By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk

It's time again to write about this year's BlogPaws event and the new 2011 promotion. For those not familiar with BlogPaws, it is an online community of pet lovers made up of pet bloggers and pet brands. It launched last year and has become the go-to resource for bloggers and brands to partner on projects and campaigns, to be educated on social media, and to attend face-to-face meetings. The first BlogPaws event was held in Columbus, OH, in April, 2010, and then BlogPaws 2010 West was held in Denver during September.

This year's 2011 BlogPaws will be held in Tyson Corners, VA, on August 25 - 27. I'm on the program for this event again and will be moderating a panel discussing some of the legalities and FCC guidelines for bloggers. I'm really looking forward to being part of this discussion along with Mary Engle from the FCC and Emily Campbell, a lead blogger for Phosita, an intellectual property law blog.

To help promote the first two events and create some awareness and buzz about the new community, I worked with the BlogPaws team to develop some online promotions. For the first event we ran the BlogPaws or Bust Sweepstakes which offered one lucky participant a free travel package to Columbus including airfare, hotel and a conference pass. It also gave three second place winners free conference passes. For the Denver event we held a BlogPaws or Bust Video Contest which gave away two travel packages to attend the event. We had some great quality videos, but the number of entrants was low, especially compared to the sweepstakes.

The team came back to me this year and they wanted again to give away a travel package for a lucky winner to attend this year's event. So we decided to do another contest and wanted to keep it fun, but simple. The 2011 BlogPaws or Bust Photo/Caption Contest is scheduled to launch this weekend. What's different about it is that we are asking for the pet (or pets) to tell us why their human just has to be at BlogPaws 2011, along with a photo of the pet(s).

We will again be utilizing the Wildfire Application to run the contest. Participants will be able to enter from a link off of the BlogPaws website or from the BlogPaws Facebook page. All submission must be in by June 30th. Participants can submit a one word caption or can have up to 50 words to state their case. A panel of judges will review all the entries and pick a winner based on the originality and creativity of the submission. People are invited to view all the entries as they are submitted, so do check it out. I'm sure we'll get some adorable pet photos to match their "voices".

There is still plenty of time to register for the event as well. You can find all the information here on the website. I'll be sure to give you an update on the contest results and announce the winner sometime in July.