blogging about blogging

Tips for a successful blog giveaway~attract and retain readers!

November 27, 2012 by Lisa · 20 Comments

For as long as I can remember, I have been hosting fun giveaways on this site. They continue to be some of my most popular features. In recent months, I had found myself actually turning down some sponsors for giveaways, because I was just overwhelmed with the amount of work a blog giveaway can be. But, recently I sat down and actually carved out a plan of how I am going to run each giveaway so that it works best for me and for my sponsors. I want to get them as much exposure as possible, but I also want to retain the readers I attract. Here is some of what I am doing.

The beginning-clarify your goals & do your research

Make sure you get a contract (email will do) with your sponsor as far as what their expectations are. This includes your promotion on social media sites, which some social media sites actually prohibit in their TOS. Make sure which contest entries they are expecting and whether or not that goes against TOS of some sites or whether or not that is a good fit for your audience. Make sure everything is clear–will it include shipping and so on.

For your own site, are you doing this just as a paid assignment, or do you hope to get something out of it? Is this just a fun little reward for your existing followers, or do you want to use it to reach out to others and draw them in?

Do your research. Google this item and giveaway, and see what other bloggers have done. What did you like and what didn’t? What seemed to have more entries? Also, network with other bloggers to see if they have a history of not following through. Some companies don’t deliver prizes, they flake out and leave you hanging!

If you are doing a giveaway either with a sponsor, or self-sponsored, make sure you pick a prize that is not too universal but is a good fit for your site. What I mean is, if you have a huge cash prize–everyone wants cash! So you may get lots of traffic for the giveaway that isn’t lasting. If you pick a prize that fits your blog, then you and contest entrants already have something in common.

Choose your method and clarify prizes

Once you have determined your goals, determine what you are going to use to hold the contest. To have the reader just leave a comment, there are options like Random.org and AndTheWinnerIs (plug-in) and other similar options. I prefer to use the click & enter options that are out there like Rafflecopter and PromoSimple because they are easy to use and offer transparency in choosing a winner. There are other promotional apps that also can be loaded onto a Facebook page (Rafflecopter does this too) and I’m looking at adding a fun app to our next giveaway that will tie in mobile use as well.

Make sure you are clear on the prizes and delivery of said prizes. We once had a sponsor want us to ship an item that would have cost us at least $30-$40 to ship and one time I had a sponsor offer a very seasonal item during Thanksgiving week, only to later find out that they didn’t plan to deliver the prize until “within 6 months.”

Have well defined terms and read TOS

I have a pretty extensive Disclosure and Giveaway Policy that is constantly being added to and revised as I encounter new issues. I hyperlink it to the bottom of each giveaway and in the terms portion of the Rafflecopter entry form. Anyone is welcome to it, I just ask for a link back. No, all of your readers won’t read it, but at least you have something to go back to, in the event they are disappointed. We have also had some very impatient readers who expected same-day turn around on prize delivery, so we are able to point to our policy and say “This is when you can expect your prize.”

If you are using various forms of social media, make sure the terms of your giveaway jive with the TOS of whatever you are using. One of the most frequently debated items among bloggers is whether or not it’s within Facebook’s TOS to have a reader like a page. I’m in the camp that does this regularly within the confines of Rafflecopter, but especially if your blog is a cooperative effort, everyone needs to agree. Some affiliates forbid being included in a giveaway, such as “sign up for this” as an option, when they are paying you for each sign up.

Running the Giveaway

I always put the end date in the title of the blog post so that I don’t get ticked off readers who click a giveaway to find it over.

If you having them tweet a message as an option, I have stopped allowing the “can do this every day” and instead only allow it once. My experience is that it’s the same small group of entrants that will do this daily and possibly clog up your Twitter feed and annoy your existing followers.

Never tag the sponsor without their permission.

Promoting the giveaway

Sure, there are plenty of blogs with enough readers that they don’t need to promote it too much, the traffic to their site is enough to please a sponsor. And some of us aren’t quite there yet, so we need to use this as an opportunity to draw potential readers in.

Promote on every social network that you’re on. Enter it in giveaway contest linkups. Two of my favorites that I use are the one over on Savings Lifestyle and the one on Cuckoo for Coupon Deals. Also on Cuckoo, you’ll see an option for paid promotion. Yes, you can pay people to promote your giveaway. I have paid Cuckoo for Coupon Deals a few times and have always been satisfied.

When promoting on giveaway and sweepstakes sites, you do run the risk of having people enter that are only in it for the prize.

