Apr 8, 2011

Increase Blog Readership With a Giveaway

Does your blog need a boost? Sponsoring a giveaway is a great way to increase readership in a short amount of time.   Everyone loves freebies and it doesn’t have to be a high dollar item to gain attention. If you’re a published author you could give away a free copy of your latest book or ebook; others might offer a gift card (that you earn free at sites like SwagBucks).

Before posting a giveaway on your blog, sign up with Giveaway Scout to get your contest in front of the masses. If you put the word giveaway somewhere in your title, Giveaway Scout will pull your information automatically to include on their widget, but you can also add your blog post manually.

My blog is new.   Should I offer a giveaway now?
While a contest is a great way to get more followers, it won’t keep them if you have nothing else to offer. If you have no other blog entries, you’ve not shown your potential readers what your blog is about or what they can expect from your blog. It’s best to have at least a few posts under your belt first, setting the tone of what's to come.  Once you’ve decided what your blog is really going to be about and have a target audience in mind, then toss out another bone in the form of a giveaway.

How do readers enter the giveaway?
Most giveaways tally an entry for performing various tasks such as commenting on the blog, sharing it on Facebook, tweeting it on Twitter, et cetera, all designed to bring you even more exposure.  Make sure to tell your readers to leave a comment for each task they perform in order for it to count as an extra entry. Remind them to leave their email address in the comment so you can contact the winner.

Is it difficult to keep track of contest entries?
When sponsoring a giveaway, I make a simple Excel spreadsheet where I type the contestant’s name for each entry. I add them in the order received and each entry is assigned the number of that row in the spreadsheet. If someone comments four times in a row on my blog, they will have four consecutive numbers on the spreadsheet. You could do the same thing with a typed document or handwritten list on scrap paper, but I find Excel easy to use since the numbers are already there.

How do you draw the winner?
However you tally them, when your contest is closed, go to random.org to pick the winning number. If you had 104 comments/entries on your blog, enter the numbers 1 and 104 and click ‘generate’. Compare the winning number to the number on your list and you’ve identified your winner.

To see how I conducted my last giveaway, click here.



20 comments:

  1. Great advice -- I've been thinking about having a contest. I don't have the resources yet to be able to give something of monetary value, but I'm giving it thought.

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  2. Awesome advice! I've seen these mentioned before and wondered how they worked.

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  3. Thanks! I have thought about doing a giveaway before. :)

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  4. I have been thinking about a contest for a while too but had no idea how to go about it. I think I will set something up after the A-Z challenge is over - I should have a few more readers by then! :D

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  5. Very interesting. I've been thinking about doing something like this.

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  6. Great tips to spice up blogging life:)

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  7. That's a great tip! I just shared it on facebook as I have several blogging buddies there. :)

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  8. Thanks for the helpful hints and tips!

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  9. Thanks! I've never heard of Giveaway Scout--wish I'd known before I posted. ;-) I'll have to get my blog approved before my next giveaway. Thank you!!

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  10. Great idea. It's not something that I've thought of doing until now.

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  11. I've considered it but am not sure about how to go about it.
    Thanks for the info.

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  12. Sounds really simple, great idea.

    For the price of a $10 gift card or something, that is a great way to get traffic. Even better if it's something like an Amazon Gift Card that you can email to someone - no snail mail or physical address required.

    If I could get my blog shared to a few thousand people on Facebook for $10 it would be well worth it.

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  13. You make it sound so simple! Thanks for some excellent advice.

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  14. I did a giveaway for a blog carnival once: I gave away a copy of my husband's book. It wasn't very hard; I don't even think I used a spreadsheet. I just counted up the entries and did a random number from there.

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  15. I tried it early on, using another site's giveaway, but haven't tried since. I've copied your blog and have it saved on my desktop for quick reference, including the hyperlink to how you worked your giveaway. Maybe I can work that in to my Avon blog as well.

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  16. This was very helpful MArie Anne. I will definitely consider using this when I build up my readers a bit more.

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  17. Bookmarking this one, too. You are a wealth of information...thank you!

    My “G” post: Genetic Link
    My “H” post: Habituation: Can You Think Yourself Skinny?

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  18. More good advice.
    I'll be stalking this blog regularly.

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