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In case you haven’t heard, MyBlogLog is running a contest from Nov. 8 till Nov. 30th to see who can grow their blog community the most. Aside from the prizes, which I’ll get to later, there are other advantages of participating in a contest like this. First of all, you can pit your skills against other bloggers to see how you fare. In the end, even if you don’t emerge as the winner, you will learn many valuable lessons about what went right and what went wrong. You can then apply these lessons for improving your blog.

Secondly, this will be a good opportunity for you to set some goals for yourself. How many blog readers do you want to have by the end of the month? How many RSS subscribers? Email subscribers? A lot of bloggers have been focusing on the RSS numbers lately but I think that is missing the point. In my opinion, email subscribers are worth far more than RSS subscribers.

Point to note, the contest is only open to US-based bloggers. I know that this is a disappointment for many folks outside the US but I heard from a MBL employee that this condition was set due to legal reasons. You can still participate in the contest but you just can’t win any prizes. You can read all the contest rules before you participate. The other important thing is also that you have to be the primary writer for the blog in the case of blogs with multiple authors.

So what can you win from these contests?

1. One Grand Prize winner will receive a one year, non-renewing Pro subscription to MyBlogLog

2. A $500 voucher for PPC advertising on Yahoo! Search Marketing

3. A one-year premium membership to SEOmoz

4. A “complete” blog redesign package from Designsbyrs

5. A one-year subscription to Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind

6. A MyBlogLog “featured community” designation for the winning blog during December 2007

7. An invitation to the invite-only blog gathering, SOBCon 2008, in Chicago, IL (prize consists of event invitation only; lodging, travel/airfare and other expenses are NOT included).

Approximate retail value of Grand Prize: $2600.

Ways You Can Grow Your Community

Now let’s discuss some practical steps that you can take to grow your MBL community.

1. Visit other MBL members’ blogs

Surf through MBL blogs. When you do this, your avatar will show up on their blog if they have installed the MBL widget. When I see someone new visit my blog, sometimes I click on their photo to check out their profile in MBL. If I do this, I know that other bloggers do as well. If I like their blog, oftentimes I will join their community as well.

2. Join other members’ communities

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you join other bloggers’ communities, chances are they will return the favor as well.

3. Invite your friends to join MBL and your community

Maybe you know of other bloggers who are not in MBL yet. Now’s a good time to invite them to join.

4. Run a contest

I’ve seen a blogger do this and he’s offering $100 to a random winner picked from people who have joined his community. You can run your own contest and offer some cool prizes.

5. Participate, Comment

Please, please, please don’t spam but leave thoughtful comments that are related closely to the topic. For the URL, you can use the link to your MBL community. If you say helpful things, people will check you out and join your community because they’ll want to hear more.

6. Blog often and write good stuff

If your blog is dormant, people will stop reading it. On the other hand, good stuff is in the eye of the beholder. Good content for one blog may not be good content for another one. Sometimes, it’s the writing style that attracts readers.

Recently, I came across Shang Ning’s blog which I found to be hilarious. It’s the way he tries to bring across the point. Being a Chinese blogger, his command of the English language isn’t that good so sometimes the words he chooses can be quite funny. It’s almost as if he is doing a direct translation of his thoughts in Chinese by looking up English words in the dictionary. For instance, in one of his posts, he wrote about the westernization of China:

“Starbucks: one said Starbucks is snack like McDonald’s in abroad, but Starbucks is regard as the elegance bourgeois.

Snooker: this is a sport for gentry in English, player have to wearing a suit on playing. Who like wearing a suit on a hot day? So you will seeing one was naked to the waist and playing Snooker in China.”

7. Update your profile

You know that profile thing in MBL? Write something interesting about yourself to give others a reason to read your blog. I’ve seen too many profiles that simply say, Male: 25 or Female: 32. BORING! Tell people who you are and why you do what you do. Be creative.

I’ll follow my own advice.

I’m not going to run a contest per se but here’s what I’m going to do. Each day from now until the end of November, I’ll feature a MBL member from my community. If you want to participate, then please join my communities (Marketing Tools Review and Money Making Blogs) and you’ll get a chance to be featured here. I’ll check the member list each day and pick out someone that I’ll feature either here or on Money Making Blogs.

The first featured MTR community member is Dawud Miracle. Yes, his last name is really ‘Miracle’! Dawud is a professional web designer and you can check out his portfolio.

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