Keeping those readers

Pinterest-This is the time consuming part but for me it has paid off. First, I had “follow me on Pinterest” as an option. Almost every time I got a notification of a new follower, I followed back–at least one board. Since I started this practice, my Pinterest traffic has increased dramatically and I don’t lose followers when it’s over. I also joined a collaborative Pinterest board just for giveaways, which also has the end date and is kept current, so as not to frustrate readers.

Twitter-Many bloggers frown up automated “thanks for following” DMs on Twitter, and I’m one of them. However, the next Follow Friday that rolls around, do a few Follow Friday tweets and include your new followers. This lets them know that you noticed they are following, and it usually results in lots of retweets. People like to be tweeted about!

You will see on Pinterest and Twitter, that there are some people who join those sites just for sweepstakes and contests. I chose not to follow those folks.

Facebook-some thank every follower, I don’t. I should, I should make the time. When you go to your Facebook page and are viewing the stats, you should see a section that says “New Likes” and that tells you who liked your site and when.

Email-I have a disclaimer that you will be submitted to my email list upon entering the contest. They still will get the verify email. I also let it be known as part of the giveaway and as part of the email welcome, that I will announce the winners in a group email, thus giving them more incentive to join.

Overall, I feel that implementing these practices has helped me steadily grow my followers and readers. It’s only one part of the process though. But I am finding that by doing fewer giveaways, but nurturing them and investing more time in them is successful.

What’s your greatest giveaway tip?

Filed Under: Contests & Giveaways Tagged With: blog giveaways, blogging about blogging

No, you pay me~revisiting my opinion on Pay-to-Play Giveaways

May 7, 2012 by Lisa · 4 Comments

Several months ago, a blogger friend of mine did a post about Pay to Play blog giveaways. Look all around the web and you’ll find lots of bloggers expressing their opinions about whether or not bloggers should work for free. Almost anything Cecily writes about blogging is a good read, but when it comes to working for free, I tend to agree with this essay from Kludgymom, about it not being a black & white issue. There are of course two separate issues here–working for free and paying to actually do work. I never dreamed I would encounter a scenario, the size and scope of what I’ve just experienced, that involved both.

Bloggers, is this you?

Now, first of all, I’m not going to be a hypocrite–I do participate in pay-to-play giveaways. Mostly it’s me & 9 other bloggers and we all chip in $5-$10 for a decent prize and do the giveaway. I’m doing the Leap Pad one right now. You, my readers, seem to enjoy them and it is a way for me to boost my email list or some other follow method. Recently a friend sent me a link to enter some free giveaways, so I joined the Facebook group associated with it, signed up for one of the giveaways and sat back to evaluate.

First, even from the get-go, I was not at all comfortable with the number of bloggers involved–literally hundreds. I try to keep all my giveaways to less than 10 entry options, because as a reader myself, I don’t want to have to like hundreds of Facebook pages for a chance at a prize. But, I was being given the html, so all I had to do was copy & paste that into a blog post, set the blog post on Post Planner to publicize ten times and that was it. Would take me 15-20 minutes of my time, and in exchange I would gain Facebook followers which hopefully would convert to page views. I assumed that the giveaway organizer was being paid by the sponsor to do this, as she mentioned several times that “the sponsor was closely watching” our promotional efforts. I certainly didn’t begrudge her this, as organizing a giveaway of this magnitude (hundreds of bloggers, remember) can only be described as a giant pain in the ass. Most bloggers I know host giveaways and are compensated in the $50-$150 range, but I know several that won’t touch one for under $250. I figured that this organizer was earning $500-$1000 (for each event, separately) or more for these, since they were so large. And I think most bloggers would agree that is fair compensation for organizing events this large.

So, fast forward a few days, and in this Facebook group that this organizer has established, she posted a message. “We have the big XXXXX giveaway coming up in a few days. There are over 500 bloggers in this group and only 200 have signed up. If people don’t sign up, they will be deleted from the group.” Not her exact words, but that was the message.

Um, ok. Nowhere, when I joined this group did it say participation in all giveaways was going to be mandatory. My first giveaway with this group was just starting and I hadn’t evaluated whether or not this was going to be worth it for me. Nevertheless, I reluctantly signed up.

Now, tonight, things changed. Because she asked us to contribute $2 to participate in these giveaways. Mind you, the money would be going to St. Jude’s, was her claim.

Ok, I couldn’t keep my opinion to myself. So I said it. And I’ll say it again here–If these giveaways have gigantic sponsors (and they do, these are big, completely legitimate businesses) and we are promoting THEM, then why am I paying? Even though the money is going to a good cause, if you want to do a charitable contribution with each giveaway, do that on the backs of the businesses, not the bloggers.

