Guest post: Tips on running competitions

Competitions and giveaways are a great way to get exposure, find new readers, make connections with brands and give away cool stuff. Tired Mummy of Two Laura has run some big competitions. Here, she shares what she’s learned and gives advice on how to start doing giveaways and competitions on your blog.

How to run competitions and prizedraws

Most bloggers I read tend to run competitions every now and then, but for some, especially new ones, they just don’t know where to start. How do you go about getting a prize? Do bloggers put the prizes up themselves?  How do you ensure you run your competitions within the law? These are all questions I have been asked over the last few months.

If you don’t know me, my blog is Tired Mummy of Two, I am a fairly new blogger with my blog turning 1 on the 1^st of August. However my blog is known for one thing: HUGE prizedraws. I don’t mean huge prizes but simply the volume of prizes I have to offer.

How I organised a big Christmas prizedraw

Most of my readers and followers first came across me around Christmas time when I organised 196 prizes to be sent out as Christmas presents to people who entered. This was a hard competition to keep track off, I had nearly 1,000 entries all based on filling in a contact form and this was before the invention of Rafflecopter. I had spreadsheets full of prizes, spreadsheets full of entries and with the help of Random.org I managed to distribute the prizes and everyone who won was happy, but how did I get these prizes?

Obviously I didn’t just happen upon 196 prizes, I spent a long time thinking about companies I wanted to work with, I Googled them, I found their press email or their PR company and I emailed them. I even told them that I knew I was being cheeky emailing but – you know what? – it worked. I started out small. I wanted 20 prizes, then 50, then 100, then 150 and eventually 200. I missed my target but seen as I smashed my original one, I still felt amazing.

Most of the companies that got involved have become really good contacts and they are my first point of call for any new competitions. You can see a list of every company who donated to my Christmas tombola on this page.

Tips on running competitions

I do occasionally get approached by companies wanting me to host competitions for them, and most of the time I will say yes, but it has to be on my terms.

I will not expect people to write a blog post to enter and I prefer to use Rafflecopter as it is easy to keep track of Facebook and Twitter entries and it allows me to write my terms and conditions into the competition itself. Remember to ask the company if the prize is going direct from them. What you don’t want is have to pay a postage charge to send the prize onto the winner.

Make sure you ask them what exactly they want out of this. Is it more Facebook likes, more Twitter followers or just exposure? (NB: When running a competition, you can’t make Facebook “likes” a form of entry as it’s against their rules. Make sure you review Facebook’s rules when using it in conjunction with competitions.) Make sure you work out if your giveaway is a prize draw or a competition. An easy way to determine this whether the entry requires skill and is it judged on its skill, or is it a random draw? If it’s random, it’s a prize draw. If there is skill involved and it is independently judged on skill, it’s a competition. You could have a bit of both where there is a question to answer and then the winner is selected at random from all correct entries — this is still a competition.

Don’t forget to write terms & conditions for whichever version of activity you run and post them clearly on the competition page or link to them. For example, you might want to restrict entry to UK residents; you’ll need to specify a closing date for entries. Again, Rafflecopter is a good resource for taking you through the steps.

How to approach companies

When I first started asking for prizes, it was at a difficult time in the blogging community. There was a huge issue going on about Bloggers and Blaggers. Some insisted you shouldn’t ask, others lived off all the stuff they received. For me it was a great opportunity to make people happy. Never feel bad about asking for prizes. The worst that can happen is someone says no.

However if you want to approach companies direct, do your research. They are obviously a company you want to work with, so tell them why and try to find a person to email, avoid using generic info@ or sales@ email addresses. Google is your friend and if you look hard enough, you will succeed in getting through to the right person. If they don’t respond within 2 weeks, feel free to drop them a cheeky reminder.

Most people are really busy and an email can easily be missed. Your personality needs to come out in your email but be polite and professional. The PRs I have spoken to said my emails stand out because I tell them the truth, I want X for Y and they will get Z in return. No stats, no sales pitch, just honesty and a little bit of cheek.

Current competitions

At the moment I am celebrating my blogoversary by hosting competitions for 17 brands, most of whom I have worked with before or who I have recently met.

See, that’s another thing, you go to conferences or events, you get business cards, leaflets, catalogues and they all have email addresses on them – well, what do you do? Personally, I sit there that night or the next day and I email every single one of them, I tell them who I am, what my blog is about, how great it was to see them at X event and how I would love to work together in the future. This smooths the way for my next big giveaway.

So if you are a blogger who currently has a competition running, why not place it in the comments for everyone else to see? Or if you are a blogger who just wants to ask a question, feel free to tweet me @tiredmummyoftwo – I’m always happy to help!

Good luck and keep comping!

About Jennifer Howze

Jennifer Howze is the Creative Director and co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about family travel at Jenography.net, tweets at @JHowze and Instagrams at @JHowze. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.

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