Five Ways to Give a Better Giveaway

You’ve seen them all over blog-land. You’ve entered them. You commented. You tweeted.  You linked. You added to your blog roll. You crossed your fingers and hoped that you would be the lucky one…

That’s right bloggers, I’m talkin’ bout THE GIVEAWAY.

Even if you’ve never hosted your own giveaway, I’m pretty sure you’ve entered at least one. Most of the giveaways out there work the same way. The blogger teases about the giveaway, lets you know what the awesome prize is, and then gives you ways to enter.

Healthy living blogs remind me a lot of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. You see one person doing a yogurt giveaway and then later you see five more bloggers doing the same giveaway. Then everyone is showing their meals and guess what??? They are all eating this same yogurt. It’s a yogurt epidemic!!!

I have only done one giveaway (when my blog was a baby), but I am trying to get some fun things lined up. I don’t want to be boring (that’s just not my style) and do it the way everyone else does, so what is my plan? I’m gonna try and break it down for you! Here are five ways to host a more interesting giveaway.

1. Go get ‘em! You don’t have to wait for companies to contact you. If you are a smaller blog, this could take a while and I’m sure you’ll get tired of waiting. Go to companies whose products you use and like. Don’t just play follow the leader and try to give away something you saw another blogger giving away. Be original!

2. Play a game of cat and mouse. Part of the allure of hosting a giveaway is that you have the potential to garner new readers.  That’s when the teasing comes in. I’ve seen bloggers keep mentioning their “super secret giveaway” for days. But let’s get something straight: a little teasing goes a long way. If you are enticing readers for more than a day or two, the game gets old fast.

3. Offer new ways to enter. Along with all the giveaway products looking like a set of identical quadruplets, the ways to enter are always extremely similar. Can’t we all think of something different than leaving a comment, tweeting, or adding to a blog roll? One creative giveaway I entered was in the form of creating a poem about why you needed the product. It was fun and different. You can do it too! Be creative, use your imagination.

And on that note, I think that asking people to add you to their blog roll is a cheap way to try and get your stats up.  Don’t go for cheap tricks. Build an authentic readership. Enough said.

4. Don’t be a drag. We already established that you don’t want to be a tease, so don’t go and screw it up and be a drag. Giveaways don’t need to drag on for a whole week or more.  When you let the giveaway drag on, readers start losing interest and it becomes less about the product and more about your readership numbers. Don’t be a slave to your stats. If you are a more popular blog, why not host a lightning fast give away? Think about it: one day or six hours to see who can enter the most times.  That would be exciting and different.

5. Crown a winner. The random number generator is an awesome tool that makes it fast and easy for a blogger to choose a winner, but you don’t always have to use it.  If you don’t have many people entering your give away, you could do it the old-fashioned way and pull the winner out of a hat. You could leave the decision up to your readers and make it interactive by having them vote on what they think was the best/funniest comment. You could post a vlog announcing the winner and actually throw some confetti.

“Cookie-cutter” is not a word that we want associated with our blogs. The next time you are planning a giveaway, give it some thought, put on that creative thinking cap, and make it fun/different/original/wacky. Just do something different. You want the new readers who discover your blog through your giveaway to stick around and come back when you aren’t bribing them.

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Tagged as: Angela, giveaways