Let the shitstorm begin. I instantly became Public Enemy #1 on that group for not wanting to give $2 to St. Jude’s. All the pious insults started coming, complete with a “Heaven forbid anything ever happen to YOUR child!” Really? Try walking a day in my shoes. (Tip: you may want to check your facts next time, before you climb up on to that pedestal. You never know who you might be talking to.)

And what was a shocking disclosure….the organizer disclosed she is not being paid for organizing these giveaways.

I promptly left the group, as obviously it is not something for me. And here is what those bloggers are just not getting–the magnitude of what they are doing. First, we all know that selling backlinks is against Google’s policy, and we also all know that it’s done all day, every day, all over the world. In my best guess, for these smaller blogs, a fair market price for a back link is about $25. The first (and only) giveaway I did with them contained five links–the blog organizer got two, the sponsor got two and another blog got one. Ok, digest that for a minute–the organizer has made it clear that she expects all 500 blogs to participate, and we don’t know how many are in this one, because the “like these pages” feature has masked the number of pages you’re liking. But a site/business stands to gain 1000 backlinks, which has a street value of roughly $25,000. Of course any blogger can no-follow the links when posting, but how many of them are?

Wait, it gets better. The sponsor makes you sign up for their site, it’s the mandatory entry for the giveaway. When I last checked, the contest had over 150k entries (you’d have to divide that by the entry options) which means the sponsor gained thousands of new users for their site. I don’t even know what the value of that is for them. But I think any business person would agree–1000 backlinks, thousands of new customers, publicity on hundreds of blogs, being promoted in Facebook updates and tweeted….pretty sweet deal for coughing up three $200 gift cards, huh? Hell, I may even try to gather up ten blogger friends, we’ll each contribute $60, and have them promote us! Why not, right?!?! If you’re doing it for big companies for free, why not us? I don’t mind paying to play, if the site I’m promoting is my own. However, I do have a problem paying to promote a site that is not mine, when they are not promoting me in return. That’s the difference between these big giveaways and the ones where a few bloggers chip in for a prize–we’re paying to promote ourselves. Just because they gave a gigantic prize doesn’t make it ok–when the balance of work, effort and resources is so uneven. How hard is it to buy some Amazon gift cards?

Frankly, I’m embarrassed that I participated. Until I did this post, I didn’t realize that the entries were masked–my readers have no idea how many pages they just liked, and now they are getting tons of crap in their feed, and I’m sorry. Shame on me for not double checking first. I should have gone with my gut, which was to not do this. To my readers, I am profusely sorry and it won’t happen again. To the other bloggers out there that are still doing this and happily paying to promote a business, good luck to you. But as a much more experienced blogger has told me (and I should have listened sooner) “Why would they pay for the cow when they can get the milk for free?”

ETA: I shared this post with aforementioned giveaway organizer, not intended to be hostile, more of a “hear it from the source” kinda thing. Needless to say, she’s offended, as I can understand when you put so much time and energy into something and someone criticizes it. I get that. Oh, and that because some disagreed with me, this is my “rampage.” Au contraire mon frere…..I’d say it is the group that went on a rampage on me, because I did not like your idea. She also claims that the group was formed solely for the purpose of the big giveaway coming up, hence the callout for bloggers to join, and that the $2 is for FUTURE giveaways (which doesn’t change my opinion on the matter in the least). She stated that her page views and Alexa ranking justify the practice and that is where she gets her value. Talking about easily-manipulated Alexa rankings….that’s another post for a different day, lol. But it also brings up a very good point–with all those backlinks, she certainly has much to gain, but what’s in it for all those other bloggers? Funny, this post has now gone full circle, as that was Cecily’s original point.

Filed Under: Contests & Giveaways Tagged With: blogging about blogging

Will bloggers & businesses ruin Pinterest?

January 10, 2012 by Lisa · 7 Comments

: Are you on Pinterest?

It’s hard to believe, but people have been on Facebook for over 5 years. In some ways, it still feels like a new medium. Yet in other ways, I long for the way it used to be. Think back to your early days on Facebook, if you’ve been on there for several years. Remember when it was just friends and family? And you saw pictures of children, reconnected with high school and college buddies…..it was grand!

And then they introduced the “Facebook feed” and initially people HATED it, but we grew to love it, didn’t we? We heard witty thoughts from our friends, posted about family gatherings, and dutifully read every.single.item.in.our.feed.every.day. When was the last time you did that? We became fans of fun & silly pages like bacon and “I hate this song, so why do I know all the words?” and helped dogs wearing tinfoil hats get more fans than Glenn Beck.

