Don’t overlook contests as a fun and effective way to generate ideas, build content and promote your site.
For the past 2 years, I’ve run an annual contest on my website that has resulted in over 1,000 product reviews, increased traffic and higher ranking in Google for specific keywords.
My contests have also helped me develop relationships with potential advertisers and gain notoriety within my niche.
Here are 5 tips for running successful contests:
1. Decide what you want to accomplish.
Design your contest with a clear goal in mind. For example, you could have your visitors provide you with ideas, complete a survey, design a logo, follow you on Twitter or Facebook, subscribe to your newsletter, tell others about your site or create content (stories, reviews, tips, etc.) for your site.
Choose one or two objectives so you don’t overwhelm your readers with too many options. During my contest, I focus on content and promotion.
I ask my visitors to write detailed reviews of specific products. If they help me promote the contest by linking to my website, they receive an additional contest entry.
2. Know your audience. What interests your visitors?
What will motivate them to participate in your contest? Are they excited by the prospect of sharing their opinions and expertise, displaying a particular skill, sharing stories and photos, or helping others?
What will encourage them to return to your site again and again? Design your contest with your niche in mind.
If you have a website about cooking, you will probably get more participation if you have your readers submit recipes or review cooking utensils instead of asking them to design a header for your site.
3. Make participation worthwhile.
Choose a high-quality contest prize that visitors can’t resist. Remember, your reputation is on the line, so don’t be afraid to spend a little money in this area. If all else fails, gift certificates are always a hit!
In addition to making your prize enticing, consider awarding more than one prize. Multiple prizes make people feel they have more of an opportunity to win and they also make your contest look bigger, thus generating more excitement. During my last contest I gave away 20 prizes ranging in value from $15.95 to $150.
Drawing on the previous year’s success, I e-mailed companies that sell products in my niche to provide details about my last contest, my traffic level, and my rank in Google for profitable keywords.
I offered 2 levels of sponsorship (total prize value of either $50 or $100) in exchange for featuring the companies on my contest page and newsletter. I also mentioned my sponsors in announcements on Facebook and Twitter, and in relevant forums and yahoo groups.
Here’s a screenshot of my contest page that lists prizes and sponsors:
4. Promote, Promote, Promote!
One of the most common complaints about contests is lack of participation. Only a small percentage of those who know about your contest will take the time to participate. So unless you have a significant number of very loyal followers, you must promote your contest aggressively.
I generally promote my contest by placing a banner on my blog and homepage, sending a special announcement to my newsletter subscribers, posting on forums in which I am an active and valued participant, and posting on contest blogs.
I also spend hours e-mailing the owners of relevant Yahoo groups to see if they will pass the information along to those on their lists. You can promote your contest anywhere you find members of your niche.
However, remember to promote your contest with integrity. Don’t spam!
5. Be professional.
Write guidelines for your contest that include a beginning/ending date, an explanation for how the prize(s) will be awarded and details about what constitutes a valid entry.
Don’t be afraid to reject an entry that does not meet your criteria. My contest guidelines state that all reviews must contain at least 3 likes and 1 dislike. If I receive an entry that does not fit these criteria, I either delete it or I ask the participant to edit his or her entry.
I use an Excel spreadsheet similar to the one pictured below to keep track of contest participants, their entries and their contact information. Each entry is assigned a number and prizes are drawn using random.org.
Once the contest deadline has passed, select and contact your winner(s) and make arrangements to send the prize(s). If your prizes were donated, send the sponsors an e-mail thanking them for participating and telling them about your amazing results.
Be as professional as possible so they will want to participate in your next contest and eventually buy ad space on your website!
Lisa, thank you for this tips. I like the part where you write about promoting. It is indeed important!
Building traffic is really a great matter of fact always and you shared an interesting guideline on contests to follow. I think it’ll help me a lot to increase traffic for my site.
Contests are fun. Honestly, I feel drawn to contests its really challenging to be competing with so many other contestants. I think contests are a great way to keep readers coming back for more.
Contests are good I have experienced. Once I got one of my sites reach #1 in Google only because of the contest. I had no links created for it, maybe a few but not money at all.
Sounds like a pretty cool contest, but as you probably know I’m not one to compete in these sort of things. That’s not to say I won’t be monitoring the efforts of others though, who knows what I may learn.
Thanks so very much for you efforts, you are a true inspiration to me – you make this whole thing look easy! Personally I having a hard time promoting my sites so thanks for your tips will try to make the work for me.
Great that you’re suggesting Random.org for choosing a winner. I started a sweepstakes on my site and I was thinking of the best way was for choosing a winner randomly.
I will definitely try some of your tips in the very next future, thank u so much for those! Super 8 till DVD
I especially like your tip of awarding multiple winners.. I will also make sure next time to require that entries “opt-in” to my site, since I failed to do that last time, and that IS the most important thing.It was really fun reading the entries. I look forward to implementing some of your tips for my next contest, and as I grow my list?
My best tip to anyone interested in starting a contest on their blog is to not force people to link back to you in order to participate in the contest.
I hate when people do that.
/Nab.
