“Vote for Me!” contests abound on the web – vaguely promising recognition, rewards and droves of traffic for brands and bloggers alike. Don’t be duped.
In fact these contests are salting the social media earth. They are killing communities, undermining authenticity and devastating the influence of otherwise influential bloggers.
Is Competition a Bad Thing?
On the surface, “Vote for Me” contests do seem like a good idea. Traditionally contests are designed to bring contestants reward for their achievements and recognition of their popularity. Everyone wants to win. Competition can be a driving force for good. We all benefit from a healthy amount of competition.
On the internet, however, when brands engage in “Vote for Me” competitions with the bloggers they are working with, there are rarely any real winners. Not the bloggers who participate and certainly not the brands. These campaigns degrade both the bloggers they seek to recognize, and the brands that seek to use them to build their communities.
I’ve Been Nominated! Will you Vote for Me?
It’s very flattering as a blogger to get nominated for an award or honor. Blogging is a lonely sport and comments can’t come fast enough. If there is one thing almost all bloggers are hungry for, it is recognition. Whether they are being recognized for their talent as a writer, their influence over their readers, the size of their following… it’s heady stuff.
So heady that some bloggers might be tempted to cheat.
Most “Vote for Me” contests being run by brands are not strictly monitored. Votes are usually tracked by email or IP address and these types of votes are easily faked and/or bought. Dig only a little and you will find online voting sites that range from the seemingly innocuous to the clearly sketchy. Google “voting bot” and you’ll find yourself down a rabbit hole.
I’ve peeked in on the administrative side of these contests in years past and seen good blogs go bad. It’s impossible to say whether it was the owners intent to cheat or that of their most rabid fans entering up to 2000 votes with email addresses in alphabetical order, but certainly enough to convince me personally that cheating is not uncommon.
Ignoring that, if you can, and assuming the contest in question is indeed legitimate and voting secure, there are still serious problems that make “Vote for Me” campaigns a bad idea.
When a blogger asks their entire twitter, facebook and blog following to visit a link, register, and vote for them – not once but multiple times in case they missed someone three hours ago – they alienate their readers. They exhaust themselves and run out of valuable time to create actual engaging content. Proving your influence and soliciting the votes to win a contest is difficult time consuming work that requires real campaigning. No matter how large your following.
Typically what happens is this:
On the first day everyone visits. On the second day their real friends click through. By the end of the week even the blogger’s own mother is not opening their emails.
Asking friends to drop what they are doing to click through and register and vote burns social capital. Asking friends/followers for their help with your campaign burns even more capital. Votes don’t come for free. Votes are a favor that the bloggers pay for by cashing in on their popularity. The price of the vote is a piece of their influence. They’ve literally “spent” it. There is risk associated. If a blogger over estimates their value to their readers, and those readers lose patience with the nonstop demands, the blogger may lose some of their followers forever.
Have you ever unfollowed, or been tempted to unfollow someone who makes too frequent requests? You’re probably less likely to ever read that blogger’s blog, follow them on other forms of social media or engage with them after this has occurred.
But Blogger Contests Drive Big Traffic to My Brand’s Page!
From a brand perspective “Vote for Me” contests hosted by a brand seem to make sense. The bloggers have turned their readers into an army of click monkeys all clicking through to your site and your numbers are soaring through the roof while you sit back reading the Radian reports. Your boss may be really impressed with your ability to deliver results. But don’t get to comfortable, chief. What you’re missing about that traffic is that there is no reason for them to ever come back again. They’re doing a favor for someone else by coming in the first place. That favor’s now spent.
Earlier this year I was at a an impressive brand event that with several other mom bloggers. Many of these women were already acquainted and good friends and very excited about the brand, and about their special group status. It was an honor simply being chosen to preview and promote this brand. There was bonding, camaraderie and a real sense of sisterhood.
Then the brand created a “Vote for Me” contest, in which they pitted their new advocates against each other, in an obvious attempt to drive quantity traffic to their site.
The women didn’t want to compete with one another. They also did not want to alienate the brand. Or lose. The prize was sweet, but the bragging rights possibly sweeter for some. It was a conundrum for all involved. One that dredged up the sort of unfortunate, ego-affirming, backstabbing tendencies that are the Kryptonite of an authentic, closely-knit community.
Some of the bloggers dropped out. Some stayed in.The page hosting the contest drew great short term traffic. Numbers that probably made the pr/marketing team proud. For the moment.
