What is a giveaway blog?
Giveaway blogs offer coupons, contests, and special deals to their visitors. Over time, good giveaway blogs develop a strong following of loyal fans. Sometimes, these blogs are built to create a list of targeted email subscribers. In other cases, giveaway blog owners make money through Adsense or other forms of advertising.
Some giveaway blogs may not even create the giveaways themselves. Instead, they list giveaways that other websites are having, and the blog is updated regularly with new contests and sweepstakes from all over the internet. In that sense, the giveaway blog is more of an aggregator for online contests as oppose to giving away prizes on its own.
How to create your own giveaway blog
Creating your own giveaway blog can be a fun and effective form of marketing. However, if you want your giveaway blog to be successful, it has to stand out from the crowd. To do that, you need to create a brand around your blog. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you do that:
Who is your ideal visitor?
Giveaway blogs come in all shapes and sizes. However, all good giveaway blogs cater to a specific kind of visitor. Whether those visitors are stay-at-home moms or fans of Etsy, you need to understand that visitor in order to create a successful brand.
Let’s say you’re developing a giveaway blog based around deals from a certain website. When you’re deciding how to brand your blog, try incorporating a color scheme that is similar to that website. This will increase your authority in the eyes of visitors. It will also show new visitors what your site offers from the moment they arrive.
At the very least, try to design your blog with the gender of your visitor in mind. Many stay-at-home moms spend hours entering online contests every day. As such, female visitors make up the bulk of giveaway blog traffic. Design your website accordingly.
It’s all in the name
One of the most important parts of any branding campaign involves choosing the right name. The most successful giveaway blogs on the internet may not even have the word ‘giveaway’ in their titles. Instead, the blog owners have developed a strong brand around their first name or a specific word.
For example, “Rachel’s Rocking Giveaways” is going to create more of a meaningful connection with your followers than “Free Online Giveaways Blog”.
Reader engagement
Do we really need to emphasize the importance of social media? At this point in the game, it should be obvious how much traffic Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Reddit, and other social media websites can generate.
The people who spend hours on social media every day are the same people who are attracted to giveaway blogs. Connect with your potential fans by tweeting frequently about giveaways. However, it’s important to fill your Twitter feed with more than just links to your website. Take the time to respond to people and help them solve their problems. Most people can spot marketing ploys from a mile away. Be smart about social media, and the traffic will come to you. This is where inbound marketing techniques become important.
Social media is about more than just attracting new customers; it’s also about retaining old ones. Somebody might stumble upon your blog one day, only to forget about it by tomorrow. However, if you get them to sign up for an email newsletter, or follow you on Twitter, you can remind them to check your blog daily for giveaway updates.
When using social media, maintain your brand image at all times. Be conscious of the kinds of people you’re trying to attract. By building a social media campaign that attracts the right kinds of people, you can quickly build targeted traffic to your website. This involves everything from big decisions – like which social network to focus your efforts on – to smaller decisions – like how you’re going to respond to somebody’s tweet.
Be unique
The branding and design of your giveaway blog should immediately set you apart from the crowd. If they don’t, then you’re going to blend in with the thousands of other giveaway blogs that exist online. While you might still get some traffic to your giveaway blog, your brand won’t stick in the minds of your visitors, and they probably will not return.
On the other hand, if you spend time researching your audience and developing the right branding, your giveaway blog has the potential to turn into something huge. How you monetize that traffic is completely up to you.
Author bio
This guest post was written by Theresa Moyer. Theresa is a stay-at-home mom who loves writing. She also makes diaper cakes for babies at her website www.ediapercakes.com.