Having a Contest on Your Blog?

If you are looking for ways to draw traffic to your website or blog, you might want to consider holding a contest or giveaway. While these can draw a lot of “freebie seekers” who are only interested in the prize, you can generate a lot of buzz that will bring long time readers to you as well. Another thing you are going to do is build links without even trying to. By nature we bloggers like to blog about what other people are doing, and if we see something cool on someone else’s blog we write about it and give them a link. That is twice as likely when that something is a contest with nice free prize to win!

If your blog is devoted to parenting issues, you could hold a contest where entrants describe their funniest parenting mishap or the most embarrassing thing their children said in public, or ask them to tell you about their favorite must have toy for their kids etc.

When it comes to finding prizes for your contests, you can offer up your own products or services, or you can solicit prizes from other website owners. The latter can be a win-win situation, as the prizes will not cost you anything and the person donating the prize will also get exposure (just be sure to mention on the contest page who donated the prize).

If you are not the creative type, or you just want to keep things as simple as possible then you can simply hold a giveaway. Your visitors can enter their information into a form or your comments section and you can randomly pick a winner. Again, you can offer one of your products or services as the prize or you can seek out prizes from other business owners.

A giveaway can also be used to increase your customer retention. If you have a service- based business, such as virtual assistance or graphic design, you could hold a monthly drawing and each time one of your customers paid for a service that month, they receive an entry form. For example, if a client paid for three graphics that month, they would be entered three times. Your customers may want to win a prize so bad, that they keep buying your services each month just to have a chance at winning.

To be successful, you’ll want to promote your contest as much as possible. You’ll want to send a notice to your mailing list as well as putting information about the contest on the main page of your website and blog. If you offer a podcast, make sure you mention it to your listeners.

There are many sites that allow you to enter your contest information, and this info can get picked up and publicized by other website owners. To find these sites, do a Google search on a keyword such as “contest submission sites.” You may also want to send out a few press releases. And never ever underestimate the power of other bloggers to build buzz.