Although they may have been patting themselves on the back, I would not call their campaign successful. Ultimately the campaign for votes had nothing to do with authentic interest in the brand. It did nothing to further the community the brand had set out to establish with the bloggers and their overtaxed, vote-weary readers. This is ultimately a shame, because a lot of money was spent and aside from the “Vote for Me” contest, they did just about everything else right.
What happened to the community?
Overnight it went from close knit to unraveling. The unease of competition and the need for each of the advocates to force their (often shared) readerships to choose a favorite amongst them, drew lines between the bloggers, and compromised the loyalty they felt for both the brand and each other. The idea that they had to be silent and comply with the contest in order to get ahead with the brand was another source of stress for these women. Nobody likes being pressured.
Recently I heard an uplifting (albeit unconfirmed) story about a certain controversial Top Mom Blogger list that was about to be released. The members of the list were told about making the list but also told they had not been ranked. It was up to them to gather the votes needed to generate their ranks. They refused. Not just one or two of them. Not just the best friends. All of them. Whether they liked each other or not, whether they agreed about politics or breastfeeding or what kind of car to drive, they agreed about one thing. Competition can kill community. I’d like to believe this story is true!
Competition is not a bad thing. But when it comes to Blogger/Brand “Vote for Me” contests in the name of building communities - it’s simply bad business.
{ 46 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting. I’ve participated in a few contests, but I just don’t have the stamina anymore.
I wish there were genuine contests. I mean, I still wouldn’t enter them, but it may be nice for others.
That story you heard? If it’s the one I know (was involved in): TRUE.
(If it’s not, well, there’s more than one example of this, which, COOL!)
I agree. I’ve removed my name from blogger contests in the past, just because I don’t want to spend my social capital asking for support. But sometimes you just get sucked in without even realizing. And then you feel a little dirty.
(Sometimes, though, I think that a blogger can decide for herself that it might be worth it, if it’s something she wants badly enough. That’s her call. But still, I think you have to want it pretty badly.)
So well said. I”ve been sucked in, too. And it definitely made me uneasy. At the end of the day, “vote for me” blog rankings say as much about a person’s willingness to schill for votes as it does about their content.
I wonder too what people think are the results of winning one of these contests? I was thrilled to have been one of the winners for Most Provocative at this year’s SocialLuxe event and was also initially happy to be on Babble’s list of Top 50 moms to follow on twitter. While I have seen a lot of clickthroughs, they are very quickly followed by the spammy pitch. Lists and contests get you more spam. I don’t know if they get you more readers.
The story. True, and it changed the way that group did their “best of” lists after that as well.
This post should be required reading for all online marketers… publicists… whatever.
Great post! I think we’ve all been spammed by our blogger friends and I’ve always wondered how they thought the prize justified the actions.
I tried to win a ‘vote for me’ contest to attend a blogging conference. It started out fine, but at the end I felt so gross. I haven’t done one since. I know brands and companies want the SEO juice from all the posts, Tweets etc. but at the end of the day everyone moves on and they’re left with a momentary spike and quite possible a group of people who felt pretty good about them before the competition but have changed their attitudes in the end. Faking results in a competition is right up there with begging people to Stumble posts and requiring a lot of hoops for contests. It just doesn’t feel right IMHO.
I participated in a Vote for Me contest. The prize was better than most and I felt it would be worth my time campaigning because I thought I had a real shot at winning. Turns out the winner had a lot of professional contacts and experience doing what the prize required instead of just being a lover of the brand like the rest of the finalists. If it were me, I just would have chosen that person the winner before voting and be done with it. I felt like the brand used me for a lot of free advertising from me and my social network.
And all I got was a free t-shirt for participating. Never again.
Great post. Can’t imagine what that brand event was like.
And you’re right… the “vote for me” contests will turn easy traffic, but once the campaign is done, no one cares about it any longer.
Fantastic post and insight! The voting contests and competitions have always annoyed me, people should win because they deserve to win not because they dedicated hours and hours of time to getting friends and family to vote for them.
I would like to think that as blogging matures (it’s still kind of the Wild West out there on the ‘net), that more standards will be expected of us to uphold a certain level of professionalism. We can’t stop cheating of course — I know of someone who has over 50 personal email addresses just for voting on these contests — but I do believe that those of us who hold ourselves to a higher ethical standard will eventually want to be emulated, and hopefully, become the norm.