Hmm… for me that would be the entire point of the contest – that’s going to be my purpose for the next contest I hold. One link = one entry.
But then my audience is usually the type of people who don’t mind.
Great article Carletta!
I just ran my first contest giving a winner with a free graphic design for their website. It was really fun reading the entries. I look forward to implementing some of your tips for my next contest, and as I grow my list. I especially like your tip of awarding multiple winners. I will also make sure next time to require that entries “opt-in” to my site, since I failed to do that last time, and that IS the most important thing. Oops! LOL
But again, great article 🙂
~Thea
I would like to make my own website
Good stuff, Carletta! I’ve tried to promote my site with incentives, but with very limited success so I will certainly have to try these tips out. Thanks!
contests are a great way to boost recurring traffic, increase rank in the short term, engage and encourage participation from readers and build a sense of community. we have ran several promos and contests across several of our websites, each time resulting in a tremendous traffic boost, which helps organic ranking as well and brings in more readership
I’m now on my 3rd attempt to make money with google adsense.. This time I have paid much more attention to you lisa and have gone for a one topic subject.. I’m now running all my promotions which I never much bothered with before. Thanks alot!
Nice post, I agree with it. The headings describe itself what are the major factors to consider.
Contests are a great strategy that I have not used at all. I actually don’t see many great contest worth while by Ileane got one by FamosusBloggers. I think defining worthwhile to begin with will be important. If it is something you are willing to participate on then your followers will too.
Hi Carletta, I held a CommentLuv contest recently and I thought it would run for one week. To my surprise by the end of the day all of the CommentLuv prize credits were awarded, but the post continues to bring traffic from people that are sorry they missed out.
I got the idea from the huge contest offered by FamousBloggers and CommentLuv earlier this year. Kristie walked away with $750 and it total over $3,500 in cash was awarded. Now that’s what I call a contest!
Very timely post! I just started my very first contest on Monday the 25th. It’s lasting just over a week and I’ve got 15 entries. 14 of them are from one person only!
The problem I’m having is with entries that do not match criteria. Either they don’t give me their contact info so they can be notified if they are a winner or they are not a resident of the particular region I’m requiring (US and Canada).
So when I have only 2 participants and they both don’t qualify, (although one has written enough content to qualify for 30 paid articles) it can be a little frustrating.
Relying on a guest judge has its perks and its drawbacks. You’re relying on another person other than yourself to make things go smoothly, so when there are glitches or unexpected obstacles, it can be frustrating when a solution is not immediately at hand.
Great articles
i’ve always wanted to provide my site visitors with a contest. With this post, i see a contest on my blog
it is really nice posts 4 increasing traffic on my web or blog… Thank u v much i will try this …….
Thanks for suggesting Random.org for choosing a winner. I started a sweepstakes on my site and I was wondering what the best way was for choosing a winner at random. Thanks for the post!
Great article, Carletta! Can’t wait to hear how your next contest goes.
I always want to hold contests/giveaways in my blog, but my budget doesn’t allow this 🙁
In fact, it’s been like a year since I’ve done that! With Christmas coming, I may have to do that again!
Thanks for the reminder.
I usually have a good response when I give away books. They are something people like, and I can usually just order it online and have it shipped directly to the winner.
I also consider holding a contest when my blog get bigger. Nice post!
Amazing tips. Will surely try it sometime in the near future.
Thanks for this post. A contest is definitely something I want to do (at least once), once my project is online and gets some traffic.
One question…when you contact potential sponsors about donating prizes…do you ask for a specific donation or just for what ever they are willing to give? And do they also want to see some proof of how much traffic your website gets? I thought that might be interesting for them since they might only give donations/prizes to websites that get a lot of visitors which will be good advertising for them.
🙂
I did not ask for a specific donation, but I did ask for prizes (or a group of prizes) that amount to either $50 or $100 in value. The companies did not ask to see proof of my web traffic. However, I did share my traffic numbers with them, and I do feel it is important to be honest when sharing website stats.
When I do run an contest I do pretty much of the same things you do, but I haven’t decided to contact people to sponsor a product..I will usually just go buy something.
“TrafficColeman “Signing Off”
Last week, I held a sort of contest in which people shared new filthy and inappropriate words with each other. It was sort of impromptu, but I heard from readers who don’t usually comment. It was lots of fun.
If I had offered prizes, I could have gone all the way through nominations and an election for the best filthy word. That would have tied in thematically with the mid-term elections next month.
It was a fun experiment. I’d suggest to Paul to just play around with a small contest before trying a big one. You learn from it.
Thanks Fred. I’ll have to see what I can come up with for a small contents.
A contest is something that I have been thinking about for some time, but just can’t find the time to implement one. While it does appear to be a lot of work, then results you can achieve with hold a successful contest can be tremendous.
If I do decide to hold a contest, I’ll have to refer back to these tips.
This is a great way to keep your audience active! Not only will the person who is offering the contest receive exposure, but the person who WINS will also (considering they have a site, etc.)
I have not utilized this strategy yet, but I can see myself offering contests such as these to hopefully increase my visitor count, but most importantly, my credibility!
Thank you for this post. I will try this strategy to drive traffic to my site.