Well, it didn’t take bloggers long to realize that their friends were posting links all the time…….and what better way to get in front of a bunch of people, than to put your blog feed in front of hundreds if not thousands of fans. And our page views soared. Businesses quickly followed suit and built pages faster than you could say “social media.” Best of all, it’s free!

Then came along Twitter, and if you’ve been on Twitter from some time……..again I’ll ask you to think back to when it was just you & your fun followers. It was a good time. The honeymoon with Twitter was much shorter, as bloggers and businesses already savvy to Facebook, were much quicker to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. Now you can’t banter back & forth with friends and followers without constant interruptions from big brands asking you what you’re cooking for your holiday meal or what are you ‘must have’ items to pack for vacation. A one-hour Twitter “party” is hardly a party to those not participating, and frankly, makes Twitter a lot less fun at times. (There are ways to block #hashtags by the way, so if you find your stream hijacked by a Twitter party, block the hashtag they’re using.)

For the record, I am on both Facebook and Twitter with at least two blogs. In some ways I enjoy it and in some ways I view it as a blogging chore that I must do if I want people to read my blog.

And now comes along Pinterest. Forget all the chatter about Facebook being drowned out by Google+, if anything it will be Pinterest first. I initially declined all offers for invites to Pinterest, mainly because I thought it was all about doing crafts. Crafts that I don’t have either the desire nor the time to do. So I passed. Then I learned two things:

One is that it’s being used for recipes and other items of interest to me, like frugal living and special needs parenting.

And then someone said (typed, actually) the magic words: “It’s increasing my page views and it’s my number one source of traffic right now.” Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner.

With the recent Facebook changes and how Facebook is changing what shows up in your feed, many bloggers saw their traffic from Facebook fall off the planet. Big, huge dips in our stats. And as most bloggers will tell you, even if your Twitter followers aren’t annoyed with the Twitter parties, the overall click-through rate on Twitter is painfully low. We had to check Pinterest out!

So I did. And before I even poked around much, I started pinning like crazy. See, it’s a virtual bulletin board, for those of you not familiar. And you “pin” photos that interest you in different categories. And these photos are linked to a site, some place. In most cases, blogs. So if you see a photo of mine that you like, you view it and you can see the source and then click-through to my site. And, you can repin it, thus perhaps getting me even more page views. So I pinned a few dozen posts of mine, from both blogs. I dug up frugal and fun recipes that were two or three years old, dusted them off, added a “Pin This” icon, and reposted and pinned. And I did see an increase in traffic on both of my sites.

And then something else happened. I took a step back, started looking around, viewing what my friends were pinning, following more people……..and basically, I like it. Like, really like it. I’m cooking some of the recipes, making plans to put some of the frugal living ideas into place. It’s fun. If you’re a visual person, you’ll love it. It’s peaceful, there are no words unless you want to read words.

And here’s the thing. I’m so exhausted with all the “noise” on Facebook, I’m afraid the same thing is going to happen to Pinterest. And that makes me sad. Because now bloggers are doing tutorials for other bloggers, on how to make your posts and photos more “pinnable.” In several blogging groups I’m in, I’ve heard (read) bloggers say that they are changing the focus of their blogs’ content, just to make it more appealing to Pinterest fans. How long will it be before big corporations have their PR and Social Media people setting up accounts, to pin their stuff? I know for a fact it’s already happening. So instead of the fun photo you see with an organizational method from a crafty blogger, it will be from P&G Everyday Solutions. Recipes? Forget the moms and foodie blogs, it will be all the food brands.

Can we do anything about this? I don’t know. I guess we’ll all just have to wait and see what develops. I know that I am approaching it pretty cautiously, and only following people and boards that I have an interest in. I’m not doing automatic follow-backs to people who follow me–I check out their stuff first. And I unfollow specific boards that are of no interest to me. I don’t want Pinterest to turn into all the “noise” I get on Facebook. Because right now, it’s my escape. Because it’s beautifully quiet over there, and I hope it stays that way.

Filed Under: Home Sweet Home Tagged With: blogging about blogging, pinterest

So proud to be a DealPro~here’s why!

December 2, 2011 by Lisa · Leave a Comment

Earlier this year I was picked by Savings.com to be a DealPro-and it felt like an honor then and it still does today. Maybe you’ve seen the button on the blog, or have read me reference it a few times and were wondering what DealPro is. Luckily, Savings put together this cool video that sums it up. For the DealPros, it’s not just about blogging–we genuinely care about our readers and enjoy sharing our tips. Pssst-if you’re wondering which one is me, I don’t talk on this video, but I am wearing a navy & white striped scarf.