Blogs with word count

I found a way to motivate my students to type more on their blog more by accident than anything else. I gave an example and modeled what I want and all that great stuff. Then I had the students respond to my prompt. They started typing and it was all seeming very much the same as always. Then I commented on one student saying I was impressed with how much he had written. I showed him the word counter that is at the bottom of the posting screen. It counts how many words typed. He then went around and looked at what others had and thus spreading the word of the word counter. I then noticed that some of my students who never write or type much unless I set a limit started typing more and more. The students started a little competition to get the most words. The highest word count ending up being 560 words! They usually type less than 100.