Syed Balkhi — May 7, 2020 Looking for a new way to boost traffic and conversions? Try running an online giveaway on your blog.
An online giveaway is a great way to attract new visitors to your blog, get more email subscribers, increase revenues, and boost your social engagement. You might’ve heard they’re complicated to run one, but it’s not true.
I’m here to explain just how easy it is to set up and run an online giveaway on your WordPress blog.
Why Run a Giveaway?
Giveaways are pretty popular, and they appear everywhere, including websites and social media channels like Instagram and Twitter.
Hosting a giveaway on your WordPress blog lets you control the experience and spread it out over more channels, increasing your reach. It’s not too hard to host a giveaway, but first, you’ve got to decide on your goal for the giveaway.
1. Set a Goal
Don’t waste your giveaway by running it without an end goal or objective. You must decide why it is you’re running it and what you hope to achieve with it.
What’s a good goal for a giveaway? Well, you may want to:
- Drive more traffic to your blog
- Get more email subscribers
- Increase your social media followers
- Capture more leads
- Promote an event
- Something else
Knowing your goal will help you structure your giveaway more easily.
2. Choose Your Prize
Next, you’ve got to choose the prize to give away. It should be something relevant to your blog or business, which will entice people to enter.
For example, if your blog’s about scrapbooking, you wouldn’t offer a cookbook, would you? You’d end up with a lot of disappointed people who would unsubscribe pretty quickly.
Choosing a relevant prize is more important than the number of prizes you offer, so consider things like:
- Money
- Gift certificates
- Free books
- Complimentary session of your service
Just be sure to offer a prize that’s relevant to your blog and is useful to your audience.
3. Set Up the Rules
Now that you know the prize, you’ve got to define the rules for your giveaway. First, decide what you want people to do to enter. You’ll get more entries if it’s simple, so ask for their name and email address (or if you’re on social media, ask them to follow and share the message.) But it does depend on your goal and what you’re looking to achieve with the giveaway. Give people clear instructions on how to enter the giveaway.
You can achieve your goal faster if you map your entry method to your goal. For example, if you’re looking to increase your email list, ask for people’s email addresses. If you want more social media followers, ask them to follow and share your entry message.
Other rules and guidelines you may want to consider are:
- Start and end dates: How long will you run the giveaway?
- Limiting entries: Can people enter more than once?
- Choosing the winner: Tell people how you’ll choose a winner, like a random draw, a correct answer, or something else.
- Announcing the winner: How and when will you announce the winner?
Once you have set up your goals and rules and decided on the prize, it’s time to set up the giveaway on your WordPress site.
4. Use a Raffle Plugin to Manage It
You can use a raffle plugin to manage your giveaway on your WordPress site, including RafflePress, Gleam, and Rafflecopter. Most of the plugins have a free version that lets you run a basic giveaway, but if you want to reap all the rewards of running a giveaway, you’ll need to invest anywhere from $ 79-150 to get the pro version of any plugin. These plugins will help you set up, manage, and publish the giveaway on your WordPress blog.
Be sure to promote the giveaway before it begins. Send an email to your newsletter list to encourage them to spread the word to their friends. Hit up your social media channels to ask them to enter too. Don’t forget to give extra entries for all referrals!
5. Pick and Announce the Winner
Once the contest deadline passes, you’ve got to choose the winner. Based on whatever rule you stated, pick the winner for the giveaway.
Then, reach out to the winner and inform them they’ve won. Publish the winner everywhere you promoted it, and contact all those who entered to thank them for registering.
Congratulations! You just ran your first giveaway on your WordPress blog. How did it go? Did you achieve any or all of your goals? What are your next steps with your expanded audience? You’ll want to reach out and welcome them to your community.
Now that you know how to run a giveaway on your blog, are you ready to do it? Share your experiences in the comments below and let us know how your latest giveaway went.
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