How to Run a Great Blog Giveaway

Running a blog giveaway is a great way to say thank you to your followers, and provide your social media channels with a blast of activity! Although you shouldn’t rely on giveaways as your social media growth plan, the occasional giveaway planned well can be great for interaction with your readership. If you do get some prizes to give away- don’t waste the opportunity! Plan every aspect of your giveaway to ensure you’re getting the most out of it.

Step One: Find Out What Your Readership Wants

Giveaways work best when they are inspired by a blog’s readers! Readers are the key to a successful giveaway, so it’s really important you take the time to make sure your plans revolve around them. Send out a few messages across your social media networks asking what they’d love to see you giveaway, and what brands they’d like to see you collaborate with. Not only will you get some great ideas- you’ll be getting your readership excited before your giveaway has even begun!

Step Two: Get Your Favourite Brands Involved

Giveaways are so much better when you’re passionate about them, and it’s always fun working with brands you love! Keeping in mind the feedback you’ve received from your readership, get in touch with any of the brands mentioned, saying that you’d really love to work with and letting them know you’re running a giveaway. The fact that you can actually say your readership has mentioned they’d love a giveaway involving them should get the brand excited! Make sure you have any stats and unique information about your blog ready to send over to the brands PR team.

Step Three: Sit Down and Plan

Giveaways are exciting, and it’s really tempting to jump in and get started without really thinking things through properly. But as with any promotional activity, a blog giveaway really benefits from a structured plan. Take time to sit down and plan your promotional activity properly. Here is a quick pinnable guide on the stages of creating a great blog giveaway:

Step Four: Keep a Record of How Things Went- and Learn What Could be Even Better for Next Time!

Even if you’ve done 20 giveaways previously- still do this! Make a few notes each day of the giveaway on anyone that tweeted, how the numbers are doing, and how many people are entering. Often with giveaways, the response can be great for the first couple of days but then it starts to dwindle a little. If this happens to you, you might want to re-think your social media strategy. Often, I create a few different images to tweet out when I’m promoting a giveaway so our following see’s something fresh rather than the same post again and again. Little details like this help to keep people interested and sharing your tweets consistently!

Have you got any of your own tips for running a giveaway?! Let us know what your process is…..