There are many bloggers nowadays. But, only a few of them are getting noticed. Just by writing good blogs you cannot make your site popular. Every blog needs promotions to get some good exposure. There are different ways to promote your blogs. It is very difficult to get noticed even though you promote your blogs effectively.
Social media is a good medium to promote your blogs. There are many other options also. You can find many articles on the internet on various blog promotion options. Try them and check whether any of them works for you. Blog contests are one option among them which gives you immediate result.
But, conducting effective contest is not an easy task. For that, you need to find many attractive options to get users attention. If you conduct it effectively you can promote your blog well. Before implementing them plan well so that you can make it a huge success.
The main advantages of conducting blog contest are:
- Contests help to attract a new audience. As the blog traffic increases your blog popularity also increases and you can make more money out of it.
- By conducting contest you will get more followers and link shares also increase
- If you are promoting any product through your blogs contests helps to improve your sales. Thereby you can increase your ad income.
- Contests help to keep your page active by sharing it on various social media platforms.
- Economical when compared to all other marketing strategies like paid advertisements.
But creating an effective contest idea is very important. You can’t achieve popularity just by conducting a normal contest. For that, it should be attractive and should reach to an audience well. Don’t conduct unfair contests. You should gain the trust of users and follow all the steps properly.
You should plan it in the right way to stand out among other contests. Before planning a contest follow the below steps properly
- Find a unique name for your contest. Brainstorm all possible names and choose one that attracts user’s attention
- Design good posters and promotional tools. The posters should be such that to get a place in users mind. You can create trailers and teasers also with banners.
- Explain your competition rules and regulations properly. This makes the users easy to understand the contest qualification rules
- Give a call to action to participate in the contest. it could be like sign up in your site or by sharing it on various platforms.
- Include a disclaimer to avoid further problems with the result
- Limit the number of participants to make judging easy. You can include a sentence like ‘first 100 people who are registering on site can participate in the contest’.
- Show every result of data and statistics to users to make it clearer.
- Declare final result. Follow all the above steps and conduct a good contest
Got an idea about conducting a contest? Now, I am going to explain some points in details. Here are some powerful ways to promote your contests effectively.
How to Run a Blog Contest Successfully?
1. Why are you conducting a contest?
This is the first question every blogger should ask. Before you decide to conduct a blog first you need to set some goals. Plan your contests accordingly to achieve those goals.
If you don’t have any idea about what you want in return from conducting a contest then you are wasting your time. So first set a goal. Your goal could be
- To get more social media followers
- Increase your email subscribers
- Promote your brand awareness
- Increase your blog backlinks
Those are the main aim of people who conduct contests. There are many tools using which you can conduct contests and thereby improve your blog traffic. But it is important to choose one wisely because your contest quality is very important and it affects your blog promotion.
2. Create effective trailers or teasers to promote
This is a new trend in the blog contest. As new strategy bloggers create a short trailer based on the contest. It is more effective than images and other modes of promotions. If you create a short attractive teaser based on your contest it will help you to gain great followers.
First, create an effective teaser. You should include your reward details and previous contest details in it. Then you can pick a date to launch that video. Give the details about the contest starting date and teaser link in your Facebook, Twitter accounts. Give such an introduction that attracts viewers and they should be curious about your contest by just reading your introduction.
You can send personal emails, Facebook messages to your genuine followers. Tell them about your contest and ask them for their feedback and suggestions. You can improve your plan if you get good suggestions. When the contest starts to remind everyone about it and tell them to participate in contests. Also, request them to share it among their contacts. This will create a great impact on your contests.
3. Write a blog post about your contests:
To inform your blog followers it is a better idea to write a blog on your contest. First, post it on your blog so that your regular followers will know about your contests. Give it some time to get popular and post your next blog after a few days.
Your blog followers are the first users who need to know about your contest. if they like it they will promote it among their contacts. This helps to get new visitors to your blog.
4. Use your most popular articles to promote:
You can search on Google analytics to find your top 10 blogs posts. You can add your contest link above those top 10 blog post. Give a simple intro about your contest like’ I am conducting a contest on my blog, click on the link to know more details about it’ and give contest link with it. By knowing about your contest you will get many new followers.
5. Get help from other popular bloggers:
You can promote your contest by getting help from other bloggers. If you find a blogger who can influence people then get help from them. If they agree to promote your contest through their blog post then you can get good new followers.
