Danie’s Corner – Here Are 10 Tips To Hosting A Successful, Effective Blog Giveaway

Giveaways are great way of promoting your blog or brand, collaborating with other bloggers or brands, increasing your social media followership, comments to a post and boosting overall traffic. So what are the things to keep in mind when preparing for and actually hosting a giveaway on your blog.

1. Know The Purpose Of The Giveaway – You should ask yourself what do you want to achieve from this giveaway. Is it more email subscriptions, more likes to a Facebook page, is it as a gift to your readers? Or for a celebration or anniversary? Or is it to promote a brand’s website or social pages? That way you know what to include in the rules.
2. Pick the right item – Pick an item or items that your followers would be interested in. You can get the product yourself or get a brand you are working with to sponsor the giveaway.
3. Keep entries simple and worth the prize – The more complex it is to enter a giveaway, the fewer entries there will be. The rules should be as simple as possible but should also be worth the prize.
4. Let the rules of participation be clear – Clearly state the rules and instructions to be completed in order to stand a chance of winning.
5. Promote! Promote! Promote! – After you announce it, you have the responsibility of promoting your giveaway. Social media, newsletters, email reminders are different ways you can do that. You can share the giveaway at least once each day for as long as the giveaway is opened.
6. Host it on another blog – If you have a fairly new blog and small readership, you could consider hosting it on another more popular blog that attracts your target audience. You and the other blogger both benefit from this in that his/her readers are getting something for free and you are getting recognition and clicks to your own blog as well.
7. Follow through with the winner – When a winner has been selected., follow through with the person. Respond to their messages, comments and emails. Keep them satisfied
8. Avoid Spamming – Spam is a major turn off. Leaving your links or posts on other bloggers pages when you were not permitted to. Or leaving comments here and there like ‘enter my giveaway!’ even on people’s pages that you don’t know or talk to is considered spam.
9. Be clear about any terms and conditions – If the giveaway is only open to people in a certain country or state, or an age or gender, clearly state those term and conditions. When and where the winner will be announced, the period during which the winner is to claim the prize after being chosen, etc.
10. The giveaway period should not be too long – The time shouldn’t be too short but should be long enough to raise the awareness that you want but not so long that people forget about it. 1-2 weeks is recommended before a winner is selected.

Have you hosted a giveaway/contest on your blog before? Was it as successful as you expected? What other do’s and dont’s do you have to share?

Thanks for reading! Happy Blogging !!