Giveaways: A strategy for promoting?

'Winner Medal Ribbons' by thimblewinder

All of us love giveaways. As someone who's entered a few giveaways I thought I knew just about enough to make one of mine work.

My first decision was to dedicate a specific blog to my giveaways: The Magnet Giveaway. That way I'd keep things simple and all traffic towards my giveaway separate from Whim Blogging. With hindsight it was both a good and a bad thing:

• The good bit: I knew exactly how many people came over for a giveaway.
• The bad part: This traffic remains limited to giveaway posts and does not have access to Whim Blogging where my other content is generated.

On the other hand, the nature of this blog has changed significantly. I am happy to keep it as my business diary and customers who come over won't find any advertising photos and stories (too many of those blogs all over the Internet, really). Therefore, potential customers from the giveaway wouldn't visit Whim Blogging anyway.

I've decided to allow two entries per person - one through Facebook likes and share, and one through other platform shares. Most of the participants did both.

• My Facebook likes increased with 15.
• My Facebook reach peaked at 738 people during the first week of the giveaway.

I've also gathered a few e-mails. I don't have a newsletter, so I couldn't use them as of now. What I did, though, was send a 20% discount code to everyone who took part. So far no revenue has been generated from giveaway participants. Oh, yes, the winner didn't leave any contact details - hence, tomorrow the second one will become grand winner and a new third winner will be chosen.

A good tool for promotion? Maybe. A good tool for getting new buyers? Not so much. I was conscious of the freebie audience a giveaway attracts. How this turns out at the end - there's still some time to see.