I’m so glad you brought this up. I have always detested these contests and have never actively participated in promoting our blog. Which means, if we do “win” anything it’s from true voter’s love and recognition.
I’ve always felt these contests that make people vote for you are spammy and scammy.
If nominated for a legit “vote for me” thing, I think most of us have been suckered in at one time or another. Then we learn exactly what you said here, which really needed to be said. It made me feel itchy to say VOTE FOR ME when nominated for SocialLuxe…so it suddenly hit me that I could say “vote for Violence UnSilenced instead of me!” which felt so much better. I just really wanted VU to get that exposure, no matter how fleeting.
I think the draw to that sort of thing is that everyone wants SOME kind of recognition and we get overly excited if it happens…we don’t think it through to realize how fleeting and inconsequential it can all be until we have a little more experience figuring out what we think about it all. If that rambling thought made any sense at all, I’d be surprised.
I don’t know if I completely agree with this or not. I think it’s immoral to cheat and I condemn anyone who would use any type of bot or encourage their readers to manipulate the system, and I think that a brand asking a community to fight each other for votes is a bad idea, but I have no problem asking someone to vote for me AND creating engaging content on my site every single day of the week.
Also chiming in to say it’s a true true true story. Jessica is right – the website did change subsequent campaigns after that.
I won’t do vote for me contests. I did once and never again. Just last night I told that very contest host why I wouldn’t do it again. She agreed. But she did add, “it’s sure good for our traffic.”
Pick me for something because you deemed me worthy. Not because I was able to get the most monkeys to sit at a computer hitting vote/refresh a million times in a row.
Killer post Ciaran.
I did a contest, only the bloggers knew it was a contest. The blogger with the most giveaway entries won an ipad. Except no one knew the prize and the whole thing was messed up in the end. The pr company who did it learned a valuable lesson because 3 bloggers involved ended up getting ipad’s. (I being one)
I will never do anything like that sort of “get votes, get entries, vote for me” again.
I’m never nominated for contests so I think I’m safe, but I also read a lot of blogs and agree that it can become annoying to read a constant stream of vote for me shouts. I don’t really care to vote for people’s kids in various photography contests either. In the end, the company gets a big reward and the participants end up doing all the work. Doesn’t sound particularly rewarding.
These days I often think to myself about the price of a platform. People think, “what’s one tweet?” or “what’s one sponsored post?” but I think it’s important to remember that you’re not just selling one spot–you’re selling the platform that you’ve worked tirelessly to build and protect. I don’t mind if people take money in exchange for ads or review or what-have-you, but I wish they all considered that it’s not a one-time thing–they’ve lent their voice to something permanently and there’s only so much of that to go around.
It’s like the heavens parted and this post floated down to show me the light and confirm what I’ve already been feeling. It couldn’t have come at a better time.
Around this time last year I was nominated for and became a finalist for a “vote for me” contest hosted by a popular website that I was really excited about. As a blogger just beginning to grow my readership, it was a huge pat on the back and felt awesome. What began as a super positive experience, wound up being one of the most negative of my blogging career, even though I still came out of it with an award (though not one chosen by popular vote).
As the competition picked up, I found myself getting sucked into the voting. It got ugly as women who are decidedly not fans of me or my blog began fervently voting against me (there was no limit to the # of votes per IP address). I took it too seriously, too personally, and in the end, I hate the way it made me look- desperate, self-centered, and lacking respect for my amazing co-nominees. To this day, I regret the way it all turned out and wish I would have drawn my name from the nominations as soon as I started to feel caught up in it.
Now, nominations are open again, and several readers have asked what I’d like to be nominated for. Honestly? Nothing. I can’t/won’t put myself through that again. And this post? This just made me solidify that decision. Thank you.
I hate these types of deals. I helped Kevin when Pepsi did one bc it involved getting money to research a cure for his child’s illness, and I like Kevin. I was told I had to ask for votes to get a video I made into the top 5, so that it would make the round in which judges actually vote on its content, but I hated it and only sent one “vote for me” email instead of daily ones like the others did. Like you said, it pitts friends against each other and ruins community. But most of all, it’s juvenile.
Good thoughts. I was not aware of the cheating. Both contests I am involved with right now are partially represented by votes. i think it makes sense to find out what is appealing to readers, cheating aside. I do feel bad asking for votes but I also am glad my friends and readers get to see my work rather than it be swallowed into entryland where we only see the winner and not the competition. I like seeing others’ work. Whenever I see a winner, like the best mommy blog list, I always wonder– how did they get this? Who were the contenders???
