Hosting a giveaway is a great way to build buzz for your brand and drive traffic to your website. After all, who doesn’t like to get something for free? By hosting a giveaway, you can also generate some additional income for your blog by charging the sponsor a fee for the advertising and the legwork involved.
In order to make your giveaway as successful as possible, you need to learn how to manage it — like a boss. Make sure you make the most of your giveaway with these simple tips:
Advertise Your Willingness to Host Giveaways
Start attracting sponsors by advertising on your blog that you are “PR friendly” and are open to having a conversation about hosting a giveaway. Create a page on your site a little notice that says you are open to the possibility (as well as other forms of advertising) and inviting companies to contact you directly for more details. Include the link prominently in your menu bar or on your sidebar.
Create Clear Guidelines
When companies contact you about the possibility of hosting a giveaway, you need to be ready with information about how you will handle it. This should include:
- What fee you will charge
- What your rules are regarding accepted products
- Whether you require a review copy
- How you prefer to handle shipping the item
By communicating these guidelines to companies at the beginning of your discussions, you make sure you are both on the same page right from the beginning. It will ensure that there are no misunderstandings, and it will help the giveaway to run more smoothly.
Take Advantage of All Promotional Opportunities
The primary benefit of hosting a giveaway is to get a lot of traffic to your site. You can do this by taking advantage of every promotional opportunity available. You can do this by offering readers a number of ways to enter, including:
- Liking you on Facebook
- Following you on Twitter
- Following you on Pinterest
- Signing up for your e-mail list
- Sharing your content on blogs and social media
You can even give an entry for each time the person tweets, shares or posts about your contest or other content. The more entries you give, the more exposure you are likely to get, and the more traffic you are likely to get.
Establish a Good Time Frame
A one-day giveaway won’t get the fraction of traffic that a one-week giveaway will get. However, a one-month giveaway may not get much more traffic. You need to establish a time frame for your contest that will allow you to get the most traffic possible without allowing your followers to lose interest.
Generally, two weeks is a pretty good time frame to do just that. Experiment to find out what works best for your blog to get maximum benefits.
Promote, Promote, Promote
Get as many people in the door as you can by promoting your giveaway widely and often. Send out links everyday to blogs in your niche, your social media channels, sites that advertise contests and giveaways, and anywhere else you can think to promote your giveaway. The more people who know about your giveaway, the more people who are likely to come check out your blog — and maybe stay awhile.
Follow these simple tips for handling giveaways, and you’ll soon build a ton of buzz and traffic for your site — like a boss. The more traffic you get, the more companies will want to sponsor giveaways and the more money you’ll make and the more traffic you’ll get.
How do you manage giveaways on your blog? Share your tips in the comments!
Article by Vishal
Vishal Gaikar is a professional blogger from Pune, India. If you like this post, you can follow him on Twitter.
