The owners of this forum, who also own a poker site, launched a contest asking community members to write essays: contestants had to pretend they had been hired by the site to cover the Vegas championship. A winner was picked by a jury composed of community members, and took home a plane trip, hotel accommodations, and a cash money prize.

I thought it was a pretty nifty way of creating buzz around a forum. And judging by the volume of posts during that period, I can only conclude it worked pretty well for the site’s owner as well, since poker rooms usually take 10 percent of the house bets.

Another element came to light. Jo Mannix (his forum name) went to a championship in Monte Carlo in the preceding months (he lives nearby) and posted short essays in the forum about his sightings. This certainly gave him a leg up over other competitors. After all, he had done reporting on behalf of this community already. Hmmm, food for thought. A good deed is never lost and can always been leveraged in a connected world. I hope to meet many SEOsambaists through this blog, and I might stop by Vegas for the WSOP, just to check on Jo Mannix, of course.

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