Disclosure: While I read John Chow’s blog and I love the Wii, I have never used our purchased pens from 1234pens.com.

The root of all evil, John Chow is giving away a Nintendo Wii. To enter, all you have to do is write a blog post about it. This is mine. Where’s my Wii? The contest is sponsored by 1234Pens.com. They make promotional pens.

This is the exact copy for the contest on John Chow’s site. By making this post, I have entered to win the Nintendo Wii. The reason John Chow has asked bloggers to make a post like the one above may not be obvious, so let me explain. The first reason is it’s viral. Because of the uniqueness, it causes bloggers like me to write about it and readers like you to learn about it. At the time of writing, this John Chow post has 177 comments. If a conservative estimate of 1 out of every 10 blog readers post comments, this means his traffic to this one post is probably well over 2,000 people.

Second, and more important, it creates great search engine optimization (SEO). Having people link to you to enter a contest gives you link popularity, a very important factor in most search engine algorithms. If you search Google for “root of all evil,” John Chow’s site comes up third. If you search Google for “giving away a Nintendo Wii,” Chow’s site comes up first. But, since the contest is sponsored by 1234Pens.com, I imagine the real hope is to get them to show up on the first page for “promotional pens” (currently they don’t show up until the 4th page in the 3rd position - basically 43rd).

For $250 - the cost of a Wii - this is a great SEO campaign for next to nothing in terms of cost. However, John Chow had to leverage his site in order to make it happen, so I’m sure he was paid too (although he doesn’t disclose anything about that).

You may ask if it’s ethical for bloggers to use their blogs in this manner. Since Chow didn’t ask bloggers to post a positive review of 1234pens.com, it’s a tough question. Frequent reader’s of Chow’s blog will know that linking is an important factor in SEO. However, bloggers that hear about this through viral techniques may not know they are a “pawn” in this strategy.

I probably wouldn’t have posted it if Chow wanted me to say “They make great promotional pens.” But his very fact based copy - which is just a sample post - compelled me to participate.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Contest, John Chow, Nintendo Wii, Search Engine Optimization

This entry was posted by Josh Kenzer on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 9:57 am and is filed under Blog, SEO, Word of Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.