Giveaways are a great way to get attention for your blog, attract more readers and also to boost your blog social media following. But to organize a giveaway you need to go through quite a lot of things. In this post let me show you how to organize a giveaway in just 7 simple steps. 
This post is inspired by a chat I had with my blogger friend Prince Molak of onlinemoneydon.com. he was asking me some questions as regard organizing a giveaway on his blog, and during the chat, I got inspired to write this piece that addresses most of the questions any blogger might be having about running a giveaway.
Organizing a giveaway is pretty easy and fun if you know what to do; I will try as much as possible to clear things up in things post so that every level of blogger, beginning from a newbie will be able to organize a successful giveaway on their blogs after reading this post.
Step 1 – Find your Giveaway Prize
A giveaway means someone or a set of people are going to be winning prizes. So the first and foremost thing you need to do is to find the prize you want to give to your winners.
You should be very mindful of the prize you are giving out because the overall success of your giveaway depends on this. Do this wrong and the whole giveaway will be a flop!
If you offer a prize that doesn’t entice people, you would probably get little to no turn out for your giveaway and this will surely defeat the purpose of organizing the giveaway.
on the other hand, if you are giving out something everyone wants to have, you will have a great turnout for the giveaway and a lot of people will participate just because they wish to have what you are giving out.
Make sure you spend a lot of time on this step, brainstorm for days on the perfect prize for your giveaway, think from the reader’s perspective, think of that thing that you will love to have and if you have a subscriber list of a few followers, you could ask them for prize suggestions for the giveaway.
If you don’t have a list, followers and probably you are new in your niche, here are some tips for find a good prize for your giveaway.
- Brainstorm for what your readers will love to have.
- Search for products that are trending in your niche.
- Ask bloggers in your niche for ideas.
- Find a basic need in your niche with a paid solution and giveaway the solution.
I hope the above tips will help you make a good decision when choosing a prize for your giveaway.
Step 2 – Look for Giveaway Sponsors
Usually, especially if you are just starting out, you may not be able to single-handedly afford the price for your giveaway price and this is where sponsorship comes into play.
After you may have brainstormed a perfect prize for your giveaway, there is a high probability that you may not have the financial capability to offer such a prize as a giveaway and this is a sign that you have to reach out to people who got the CASH and are willing to partner with you too on the giveaway by sponsorship.
Your best shot at giveaway sponsors will be other bloggers in your niche, and this is no-brainer, all you need to do is to shoot them an email and give them reasons to sponsor your giveaway.
Don’t just tell them “Hi, I want you to sponsor my giveaway” rather, send them a mail with 2 -3 paragraphs asking them to sponsor your giveaway with emphasis on “the benefit/why” they should sponsor your giveaway.
The benefits of sponsorship may include but not limited to:
- Traffic.
- Social media followers.
- Fan page likes and so on.
Step 3 – Set the Giveaway Rules
Every giveaway must have its own rules!
You need to come up with the rules that guide your giveaway; you need to set the rules that govern how people will participate and how winners of the giveaway will be selected.
You need to tell participants what to do and what not to do and clearly, state who is qualified to participate and how the winners will be selected; maybe it is going to be a random selection or the participants with the highest points.
P.S. – I will recommend a random selection to put off spammers!
Step 4 – Brainstorm the Giveaway Duration
A giveaway must have a start day and an end day!
Choosing giveaway duration has always been a bit controversial; some bloggers prefer short duration giveaways while some bloggers believe long duration giveaways are the best!
It is up to you to decide for how long you want your giveaway to run, it could be 7 days, 14 days or even a month depending on you.
IMAO, I will recommend a maximum of one month and a minimum of 2 weeks for any giveaway you are planning to host. One month giveaway durations are becoming the norm these days, I like it 😉 and I believe it won’t harm you if you follow the trend!
Step 5 – Create Your Giveaway
When I was chatting with prince Molak on FB as earlier mentioned, he asked for the name of the plugin that I use to organize my giveaways & I was like LMAO!
You don’t need any “extra plugin to organize a giveaway on your blog”. There are quite a number of online apps/tools that are more than capable of helping you create a successful giveaway.
My favorite tools for creating giveaways is Rafflecopter. These is the apps most bloggers out there use to create their giveaways and this is absolutely FREE.
I have used both apps before and I like both of them! J 😀
Step 6 -Tell People about the Giveaway
I don’t think you want to organize a giveaway that no one knows about! So, the next thing to do after publishing your giveaway is to announce it to the world.
Share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and so on; just market the heck out of the giveaway using any methods that work for you.
This will create awareness for your giveaway and also increase participation.
Step 7 – Pick the Giveaway Winners
After the duration of the giveaway has lapsed, the giveaway entry will automatically be closed by the app you use for setting up the giveaway and it is ideal for you to announce the winners within 24 – 48 hours after the giveaway ahs ended.
You can easily pick the winners by logging into your account with whichever of the giveaway app (punch tab or raffled copter) you used by following their guide.
Conclusion
Organizing giveaways is a good thing and I highly encourage it.
It may take a while before you get things really straight when it comes to giveaways organization but you will surely get a hang the more you host giveaways.
I hope you have enjoyed this piece, if you enjoyed it, Kindly leave a comment below and don’t forget to share this post with your friends!