I feel badly though that this kind of competition creates some strange animosities. I don’t want whoever wins PFB to have a cloud over his/her head. I want to whole heartedly cheer them on. I don’t think it’s fair to have bad attitude in a competition and then influence others negatively when you don’t win.
All that said, i get that it’s taxing. I’m trying to keep my requests to vote at a minimum. Like, 2. I’ve been amazed at the goodwill of some of my friends who get behind me without being asked.
Question: are contests that don’t require voting not rife with issues? I wonder how fair just straight up judged things are as well.
I’ll admit to being suckered in before, but you are so right, asking for votes does burn social capital – and I have always hated to ask. I truly don’t want to be ‘picked’ for something that I then have to wear on my forehead as a ‘pick me’ sign.
Very well done, Ciaran
Yes. 100%. Bad for bloggers, generating bad will and spam and tons of misdirected energy. Also, I think, very bad for brand sponsors. The engagement they think they are getting is crass and rather meaningless, and the lasting association is only positive for the people whose candidate won. Just say no.
Completely on point Ciaran! I agree that crowdsourcing is a useful tool but these popularity competitions have no basis in merit or even popularity. It’s simply the people who have friends or fans with low thresholds for annoyance and the most time on their hands. These contests are always perpetrated by people unwilling or unable to reflect on how alienated THEY would feel by being asked to vote.
I did one once… got sucked in… and totally felt like I needed a shower afterward. But I learn things everyday as I mature as a blogger. I chalk that one up in the “not again” column.
I’ve gone back and forth about this. I hate asking for votes and feel cheap and weird when I do. Plus, I have a real niche blog so there’s really no way to “compete” when my blog is up against people with way more traffic and followers. I could ask for votes til the cows come home and not get very far.
At the same time, I write my blog for, what is to me, a VERY important cause. And I struggle to get women to pay attention to that cause for more than a fleeting second. So I sometimes set aside the cheap and weird feeling I get just to try and gain some recognition for postpartum depression. Should I cheapen myself in this way? Probably not. Yet on occasion it really is the only way I’ve been able to gain more recognition and reach moms who need help for PPD. Does this make any sense?
Nothing has made me happier than when I won an award earlier this year where the winner was selected by a panel based on actual work and nothing else. It was a real joy to win something on merit … to be recognized by people I respect (not a brand) for what I do and, more importantly, WHY I do it.
Anyway, enough rambling. Thanks for this thought-provoking post.
Thank you for this. I have only been involved in one vote for me experience and I asked my followers once and even that felt icky to me. (As you can guess I didn’t win!)
As a follower, I don’t mind being asked once but when a contest goes on forever and I keep getting bothered to vote again and again it not only wears me out on the contestant, but it sours me to the brand as it becomes obvious they are merely pushing for clicks.
It feels good to have someone who I respect as a professional in this new world validate my opinion as I still consider myself new and pretty clueless. I can rest assured I got this one right.:)
Ciaran…this is so well-written….thank you…..I agree!!! I have yet to participate in one of these contests
Suckered a few times and lately something similar to this has been brewing in my mind about a post after I got a pitch.
I recently engaged in a contest to win a slot at an invitation-only conference for frugal bloggers; I’m actually headed to the conference next week, and think it will be useful both for me and for my Want Not readers, ultimately.
But. The contest was framed with the “popular vote” section being “just one facet” on which we’d be selected. And even then, stuff happened around the voting that made me really uncomfortable. I saw cheating on the voting, yes. I also saw the company running the contest being sort of vague about criteria, with one of the folks pulling down the largest possible popular vote ultimately not scoring an invitation (and having hurt feelings about it, especially in light of the clear and rampant cheating). In this particular case I think it was a good idea that didn’t work quite as well in reality as it did in concept, for lots of reasons.
I did ask my readers for votes; I wanted their backing so that I could go do something that would allow me to better serve them, so it felt less icky than saying “Vote for me to be the prettiest!” or whatever. Still, after a few days, I realized that vote-grubbing was going to get annoying (and counterproductive). I stopped asking, and didn’t even have a link on my site to it. When I found out I was one of the winners I let my readers know, and they were supportive and really awesome about it.
My hope is that if this event happens again next year, they will handle the selection process differently.
