Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Fire Up Your Giveaway!

In honor of the next couple of months and the fabulous blogs we will be featuring, I want to share some of the ways I discovered to promote your giveaway and your blog.

Unless your a blogger who gets thousands of hits a day with tons and tons of people referring to your blog and promoting your events at their own blog, sometimes it can be discouraging to have a giveaway.  You often have to work to get people to even enter!  I remember some of my first few dissapointing giveaways on other blogs.  I would wait and wait, checking my comments wondering why they were so few and far between...

I have since learned that everything evolves around work in the blogging world.  If you leave your future to chance or luck,  its more likely than not you will flop and fail.  The internet is so vast that for someone to stumble upon anything that isn't ranked 1st in a Google Search list is like 1 in 100,000,000,000,000 - (don't quote my possibly exaggerated numbers - its more like an example to make a point :-)  Sometimes you wonder, how many sites can there be out there?  Beyond our comprehensive imagination I believe.  Just in your native language alone, how many cooking sites are there?  Lots.  Lots and lots and lots.

So when your small and want exposure through a giveaway, don't despair.  There are ways to help yourself!

1. Link up to all the giveaway parties you can.

Moms By Heart has a huge list of parties here for everyday of the week to join.  Parties do some of the work advertising your giveaway for you.

Link up Moneysavingmom.com giveaway list, Tipjunkie.com listing and any safe listing you can find.

2. Start telling people.  Leave comments on blogs, send e-mails (when you have permission), and spread the word.  Post on your facebook and twitter about it. 

3. Remind often. Put a reminder right up where your visitors will see it everytime they visit.  It takes a lot of repeated exposure before people will actually develope an interest in what they are seeing.  Leave links and make it as easy for them to enter as possible.

Let's get going!  The amount of entries and exposure you get is directly related to the amount of effort you put in.  I didn't realize this at first, and just hoped that people would find me and enter.  It so doesn't work like that for most people; unless your really lucky or get a big break.  I was not lucky.  And it was dissapointing.  Then I developed a new attitude and outlook.  And I reaped the rewards.  You can too.  Don't wait for dissapointment - go and build success!

7 bloggy friends commented:

Kelly's Lucky You said...

I have a list of blogs (with links) that host Giveaway Linkys on my blog. I try to go straight down the list every day and add my giveaways.

http://kellysluckyyou.blogspot.com/p/giveaway-linkys.html

Holly said...

Thanks for the info!

Simply Stacie said...

It also depends on the prize. Some giveaways will have over 1000 entries while other will only get 100.

Sarah said...

So true Stacy!

PERMANENT POSIES said...

Good post. I am new at this and I am finding that it takes hours a day to get it all done but....I LOVE IT! Haven't done a giveaway yet but did start a Creative Tip Tuesday. Haven't had success in entries. I had one the first week and that was a friend. Not giving up.

Julia said...

Thanks for the great tips! I just had a giveaway, and this info would have been sooo helpful:). Yoyu site is wonderful.

~Julia

TerriAnn @ Cookies and Clogs said...

Thank you for the tips. I have often had those same sentiments regarding a lack on comments/entries. My Vistaprint Invitations giveaway is also at the end of its 2-week window with only 38 comments - and many of those are extra entries from the same people. Thanks for the advice and sharing your own experience with it.
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