A Blogger's Guide To Challenges, Contests & Giveaways

Today Sponsored Tweets released yet another promotional opportunity in order to draw attention towards their product. SupaTweeta Challenge III allows current Sponsored Tweets users to sign others up for accounts – and the individual with the most referrals wins $1,000.

I relate this example of Sponsored Tweets and their challenge in an effort to share with you the importance of incorporating Challenges, Contests & Giveaways into your blog. They benefit blogs greatly. Some of which include:

Increase brand visibility
Promote community involvement
Benefit the participant
Interest and blog readership

After organizing many competitions for blogs and communities on the internet – I’ve found the following steps to be crucial in developing a successful blog challenge/competition & giveaway.

1. Choose Your Prizes & Rewards

Your prizes should be something of worth and value. It doesn’t need to be extremely valuable, but enough to generate interest towards your promotional plan. Keep your prizes simple & targeted to the audience in which you’re involving. Give flash drives to seasoned webmasters, and golf balls to golfers. Not the reverse.

If you lack in terms of “physical” prizes, remember that you also have the ability to giveaway:

your services & knowledge
ad space within your blog
reviews of other blogs
and much, much more

In the past I’ve found that giving away services is a very valuable prize – and usually attracts much attention.

2. Promote Within Your Network

Networking your contest/giveaway within social networks and contacts is crucial to either much success – or a disaster.

Tweet your contest, Plurk your contest, develop Facebook interest, involve friends & family – and so on. Use the marketing skills you already have acquired – and put them to use.

This will take practice and patience, but over time – you’ll quickly learn how to generate an incredible amount of buzz towards your challange, giveaway or contest.

3. Use Your Creativity & Imagination

There are many ways to go about generating interest towards your blog.

In some cases it’s beneficial to just giveaway products, at no requirement, to the first individuals who reply to a post. In other cases, you may need to require more extensive user participation.

What I’d like to get across here is that your contest & giveaway does NOT need to be something that has already been done in the past. Use your blogging “smarts” and develop something that will attract interest within your niche. Different methods receive greater excitement from different groups of people.

I mentioned Sponsored Tweet’s challenge earlier as a premium example of how to develop a custom, unique contest to attract attention towards your blog and product. They use tested and true techniques – but with their own personal spin added. This has brought them much success, and great results from their community.

Now get out there, develop a wicked-awesome giveaway challenge – and let the traffic soar!

*If you’re feeling extra kind today – help me win the Sponsored Tweets challenge and sign up for an account using this link!