I haven’t done one of these contests, but I have been hounded to vote in them. That “one simple click” to vote doesn’t equal a blog fan. I will read a blog with engaging content, whether its author is branded or not. “Vote for me” reminds me of high school – a total popularity contest.
Thank you for your post. You’ve really got me thinking.
I had a lot of fun “campaigning” when I entered the Oprah contest, and I think it was a campaign that was good for PND in many ways – I had SO many people come to know and support me through the video audition. I was VERY grateful that campaign had an end date though!!!
I’ve also been doing Babble… the consensus seems to be that this list is on the brands radar.
Because I’ve done these (hugely self-promoting) campaigns I try to vote when i can for people who are asking… as long as it’s a single click vote… I’ll do it.
I did a Vote for Me contest recently – but it was to raise money for a charity. I didn’t do much to campaign except for a post/Facebook and maybe a tweet or two.
I was not surprised that I did not win the competition, but I really didn’t care. I only did it to raise awareness for the charity.
I did, however, actively campaign for a vote for me promotion that was supposed to benefit a local school. I was more successful with that – probably because it had absolutely NOTHING to do with me.
Well done!
I completely agree! I HATE voting contests just as much as I hate lists.
It’s why I didn’t ask for votes during the Honda, Power of Mom thing too. So not my style…..
This is funny and helpful…for me at least. All the years I have been Online, I have never been nominated for anything. For awhile I thought something was wrong with me, then I felt like the same unpopular girl from school (still do), then, I began ti wish…until finally I just let it go in my heart and stopped caring about that sort of thing.
THIS makes me glad I never was! LOL! Thanks for the post!
*to*
I will think twice about entering a contest, these are points I never thought about. So thank you. As a voter, contests get old quickly. I will vote once for a blogger I like. Everyday you get on my nerves.
There are some reputable blog awards. Do they require daily voting or one vote per person?
I LOVE this post! Our site was nominated for an award this summer that I was honored to be included in but that ultimately, the award would be given based on how much traffic I could drive to vote told me that its merit wasn’t really going to be about the quality of our site, its content, its reader loyalty afterall. The winner in any Vote for Me platform, be it an award, a contest, or most disturbing to me a contract blogging job that involves realy money on the table, is actually the person who can drive tthe most raffic to the site hosting the voting. So…if that’s what a company/brand is looking for, then that’s what they should promote. Only those who are masterful at working the system to create a frenzy of traffic to another company’s website need apply. The reason why you were tapped is completely lost in the outcome of the vote, because its outcome will only reflect the person who was the most aggressive and successful at coercing votes from every corner of their sphere of influence. That’s work to win the vote…and by the way…what was the reason we were voting? Vote for Me anything is part of what’s least attractive in how our community could be defined. Thank you for so intelligently demonstrating why.
Very insightful, Ciaran. You have my vote for “Most Thoughtful.”
Well, as somebody who is currently hassling friends and followers daily to “vote for me” to win a well-paid blogging gig (the SAM-e Good Mood gig)–I read this with some discomfort and a bit of defensiveness, I’ll admit.
Here are my thoughts: I almost didn’t apply for this job, because the idea of shilling for votes was so distasteful to me. However, once I jumped in, I found the outpouring of support to be really surprising and encouraging. With the help of my most ardent friends and fans–the ones who THANKED me for constant reminders and told me they were very invested in the outcome, I stayed in the #3 rank for two weeks. I’ve slipped a little, mostly because I backed off on the weekends to, you know, have a real life and allow my friends to have some breathing space. So now I’ve got some catching up to do, and frankly, I’m in it to win it. And now that I’m thousands of votes in it would actually seem really rude to back out. People have invested their time in helping me. It’s the least I can do to put up a great fight for them. Plus, well, yeah, I want the $30,000 blogging contract.
The funny thing about what’s happening now is that a handful of men are climbing up the ranks very quickly and earning tons of votes. They don’t seem at all shy about promoting themselves using every possible outlet including gaming forums and the local radio station. So why do I feel so squicky about asking people who already know and like me to give me a click? (This contest does not require registration, btw, it’s literally click and vote.)
Now whether or not it’s an effective way for brands to earn customers or whether there is cheating going on (I’m sure there is) is a different story. I only know that, for me, I weighed the possibility of losing some of my “weaker” connections against the benefits of getting a job that is perfectly aligned with my platform, personality and skills–and took the risk.
