Tuesday Tips: What is a blog & how do I enter a giveaway?

A blog is an online destination where a person, group or business can “write” about upcoming events, share expertise or information with others. Most of the times the author of the blogs leave a place for you to leave comments. When someone writes a blog, they often seek comments from the readers. This is a great way to give encouragement or support to author. You can also ask further questions on their post.

Have you ever wondered what someone meant when they were talking about atoms, RSS, RSS feeds, permalink, subscribe, mommy blogs, blog hop, posts and blog roll are? For more definitions and blogging terms read this wiki page!

Now that we have the terminology down, we can move on to Giveaways/Contests!
There are a few simple rules when entering a contest on a blog, and especially Regarding Nannies.

1. Read the entire post before doing anything. Then reread it and start doing your entry/entries.
2. Secondly, do the first required entry. This is most often asking you to follow or comment on something. You must also come back to the original contest post and leave your entry in the comment section.
3. Make sure you have your email address in the post…either in the comment section written out like this: regardingnannies at gmail dot com This way spammers don’t get your email address. If you don’t put your email address in there then you won’t be able to win.
4. Extra entries: these are things you can do/post/comment/share with others to gain an extra entry and chance to win. Post on your personal blog, facebook page, twitter account, yahoogroups, email friends) This increases your chance at winning! Again you must come back to the original contest post and post a SEPARATE comment stating what you did. If you are given a chance to gain 5 extra entries, then you must have 5 SEPARATE comments on the blog post plus your original entry. Making it a total of 6.
5. Winning an item is your chance to save money throughout the year, try something new or give a gift.
6. The people who run the giveaways/contests do NOT want to go chasing down your entries, this is one of the reasons why you must come back to the original contest post and post each entry separately. This is to reassure that you have completed each entry.
7. If you do NOT follow the directions of the contest/giveaway completely you will be ineligible to win.
8. Lastly, ask questions: contact the person giving away the item via email or even post a comment on their blog, they will able to help you.

Don’t forget we are on week two of our INA Partial Year Membership Giveaway. For this week’s entry, leave us a comment letting us know what your favorite parenting/childcare book is. Don’t delay in posting your comment to receive credit for your entry.

We also have a post on how you can win a Nannypalooza conference pass from NannyNetwork. Different instructions, but still easy to follow. Good Luck!