Carolyn Wilman is the Contest Queen, a successful professional contest consultant with over twenty years experience participating in, and promoting Canadian contests. She’s probably the most web savvy mom you’ll ever meet. Back in 2004 she became a full time stay-at-home ebusiness entrepreneur and was soon recognized at the forefront of the coupon & contest website niche. She’s now perhaps the most findable contest guru in Canada.
Carolyn writes From the Contest Queen You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter - all things sweepstaking, contesting, lucky and fun which is pastiche of tips and tactics, news and events reporting, reviews and recommendations. This summer (09) Contest Queen wrote about Capital C web challenges, local festivals, online events and promotions. She writes about really interesting things like how to use Twitter to help win contests, and why Canadian companies host contests? and she gives hard-to-find statistics and links to other experts. Carolyn even attempts very subjective topics like how to attract good luck.
This woman is really likeable, and unusually knowledgable about many different things. She once told me to watch the movie The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio so that I would better understand ‘contesters’ and what that term used to mean in the Golden Age of contests (when skill was required in every entry) in North America.
Forget the nostalgia, the Contest Queen is quick to talk to anyone about internet marketing. When I called her on the telephone using the phone number on her website, she answered in person. And when I identified myself as the author of Canada Blog Friends she cried out with positive cheer, and told me that she has been putting out positive messages into the ethersphere, which includes the blogosphere and that I was destined to call, or at least email, to help her achieve her quest. So all this is predestined.
Winning contests changes people
Carolyn Wilman has been both a contest producer and participant, many times. So she knows the rules inside and out and can help her clients visualize their creative promotions from their customer’s perspective. She can answer the tough questions like, ‘Do these rules make sense? What pitfalls are we missing? What’s our exposure to liability?’ and of course the simple questions too like ‘Why not Quebec?’ and ‘What happens if someone under age 13 wins the prize?’, and ‘Do we really need a skill testing question?’ Wilman’s sage advice helps corporations avoid the types of mistakes that currently plague contests in Canada. Her website contains links to Contest Auditing, Contest Pre-testing and Contest Education and Strategies services allowing companies to ensure a contest is designed to meet their objectives, and the promotion is operating properly, within government regulations, before public release.
In addition to her consulting skills, I must add the Contest Queen is also a gifted marketer. She has developed some powerful social media portals and can now spread messages to thousands of other potential contestants each week via her Contest Queen Blog, and also @ContestQueen on Twitter, her Facebook group and on her bi-monthly newsletter, The Winning EDGE. Indeed her compelling stories had me clicking her links. Great opening hooks like “Would you like a pocket full of mad money? Would you like to cruise around town in a brand new set of wheels? Would you like to bask in the tropical sun?” make me eager to know more of her wisdom. Because of this blogger we all have more insight into the business landscape of Canadian contests and sweepstakes.
Because children best understand conservation, Gail provides kid (classroom) tested art and craft projects that are unique, as well as use recycled materials and few if any purchased supplies. Art intimidates a lot of people because anything is possible but yet kids get bored with the usual projects. Gail’s art project tasks children to imagine things they have seen and things they cannot see, but only imagine to exist in the real world.
Holy Mackerel
Mary Moore was born and raised in Ottawa and got her start in journalism in high school working on the school newspapers. She was first employed as a journalist in Wetaskiwin Alberta, on a small weekly newspaper where she worked for two years as a reporter covering crime and local politics. Back in Ontario she landed a spot at the daily paper in Cornwall as a crime reporter and there covered a few national murder stories and found it to be “very exciting stuff”. That’s where Mary met Mr Handsome and right around the same time she landed her dream job as the new managing editor for Feliciter, the national magazine of the Canadian Library Association, where she worked for twelve years.
So, after some humming and hawing, I just went for it, and now it’s a big part of my life, to my family’s consternation. As my husband puts it, there’s an umbilical cord connecting me to my laptop.”
Unless you’ve got kids, you may not understand the appeal of Parenting Blogs. It’s the premier shared experience for women, pregnant or otherwise. This genre has become increasingly popular as there are always plenty of readers, plenty of writers, and lots of good stories. Styled as a friendly conversation, Mom Blogs are usually short reviews or some relevant life observation followed by a long list of very opinionated comments.
Melissa’s profile on Blogger has been viewed almost 10,000 times since she joined in October 2004. That’s because her blogs tell stories about gardening, fabric dyeing and how to make garden art from junk. She blogs about the birds and the bees, and about motherhood and vegan food, and she has an empire of dirt from which all this goodness grows.
For a few years, the blog was a fun place to write for Melissa. But eventually her oldest daughter became self-conscious about being included in her mom’s posts, and asked to be kept out of it. “Gasp! That was the end of my best material! I continued blogging but it seemed muted to leave her out, but I had to respect her wishes…” And so, she shifted her blogging efforts to a new site, and Empress of Dirt was born.
Blogging comes natural for Melissa; she’s a compulsive photographer and loves to write. Her pictures are beautiful before Photoshop, and impress folks interested in gardening, flowers or rare butterflies. In a recent post named 
Samantha is a 27 year old married mother-of-two that works in the construction industry. During the day she (sometimes) wears a hard hat, coveralls and steel toed boots on downtown Toronto construction sites. But at home, in the evenings, she gently constructs beautiful social nets – she blogs and builds pretty web buttons that bind together a potent roster of rookie moms.
Sam is ahead of the curve in social networking, and her techniques are worth studying - her Tempting Mama Twitter account now has 380 followers, due in part to the brilliant avatar. One thing I noticed right away is how her blog incorporates lots of popular social networking buttons. Her Stumble Page is focused on motherhood, but assembled from lots of diverse source material.
Okay now the real reason why I love Samantha – she puts it on the line. She is genuine and open and writes from the heart. I remember reading the post she wrote back in January under her blog’s Marriage tag where she opened up about her own marital problems. I marveled at the honesty and the bravery of her self documentation – she had the courage to step out from behind the façade and face reality in confessional writing that becomes the ultimate public self exploration. The next day she started dismantling the facade and her readership helped.
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