My last post was about My March Madness Giveaway! Thank you if you entered! The winners were notified personally and in my last newsletter! I had a great time! And I promised I would let you know some things I feel you need to run a successful giveaway. So here goes!

Choose a Prize for Your Giveaway – This may seem obvious, yet I think there’s a skill to it. Choose something or things that will be valuable to your audience. Valuable enough that your audience will want to win what you’ve offered.

Decide on the Outcome You Want and Where Your Results will show up best– For me, I wanted to increase the number of folks who receive my Newsletter! I try to do this newsletter once or twice a month. It’s full of tips you can use in your ‘Cottage Industry’ , small business and more.. And, that’s where the Details for my Giveaway appeared! That and some posts on Instagram.

Best Tip: Make sure you make the Entry to your Giveaway, easily achievable– and I have to add this, please, please value every email address you have! Folks don’t give those away lightly- we’re already overwhelmed as it is! Right?

Choose Which Social Media Platform(s) you’ll Use for Your Giveaway I used my Blog- right here! which automatically posts to several social media sites! I promoted it on my Blog and the other social media site I used regularly was Instagram. Why? Well, it’s my favorite along with this blog, yet I think Instagram is the best social media platform for me to use right now, and some think Giveaways are more successful on Instagram and Facebook. Of course, use the best platform for yourself- where you have the most growth and interaction.

Decide on Length of Time for Giveaway I ran my giveaway for 10 days.. personally I think this may have been too long- though I was going by a statistic that only 4% of your audience even looks at your posts daily. So, that guided my decision on how long to run the giveaway.

I’ve seen two giveaways lately- one for a Travel Sitewith lots of prizes and their’s lasted a Month! It was highly interactive and frankly too much trouble for the average product or service giveaway. The software alone would take a major amount of time to create is you’re running your business mostly on your own. Another Giveway I saw was a 1:1 with two major retailers who joined forces and offered this! They were Mickey Drexler and Bobbi Brown. This giveaway was for? 5-7 days.

What will be Your Entry ‘Fee’?– Be sure to list the Rules for your Giveaway– As I said before, my Entry ‘Fee’ was to sign up for my Newsletter! Yours could be an actual product you sell, it could be a coaching session, a PDF with valuable information. It could be a short video training… just make sure it’s Good Enough that folks will really want what you’re giving away!

Why sign up for my Newsletter? Well.. I’ve been giving out Marketing Tips for well over 2 years! And, with a 70% plus open rate- you may want to add it to your reading list! Also, when I did the giveaway, I wanted to reward my existing newsletter subscribers! That’s coming up soon- If you sign up- well, you’ll get the Bonus too!

Tip: Make it Easy! Mine was very easy- I have a Sign Up Form that is linked on my Instagram and I put links where my blog was posted and I’m very happy with the results! Here’s my link again:Sign up for my Newsletter! I hope you’ll sign up for mine!

here’s that link again; https://skilled-author-7671.ck.page/74d4fe914d

You will need to Plan Your Posts! Blog, Newsletter, Social Media This is important! When you decide to do a Giveaway- Plan plan plan! Plan the Images, Plan the Wording of the Giveaway (mine were actually done in a Quote Format, Plan your Content. Send out multiple reminders- for me this meant sending out additional emails. It also meant doing the posts in different formats- I wrote a Blog post, I wrote a Newsletter, then sent out an ICYMI repeat of my newsletter, I did at least 5 posts on Instagram and multiple Stories, even a Reel or two! It wasn’t hard to plan, yet I realized that the preparation for it- made it easier while the Giveaway was running.

Choosing Winners isn’t Easy. This was perhaps the most difficult part of the Giveaway for me. So? What can you do to alleviate the stress of it? I had some input from someone I trust. I also ‘gave points’ for the Enthusiasm level for the contest or what their response was to a certain gift I was giving away! And.. I also gave points for folks who shared my giveaway to their Instagram Stories or shared a post I had done about it. Because after all, that speaks to how much they value their community and the prizes they needed or wanted!

Contact Winners, they may or may not Accept the Prize Before I ever awarded the prizes, I had narrowed my ‘winners’ down, some categories had several people who had earned the ‘points’ yet, and this is a Big Yet- Would they accept the prize if it was offered? Because let’s face it- it they don’t want the prize- it’s not really helpful to you and for sure puts that person in a bad situation, if their name is announced and they just can’t accept it because of personal or professional situations that just aren’t right at the time of the giveaway. Be sensitive to that- I think this part is important.

Where will you Announce the Winners? I chose to announce my winners through my newsletter because that was the way participants entered the contest. I also sent that out twice because there were a few that had signed up yet for some reason, the newsletter bounced or even may have gone to their spam boxes if the newsletter was new to them. I also followed up with the winners through a private direct message.

Check Your Results! This might be the most important part of the Giveaway! Did you achieve what you wanted the giveaway to achieve for you? I checked my analytics. I had gained subscribers to my newsletter! I was actually amazed to see it in black and white. And… the newsletter has grown even more since the the giveaway has ended? Why? Well, it’s because I had told my loyal newsletter winners that they would also Win? Whether they won a prize or not, I will be giving them something special through my newsletter- (a link to this blog post for one thing) and a short video training and PDF that they can download!

So! Do I recommend doing a Giveaway? YES! I hope you’ll try it, and I’d love to know how it goes!

Love y’all, Brenda