Step by Step to Run a Successful Blog Contest

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Have you ever think of running a contest at your site/blog? If you are a blogger, holding a contest at your blog is something that you will be considering during certain stages of your blogging journey. Even though i have not hold any contest here in Findmyblogway but that’s something i will be looking forward to in future. I like to do some research beforehand and i like to share with you on steps to run a successful contest at your site.

Why Do You Need to Run a Blog Contest

You may be wondering, do i need to run a contest in my blog? Well, it all depends on you. What i can tell you is there are several advantages holding a blog contest. The most notable benefits are:

- Create blog brand awareness

You may wish to widen your blog brand and make it known to more people. Holding a blog contest will definitely help you to spread your blog brand.

- Encourages readers participation

For long your loyal readers has been very supportive to your blog. This is your way to reward them and encourages their participation. As a result, a stronger bond between your community is fostered.

- Increase readership and new readers

By holding a blog contest, you can attract new readers to your blog and as a result readership is increased.

- Make your blog viral

This is one of the effective ways of viral marketing. If you can create a “buzz” out of the contest, people will spread the contest for you and your blog will go viral.

Criteria to Meet If You Want to Hold a Contest

While there are several benefits in running a blog contest, it’s not advisable to run it when and as you want. Your blog need to fulfill some criteria before you are able to make the contest as successful as you want it to be. The most important criteria are:

- Finding sponsors

Blog contest normally comes with a prize for the winners and its not easy to find sponsors. You need to find sponsors who are related to your niche. Let them know what they will gain if they agree to become sponsors of your blog contest.

- Have a budget

This comes in if you have a hard time in finding a sponsor. You need to come out with your own pocket money to purchase the prize.

- Decent traffic and readership

If you have a small traffic, it’s irrelevant for you to run a blog contest. Not only you have low participation, you will be facing hard time to convince your sponsors to come out with a prize.

- Time committment

You need to allocate time to run through the contest as it normally take up a resonable long time to complete. Your contest will be in chaos if you are suddenly tie up and your blog credibility will be affected causing you to have a dip in traffic.

Steps to run a successful contest

So you decided to hold a contest in your blog, what are the steps require? Here is a guide on step by step to help you through.

Step 1 – Determine your goals

You need to ask yourself why are you running a blog contest. Is it to increase subscribers, increase blog traffic and simply want to spread your blog brand? Without any goals, you will not know what is required to make the contest successful.

Step 2 – Determine your prize

Be it a sponsored prize or a self bought prize, it need to be relevant to your niche. People participate because of it. If the prize has a wow factor, it will increase participation and notice in the blogosphere.

Step 3 – Set your rules and regulation

Every blog contest has its rules and regulation. Let your readers know what is the rules they need to follow in order to avoid any controversy.

Step 4 – Set your entry requirements

What is the requirements to enter the contest? Be it a comment in a post, doing a retweet or even subscribe to your blog,  you need to make it as valuable as possible to your blog before you start the contest.

Step 4 – Set the contest duration

Determine the time frame that the contest starts and finishes. Set a reasonable time frame as you may not see the intended results if it’s too short. On the other hand, you won’t want to make it too long if the response does not meet your expectations.

Step 5 – Make it official

Write a post and inform your readers about the contest. Depending on what type of contest, you may want to release it few days or few weeks before the contest gets started.

Step 6 – Promote your contest

Promote your contest through every means of social media. You need to let as many people know as possible. Ask for your readers help to spread words of your contest around for more awareness.

Step 7 – Write another post

Try to write another post one or two days before the commencement of the contest to give a final reminder to your readers and entries.

Step 8 – Scan your entries

You need to go through your entries to determine and moderate them if there is too many. You can also seek for help to assist on the logistics side of your contest.

Step 9 – Pick a winner

After the end of the contest, you need to pick a winner. You can either randomly pick a winner or you can set some requirements to determine the winner.

Step 10 – Announce the winner

Be sure to announce the winner in your blog after the winner is determined. You can also inform the winner on how to collect his prize in the post.

Bonus step – Conclusion post

A blog contest is consider to be successful only if the goals are met and fulfilled. I am pretty sure after every contest you have organized, you will learn something from it. Share it in your next post and let your readers know what you have learn, what mistakes you make and how will you improve from it. Your readers will be interested to know.

Wrap Up

What do you think of the steps listed above? Did i left any steps out? I want to hear from you. Please kindly share it with us in the comments box. Thanks.

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