‘Fess up. You like getting free stuff, don’t you?

Me too. In fact, I have yet to meet someone who doesn‘t like getting freebies.

That’s why, in our blogging partnerships with trade show and event producers, we encourage our clients to give away several tickets to the event in exchange for guest blog posts.

It’s a win-win for everybody.

Here’s how it works (using our client, the Northwest Flower & Garden Show, as a case study):

1.  The event producers allot us a limited number of tickets to distribute to show-goers who agree to submit a guest blog post that chronicles their day at the event.

2.  We:

3.  Our client gets several professional-quality guest posts in which enthusiastic attendees explore all aspects of the show.

4.  The ticket winners - who are usually avid bloggers and gardening enthusiasts - get to attend the show for free in exchange for telling the world about their day.

Win-win.

Here are some notes we received from guest bloggers after last year’s Northwest Flower & Garden Show:

Thanks again for the pass. You did some great edits and added the perfect pictures!

THANK YOU SO MUCH for the tickets & the opportunity to blog about our experience at the show - we had a blast (and just got home)!

I had a grand time today, thank you for the opportunity to share my experience.

Our client wins, too. Why? Because the guest bloggers tell (beg?) everyone they know to read their posts. All their friends read it, link to it on their own blogs, and forward it to their gardening friends. It grows from there… grassroots marketing at its best.

And trust us; those guest posts get read. And read. And read. Last year’s guest posts for the Northwest Flower & Garden Show rank as some of the most-visited posts on Flora’s blog, receiving not dozens, not hundreds, but thousands of hits year-round.

(Aside: My 12-year-old son guest-wrote the blog’s all-time most-popular post, Junior Bonsai Warrior, which has garnered over 5,000 page views so far!)

We’re gearing up for another round of guest posts beginning Wednesday, February 18 and running through the close of the Northwest Flower & Garden Show on Sunday, February 22. We’ve been inundated with people requesting to be guest bloggers for this year’s show, and we’ve scheduled a terrific lineup of guest bloggers.

Hope you’ll follow Flora’s blog this week and find inspiration through the words and reflections of our guest bloggers. Oh, and if you live in the Northwest, plan to attend the show. It’s truly magnificent!

Here are links to the 2008 guest blog posts, to help you plan your day:

Dig Deeper

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