The holidays are over now, but they don’t have to be! Keep the spirit alive by sharing your feel good holiday story with the world. And hey, you might even find yourself on a sizzling hot Cancun beach ($1,800 value) for all your efforts! If you haven’t already, submit your story to The Goodest Story Ever Contest today.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. If you really want to win one of the great prizes being offered, this post is for you! Since the community decides who wins by voting for their favourite story, you can increase your odds by spreading the word to your network.

Here are 6.5 ideas for promoting your story to your peeps:

1. Tell everyone you know. Phone and/or email all your friends, family, co-workers, classmates and anyone else you can think of, and ask them to take 5 minutes to help send you to sunny Mexico. If they’re already registered Do Gooders, it’ll take them even less time! Mention all the prizes and how easy it is to submit a story, and you might even inspire some healthy competition.
2. Make Do Gooder friends. So you’ve already asked your Do Gooder network to vote for your holiday story, but what about the Do Gooders that you’ve been meaning to connect with? This is a perfect opportunity to grow your Daily Challenge network! Ask your new friends if they’d mind reading/viewing your Goodest Story. Maybe they’ll vote for yours, maybe they won’t. Either way, you’ve met some new people who share your interest in changing the world for the better.
3. Use social media sites. Share your Goodest Story submission with your social networks on Facebook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumbleupon, MySpace, etc. You can do this easily with the share tool at the bottom of your individual published story page. And don’t forget to post the link to your story on other sites you frequent.
4. Blog about your story. Bloggers have a unique advantage in that most of them have regular readers to share their contest submission with. We encourage you to write a post asking your readership to send you and a friend to Cancun, Mexico!
5. Optimize your story for more votes. If you read the rules, you’ll find out that for every method you use to share your story, you are rewarded 3 votes each! So if you write a story, upload a pic AND share your YouTube video link, then you automatically begin with 9 votes. That’s a great lead!
6. Publish the Goodest Story Contest banner. Our development team has created a set of banners for you to display on your website or blog. When your readers click on the banner, it will bring them straight to your personal Goodest story page so that they can cast their vote for you.
7. Stand on the street and beg for votes. Ok, you probably won’t do this one, so that’s why it’s only worth half a point. But with a little creativity, you just might make this into a viable promotion tactic! Let us know how it goes.

Alright, there’s 6.5 ways to go about promoting your holiday story. At this point in a post, I’d normally ask if anyone has any other ideas to share, and please do if you’re so inclined! But I have a feeling you may want to keep them to yourselves this time for an added edge.

Good luck to all the Do Gooder contestants!