6 Ways To Supercharge Your Blog Giveaway

Throwing a giveaway on your blog is a powerful way to attract new visitors and increase your traffic. People love freebies, and you’d be surprised how far some people will go to get their hands on them. Each giveaway that you host on your blog is an opportunity for you to get more traffic and links to your blog, so you shouldn’t waste any opportunity. I have seen many bloggers who give things away without getting the most out of their contest. Sure, you want to keep the rules simple and easy to follow. That does not mean you shouldn’t reward those visitors who are willing to go beyond everyone else and do all kinds of things to win something on your blog.

There are plenty of ways one can supercharge a blog giveaway. It really depends on your creativity. The below 6 methods should give some ideas though:

1. Do not forget social media: if you have a Twitter profile or Facebook page, the least you can do is ask your visitors to join you on those sites. If you must, you can make it an optional entry. There are hundreds of people who have gained thousands of visitors by giving away iPads and other top gadgets. Don’t miss your chance.
2. Ask Your Visitors to Blog: giving away things is a great way to gain incoming links to your blog. So ask your visitors to blog about your giveaway and share their link with you. Give them extra entries as an incentive.
3. Encourage Video Shout-Outs: creating professional quality videos and posting them to YouTube can take a lot of your time. Why not use your giveaway as a way to have you readers create some additional videos for you? These things add up after a while.
4. Don’t forget social bookmarking: StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Reddit can all bring you more visitors. It never hurts to ask your visitors to add your website to those services. Just make sure you tell them not to spam.
5. Spread your button (brand): banner advertising could cost you money. There is no reason not to do it. You can bring your costs down by asking your contest entrants to post your banner or button to their sites for additional entries.
6. Reward Referrals: this is my favorite way to throw a killer giveaway. Create exclusive links for each visitor and give them additional entries for every person they refer to your blog. This affiliate-type model can bring you lots of traffic!

What are your suggestions? How would you go about throwing a killer giveaway?