Running Contests

[higheredunderground]

How much success have people had running contests on their blog? Where do you promote them to achieve maximum impact (other than on your site, of course)

I've got one running right now on my site, Higher Education Underground. All you have to do is become a fan on Facebook, and I'm giving away a $15 Amazon Gift Certificate to one fan on October 1. I haven't had a lot of luck getting new fans this way (ps- if you want an easy win, become a fan ... there's only three people eligible right now!)

[QuirkyMomma]

I found more luck submitting them to blog carnivals. There are a ton of education related ones out there. Maybe they can get you some traffic... also, forums for parents of teens (their starting to think about college) and maybe college freshmen or something???

Good luck!

[~kev~]

I have had some good success with contest, but only after running several of them. The problem is finding ways to promote the contest. I submit the pages to social bookmarking sites, submit the news of the contest to larger sites, and I get very little response.

[Trulyana]

I haven't done a contest as such, what I have done is a Giveaway. On celebrating my 100th Post, I spontaneously (out of the goodness of my heart) decided to giveaway some handmade soap products, and a piece of Art created by me as a thank you to those who drop by and read my blog and to mark human craftsmanship.

It was my first Giveaway a nice turnout. I really enjoyed inviting people along to the Giveway as I wanted them to be involved.

I feel that in the future I may very well be tempted to have another one, to mark a milestone and I feel there will be a lot more entrants now that I have a much stronger readership.

It's great fun!

[erik]

For my Vegan.com blog, there are any number of publishers and authors looking to have me do vegan cookbook giveaways. I put up an online entry form through a Google Apps spreadsheet, announce the contest and link to the form from my blog, and I'm off to the races. With 2300 blog subscribers I can easily get 500 entries over a weekend.

It's impossible to say how much these contests bring me new readers. But I know my contests get re-tweeted. Often, the book author will mention the contest on his/her blog / twitter account / Facebook page. When that happens, I get a bunch of traffic.

It might take me an hour total to set up a contest, choose a winner, and announce the result. These contests probably don't bring me huge numbers of new readers, but they're easy to do, and every little bit helps.

I guess I'll end by saying I probably wouldn't do a contest until I had a couple hundred subscribers, or an online avenue by which the contest could easily promoted to loads of people. Hope all this helps!

[CovertKate]

Hi,

I have a pretty new blog so was thinking if I get up to 100 followers about doing a giveaway. Any ideas on what is good though? And I am based in the Uk so is it better to limit to just UK area?

Total rookie here so any advice would be very much appreciated

Kate

[Trulyana]

Originally Posted by CovertKate

Hi,

I have a pretty new blog so was thinking if I get up to 100 followers about doing a giveaway. Any ideas on what is good though? And I am based in the Uk so is it better to limit to just UK area?

Total rookie here so any advice would be very much appreciated

Kate

Hello Kate,

Doing something around your blog's theme can be a good idea.

Also if you are attracting people from all parts of the world to your blog, why restrict the contest to just UK users? Of course, it's different if you have specified your blog only for UK residents.

I wish you all the best in whatever you may do.

[CovertKate]

Thanks Trulyana good point. I think I might need to do a little more research before doing a comp

[QuirkyMomma]

I just started my first giveaway, and here are the blunders I learned from my first round:
1) Combine ways to win. I made seven different ways to win and I think it was confusing. Make one entry "Follow via twitter, facebook or RSS" with each one a link. I think I overwhelmed some people.
2) Don't have super high expectations - I thought people would respond right away and I'd have tons of followers. Maybe if my giveaway was a cruise to the Baja. I got about 10 new followers but how many of them are really going to follow for the long-term? Prob not many of them.
3) Pimp the giveaway and then pimp it some more. I had 200-300 original viewers before my giveaway. When I advertised my giveaway those numbers jumped to 400 for the day or two after I advertised heavily... and the numbers are back down again. Maybe a few of them will be back.

Why will I do a giveaway again in spite of the fact that I don't see a lot of fruit from it? I have several businesses begging me to giveaway their products and do reviews. This is one way for me to make revenue. I will always keep my giveaways off in a "back page" though. I don't want them to become the focus of my site.

Good luck Kate! Let me know when you have your giveaway up and I'll come check it out! Also, if you want my big list of places I submitted the giveaway to let me know and I'll share that too!

[Bloggeries]

I had good luck with running one a year ago, giving away an ipod nano.

Just what is the point? You need to have a purpose, if it's just to increase subscribers or comments... Not worth it as they are gone as fast as they come.

I was trying to grow the usage of "bloggeries" instead of posts.