Meme Exchange… the list goes on and on. This seems like just another in a long line of contests and buzz marketing tricks. I hope that some beginner bloggers actually learn from the experience, and generate some good leads.
Contests have always been the secret weapon of successful bloggers. And there are plenty of good ideas out there that haven’t been tried yet.
Back during the Yankee Blog swap, we had changed over to a new URL for our blog, but then at the last minute decided to keep the blog on our main directory at the URL that it is now. But during that short time that we ran the blog on that address, we participated in the Yankee Blog swap, and because of it, formed a ton of new incoming links. There wasn’t even any content under the blog itself! But just by participating in a single blogging event, we got 50 or so incoming links. That old blog still ranks fairly well for the keywords that we targeted it for, and we didn’t even do anything…. it just goes to show the power that contests and blogging events can have.
Anyways, I’m interested to see how this contest will pan out…
Related posts:
- 5 Reasons to Start Blogging Today
- Book Review: Realty Blogging… I got mine!
- Google Launches New Blogger Friendly Search Service
- Guest Blogging to Gain Traffic And Links
- How to Avoid Suffering From Blogging & Social Media Overload
Frontrunner? Wow!
I sure hope we can keep up with the ambition of those participating. I may be a bonafide blog coach already… but this contest, I feel, will be the make or break for the formula we use!
Thanks for the confidence.
Hi Justin.
I am guessing the guys from Zillow would not actually be that hard to get as a one week judge, but what do I know. Afterall, their PR staff includes bloggers so they get that part of their marketing.
As for you bets on who will win, I agree that Jim Cronin has an advantage. He is already building lovely blogs for people and coaching. If I were competing, I would be reading his stuff!
And as for contests, they have done some wonderful things for my incoming links. I like them, but that is never why I have participated or run them. Usually its just for fun or to challenge myself.
Project Blogger should be interesting to watch, just like a reality TV show.
Hey Justin – This sounds like a great idea. SO how do you enter the contest as a mentee?
Hi Maureen,
You would probably need to court one of the many judges. Here is the list:
1. Dustin Luther, RainCityGuide
2. Jeff Turner, RealEstateShows
3. Greg Swan, BloodhoundBlog
4. Jim Cronin, RealEstateTomato
5. Teresa Boardman, StPaulRealEstateBlog
6. Joe Ferrara & Rudy Bachraty, SellsiusBlog
7. Ardell DellaLoggia, SearchingSeattleBlog
8. Pat Kitano, TransparentRealEstate
9. Joel Burslem, FutureOfRealEstateMarketing
10. Jonathan Washburn, ActiveRain
11. Frances Flynn Thorsen, theRealtyGram
Just send them a short email introducing yourself, and why you should be considered… I’m pretty sure that Active Rain blogs won’t be considered… but I suppose it’s up to the coach. My guess is that they won’t be accepted, especially considering the quality of coaches. They would know better than to approve an AR blog.