Contests and giveaways are great techniques used to drive more traffic to a blog.
For the past several months, I have been noticing that many blogs are running contests with tags like:
- “Comment and win $100!”
- “Free $60 cash giveaway!”
- “Like, share, WIN!”
And I am always running contests here on SML…
In the case of a new blog, contests can be very helpful in attracting new readers. All a blogger needs to do is choose the right product and market the contest well.
The idea is that these contests will help get free backlinks, free advertising, and ultimately bring in new subscribers. In my experience, the “contest strategy” always works and is very beneficial to blog owners.
Direct Benefits Of Running Contests On Your Blog:
1. Free Backlinks
When you run any contest, whether the prize is free advertising, free software, free ebooks, or free cash, you will attract many other bloggers who will refer your contest to their readers (giving you a backlink).
By providing you with a backlink, these other bloggers are not only directly helping your blog get more traffic, they’re also building up your authority. This will help you get even more traffic in the long run.
Likewise, if you see a contest, and you know the blog is trustworthy and legitimate, don’t hesitate to share that info with your readers. This will increase your value, credibility, and authority.
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2. Free Social Traffic
Apart from the traffic coming from backlinks, contests help promote your blog to various people who will share your blog with their friends.
You can simply add a viral condition to each entry. For instance: “To participate in the contest, share this post on Facebook.”
This method, when employed correctly, can achieve huge spikes in traffic.
And because this traffic comes directly from social media, it’s more likely to be highly targeted. This has all kinds of benefits, not the least of which is social proof.
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3. Free Advertising
In addition to the free backlinks and free traffic, a contest also gives you the benefits of free advertising.
Your blog will be exposed to a whole new set of blogs and you’ll be able to appeal directly to those other blogs’ readers. This kind of promotion and advertising is hard to achieve otherwise.
You will likely generate new blog subscribers (for free!) with your contest or giveaway, and a whole new set of readers will begin to follow your blog.
And finally, running a successful contest will expose your brand to new advertisers, who may just want to sponsor your next blog contest!
Read:
- How To Find Blog Sponsors For Blog Contests
- What Is The Importance Of Free Giveaways In Blogging?
Have you ever run a contest or giveaway on your blog? We would love to hear your story. Tell us about it in the comments section below.
For running contest on your blog you can use this amazing free tool call Gleam.
If you find the information in this post useful, please share it with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.
For more on giveaways, check out:
- How To Run A Giveaway On Your Blog Using Gleam & Grow Your Readership
- How To Create And Manage Giveaways Using Rafflecopter
This has been on my to do list forever! Thank you for the motivation to move it up the list haha. There is so much that goes into a blog that it’s easy to have things fall through the cracks. Shoutmeloud.com is always a great reminder of what I should prioritize. Thanks for all the effort that goes into the post! They are SO helpful.
Inspired by your post I just started a giveaway on my blog THANKS a TON.
I am so happy I came across this post.
Lets see what happens. I am so excited.
you are right sir. i have been running a comment contest on my blog n i saw traffic improvements in my site. i got aspirations from u sir.. thanks a lot.. 🙂
Free traffic , Free backlinks and free advertising are 3 major things which every site or blog needs ,specially in the beginning .
But it is not easy to design a campaign which can get targeted audience for the blog . Also, it can be challenging to do a contest without harming the credibility of website .
But a great idea for someone , who is ready to put in some effort with lot of care and attention.
I just came across this post thru internal linking and while reading comments, I came to know that this very old post. But I am really surprised that still it has evergreen and relevent contents.
Mainly we get traffic and promotion of our blog by running free blog contest. Am i right?
that is a nice way of getting traffic……….!!!!!!,i will go for it when i start getting money from my blog.
Hey Harsh, this is quite true. I have participated in a few contests last year and have seen that I DO GET some traffic by doing this. I don’t know how much value it gets in Google PR, but yes, traffic increases!
Can you have a contest free give a way on ablog that has maybe a 100-200 visitors monthly?
Consolata its a good idea to run contest on a blog which is not very popular, because that will help you to create backlinks and traffic. Since every one love free giveaway.. The only thing you need to do it , you need to find the best way to promote your contest.
me having yet started using these strategies in my blog since i’m a beginner… hoping to do such thing in future!!
I am thinking of running one in the future. It will be my first contest. But how do I find sponsors to sponsor the prizes? How do I approach them?
Steve thats a good thing if you planning to run a contest. Well depend on your niche you can contact the advertisers. Suppose you write about wordpress, you can contact some premium theme clubs and ask them to sponsor your contest. This can be in the form of free premium themes giveaway…
Though if you have good reader base and good PR , getting sponsor will not be an issue. 🙂
This indeed a good idea harsh, I was planning to get on something to make linkedtraffic popular, This will come handy… Infact i actually have done this for some other blogs that i own, I was giving away a free rapidshare account. Now this deal seems good…
Best of luck hardik for nest contest. And do let me know when you launch it :). I will never mind some free gifts 🙂
Yap!! This practice does help, in fact mutual coordination. But, how many of them are genuine in paying the winners of the contest!!
Mansi I wonder if there is any blogger who tempers with such contest. I guess no or if there are any , probably they are never a successful blogger. To show the transparency, people show how they pick the winner. Either it can be a point system or picked by set of Judges.
Thanks for the information.
In future I may also thinking of contest on my blog. But right now i m not in position. You all great bloggers are our inspiration.
Thanks
Thanks for your comment Vikash. Well you can always get free sponsors for your blog. Just check with your niche and contact the right person. It can be a free software license giveaway or can be a free domain giveaway which are pretty cheap but no one will mind freebies. 🙂
Running contest will give sharp boost in visitors and later in search engine rankings. Whatever the case, expert who already well established runs the contest. Not every noob can do this.
Rahul I dont know what do you mean by noob, and in blogging there is no term as noob (Slang). Anyhow..Its always first time for every one..and one fail contest does not mean next will be the same… So its always like you keep trying.. Always start from a small investment and if things work out, then go for big investments.
Very true. Also it is very necessary as to what the contest is. People have to be very careful on the contest format. Basically they need to know WHAT they want from the contest.
Thats true Raju. Any blog contest needs proper planning in the form of stages of promotions and also make sure one get the targeted traffic.
Harsh I am agree with your points because in previous contest on my blog I received many back links because my friend bloggers published on their blog post about the contest.This way my blog reach on the upper stairs in search engine ranking as well as Technorati ranking.
Secondly I increased subscription of the email readers.
But I would like to say that contest is not everything,The best thing is content.Contest is the way to attract to the readers but if content is not good,they would not stay for longer.
I’m really thankful to you for publishing the information about contest on SML.
Surender thats the main benefit of running a blog contest . Free advertising, free backlinks and for sure good no. of traffic.. 🙂 I’m glad you enjoyed it and thanks for your insight on this topic.
Thanks a lot for the Shout Harsh. Hope your visitors will participate and best of luck to them 🙂
You welcome Lax. Since your contest is good and helpful for readers I’m sure every one will love to participate in it. 🙂