It depends a lot on the contest, I think, and the possible benefits of winning. I think of my readers, friends, and followers-with pretty much everything I put out there online. But sometimes you have to be brave enough to put yourself out there and take a risk, even if it means possibly alienating some people along the way. If people have stopped following me because of my involvement in this contest, then they are people I had such tenuous relationships with to begin with that I haven’t even noticed.
So, that said I’ll just end with a simple question: Vote for me?
Meagan, I want to clarify. I would not judge or condemn any blogger for conducting an honest personal cost/benefit analysis and making the decision that a particular contest was worth their while, and for participating in that contest. I’m not in a position to make the decision for anyone but myself. My point is that this sort of analysis needs to happen, and hopefully should not ever be happening with the fear of getting dumped by a brand if you don’t pony up and deliver pointless clicks to them. I’m not against competition or using your social capitol for something that is worthwhile to you. It just needs to be examined. Not all contests/opportunities are equal. We’re all on our own journeys in Social Media. It can be a tough call! I will take a moment to vote for you. And I hope you win!
Stopping by on Mommypants’ recommendation!
I feel weird writing this after the previous commenter’s post, since I, too, applied for the Good Mood blogger position.
I really appreciated this post and it made me feel much better about deciding, after one week of begging my friends, family and blog readers for votes, to stop trying to win the $30,000 paid blogger position, even though it would have helped my family tremendously, and even though I could have done a kick butt job at it.
I think it dilutes our power as bloggers and, frankly, just as people who have social media networks, to engage in these activities. I have strong supporters both in blogland and in real life, but there was no way that even with their support, I was going to stand a chance against people who cheat and use technology to circumvent voting rules.
There was no way that I was going to allow myself to keep harassing people, either. People read my blog because I’m funny, and I know a few things about technology, and I think I’ve established a level of trust. Each time I talked about the Good Mood blogger on my blog, I felt dirty. Each time I had to ask my family to vote, I felt even dirtier.
When people approach me and said, “how is the voting going? I voted for you!” I thank them and say that I appreciated their vote but that there were people who had obviously cheated (NO person can get thousands of votes in one or two days) and that it was futile for me to continue.
The only winner in all of it is Sam-E. Tons of free publicity and page views. They are enticing good, solid, honest people to do their dirty work and potentially damage their personal brands. At what price do we do things?
I don’t need to enter a voting contest to know that I have people that support me. But it was a good learning experience. Now I know to protect the work I do and the reputation i’ve built.
“My point is that this sort of analysis needs to happen, and hopefully should not ever be happening with the fear of getting dumped by a brand if you don’t pony up and deliver pointless clicks to them.”
Thanks for the clarification, Ciaran. I admit to having read this through defensive-colored glasses this morning so I may have missed your larger point
I also completely agree that none of us can make decisions or avoid conversations for fear of being dumped by a brand. I think I must be missing some context and backstory, too, because I’m not sure which brands or contests you’re talking about.
No matter what, creating false competition in a tight community is not a great way to make a lasting impression–you’re right about that, for sure.
And there’s the beauty. You analyzed and decided it was not worth it for you. It’s a tough call for all of us. One that only we can make. My hope is that brands in the future will not spend so many campaign dollars putting us in the unfortunate position of having to make decisions about contests like these. Because while the prize may be worth it for one person, in terms of their social capital expenditure (or if they cheat… their integrity), it’s bad for the community as a whole. Bad feelings result. As a marketer I’m pretty sure that engendering so many bad feelings is never good for any brand!
Ciaran, I think another thing that made me feel OK about the Good Mood blogger gig was that I personally know very few other bloggers in the running (and none at all who frankly stand a chance of making it to the next round–it was pretty clear within the first day or two) so I don’t feel like I’m competing directly against my friends, you know?
@Gigi–interesting, I did feel uncomfortable asking for votes from near strangers but have never felt a bit dirty asking my friends and family to click for me. I’d do the same for them. If I were running for office I would certainly ask for their votes and I know they would gladly campaign on my behalf–this just didn’t feel any different to me. And while you’re right that it’s very difficult to compete with people who cheat, it’s not impossible. I’ve been right up there the whole time, and close to the top for much of the time, and haven’t cheated–in fact, I turned in a guy who was offering to sell me votes.
“vote for me” contests are never a legitimate way to get the ‘best person for the job’. It’s like internet prom queen. The vote can be swayed and it really does feel like manipulative marketing.