You can connect with them through Facebook, Twitter etc and ask about it. If they agree you can use it as a strategy to promote your contests. You can help them too whenever they reach for your help in return.
6. Select a good judge:
Select someone to judge your contest who has a good knowledge of social media networking. When people know that they are being judged by a prominent person they will participate in your contest.
After completing the contest you can handover every detail and link related to your contest and they will decide a winner. Don’t do it by yourself. This is an issue of credibility. So, don’t lose it by doing unprincipled things. Just be a mediator between judges and participants.
7. Choose the type of contest you want:
There are different contest types available. They are
Skill contest:
A skill contest measures user skills. Have you participated in any of them before? There are many examples of skill contests. Contests like short story writing, caption writing, jingles etc are some examples of skill contest. Judging them is very difficult. But, many sites tell them to get a maximum vote for their creation. The person who earns maximum vote will win the contest.
Photo contest:
This one is the most familiar contest type. Here users have to take photos with the product you are promoting. It helps to spread your product popularity among users. There are many selfie contests nowadays. Most of them are part of brand promotions. Contestants can seek for the vote by sharing their picture in various online platforms. The winner will be the person who wins the most votes.
Challenge contests:
Challenge contests are also one of the popular options to conducts a contest. For that, you will get many interactive entrants who can make your contest interesting.
Sweepstake:
Users can submit their name for the contest by signing in with their email address. Winner will be randomly drawn from all participants. This type is based on luck, not skill.
8. Keep users engaged:
You can keep users engaged in your contest using various methods. They should be interested in what you offer as a prize for a winner. You can also include multi-entry steps. It has a good response when compared to a single entry one. You can try challenge contest to grab audience attention.
Also, try to it simple. Don’t set some unachievable goals. If your contest is simple and interesting then users will get interested in it and they will participate. When you set unachievable goals people lose interest in your contest.
Nobody wants to spend their valuable time to achieve some impossible goals.
9. Apps are there which conducts contests
Conducting a contest manually is a lot of work. You have to spend more time to manage all the details and your emails. So, get help from apps that can help you with creating the contest. There are many tools available for that purpose. Do you want to know their name?
Some most popular sites are:
Binkd: This is a contest platform that offers word press plug-in and Facebook contest and challenges
Wildfire App: This app handles Facebook sweepstakes, photo contests, and voting
Bulbstorm: Bulbstorm is also similar to the Wildfire app.
These are some popular apps through which you can try to conduct a contest. For a newcomer, these apps are like a blessing. When they handle it for the first time they have to handle a lot at a time. Newbies and even experienced business persons can use apps like this to conduct a contest.
When you are conducting competition online using apps you don’t have to bother about their promotion and reach. Most apps handle all of them and they will give you the final result.
10. Finally, declare your result:
You can make the contests exciting by eliminating poor contestants and keep strong contenders. Keep it interesting by updating instant results frequently. This helps to gain popularity among users. They will participate if they are interested.
After conducting your contest, be sure to declare the result publically. It helps to gain trust among your users. Show every statistics and results to users. Then only they will trust you and your contests.
After successful completion of your first contest, you can conduct new contests again and again to promote your blog. It helps to bring more traffic to your site. Hence your popularity and income also increase.
There are tons of sites through which you can promote your blog contest online. These sites develop new strategies to promote your blog throughout various platforms. All the promotions are with interesting taglines to attract viewers.
- Cool Freebie links
- Freaky Freddies
- I Love Giveaways
- Freebiedot
- Freestuffsites
- Freebie Finder
- Yes All 4 free
- JustFree stuff
- Contestgirl
Which one are you choosing? All of them are famous for promoting blog contests. They have many resources to support contests. Some sites promote contests for free without any string attached. They don’t demand anything other than your contest information. All the sites handle this with extreme care and they guarantee the full privacy of your information.
Final thoughts:
Here are some effective ways using which you can promote your blog contests. Using it you can promote your blog popularity and traffic. First, define your goal. Without a goal, you cannot create a successful blog contest. Follow all the steps properly and reach your goal successfully.
You can build up a good email subscriber base by running these contests. A good number of followers will increase your blog popularity among users and you can communicate with them in the future. Get help from professional also if you cannot handle it properly. They know how to handle it properly.
Get qualified fans by running contests and giveaways to promote your blogs. Have you tried blog contests before? If not try it. Engage your readers so that they will come back to your blog again and again. Apply new strategies to keep them occupied.