Giving away things on a blog is one of the easiest way to drive some traffic and links to it. The bigger your prize, the more action you are likely to get from your visitors. Of course, you do not want to just sit around and hope for the best. Here are just 10 ways you can drive traffic to your giveaway contests to make them more successful:

1. Twitter: those of you who have thousands of followers on Twitter should use your account to get more exposure for your blog contests. While you do not want to spam on Twitter, there is no reason you should not reach out to your tweeps to ask for their help with promoting your contest.
2. Facebook: similar to the first step, you want to make sure you keep your Facebook fans and friends up to date with the latest contests on your blog. You also want to reward those visitors who choose to become your fans on Facebook with an entry or two.
3. Repeat mentions: one way to get more attention for your giveaway is by allowing your visitors to enter each day by tweeting or mentioning your contest on Facebook. Bloggers should warn their readers against spamming on those site when using this approach.
4. Banners: if you know some Photoshop or can create a simple banner by your own, you can use it to take your giveaway to the next level. Offer your visitors an entry or two for posting your banner to their blogs. You should use those banners on your own blog to let all your visitors know about your contests.
5. Email/RSS list: yet another way to gain some attention for your giveaways. Sending a note to your e-mail subscribers or posting an update on your contest in your RSS feed can help.
6. Forums: industry forums can not only drive targeted traffic to your blog, they can help you get some attention for your contests. You will need to be somewhat active in these forums for this strategy to work.
7. Advertising: advertising through Adwords, StumbleUpon, and Facebook brings more eyeballs to your stories. You do want to make sure you don’t go broke trying to promote your giveaways though.
8. Giveaway blogs: there are certain websites that are dedicated to covering the latest giveaways on the web. You don’t want to miss these sites as they have targeted traffic and can bring a ton of giveaway-hungry folks to your website (whether you can turn these folks into loyal followers is another story).
9. Partners: this is where your network comes into play. If you happen to know a bunch of other top bloggers, you should reach out to them about the possibility of getting your giveaway mentioned on their blogs.
10. Blog mentions: want to make sure your giveaways gain enough traction on the Internet? Provide your visitors with bonus entries for blogging or creating a video covering your giveaway.

When you are promoting a giveaway, every little step that you take will count. The above tactics should help you get more people excited about your blog contests.

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?

One of the best ways to generate extra traffic for your blog and get a major boost in the number of people who visit your blog is throwing viral competitions. Giveaways can always bring more people to your website as everyone likes freebies. Viral competitions are a bit different. Sure. You are giving away something to your visitors, but your goal is to spread the word about your blog and reach people you usually don’t reach with your everyday giveaways.

For your viral giveaway to work, you are going to need a killer gadget. Something that people want to own badly. The iPad comes to mind at this point, though the next generation X-Box or iPhone can all make great prizes as well. You can’t pull it off with a bag of chips or a t-shirt. That’s only one part of the equation. You have got to have a clear plan what you want your visitors to focus on. In most cases, it is always better to allow your visitors to enter your contest multiple times. You should have one main way for your visitors to enter your contest and add other channels that you want to target in your “extra credit” section.

Let’s say you want to spread the word about your blog on Facebook. That needs to be your “must-do” step for your competition. You can make other steps optional. Of course, since taking those steps increases the chances of winning the prize for your visitors, you can expect a lot of them to take those as well.

Don’t Be Cheap

Everybody wants to be a winner. When you have only one prize up for grabs, it may turn some visitors off. The more people your contest, the less chance each person has to win your contest. That’s why it always pays to have multiple prizes up for grabs. Let’s say an iPad as your main prize and a PS3 and a Xbox as your second and third place prizes.

Tracking Is Key

If you are allowing your visitors to enter your contest multiple times, you want to make sure you have a way to track their entries. One way to do this is by giving each visitor a unique URL. The easiest way to do that to somehow add the username of your visitors to the end of their URL. That makes the URL more recognizable to them and to you as well. Another way to do this is by asking your visitors to include their Twitter username with each step.

Focus On Major Sites

Don’t forget to prioritize your steps. If you want your visitors to spread the word about your contest on Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious (in that order), make sure they know that. You can give more entry points to those who add your site to Facebook and less to other steps. You get the idea.

Don’t be Passive

Just because you want to focus more on Facebook with your contest does not mean that you should forget about other channels that can get your blog some traffic. There will always be visitors who want your prize so badly that they’d do anything you ask of them. So don’t forget about some of these sites:

Reward User Generated Content

You should not forget about YouTube when setting up your giveaway. You’d be surprised how many people go out of their way and post videos to YouTube if you make that a part of your contest. You can always use these videos to push your blog and spread the word around in the future, so there is no reason not to try it.

Pull It All Together

In order to get the most out of your viral competition, you will need a super prize and a decent strategy. You don’t want to have too many steps and turn your visitors off in the process. Make the step that you absolutely want people to take a must do and keep everything else optional. While you do want your visitors to add your links to as many social networking and bookmarking sites as possible, you don’t want to include every single such site in your giveaway rules. The best way to do this is by creating a unique link for each user and give them one entry per each submission. So no matter what site they submit your site to, they get a point. That’s what I call entry-per-click strategy. Last but not the least, bloggers should ask their visitors to avoid spamming on social networking sites. It just does not look good for anyone. So be aggressive but don’t jump off of a cliff.

You should also take the time to go over your blog statistics and numbers after your contest to find out what your return on investment is. If you have gotten enough traffic, links, or attention for your troubles, there is no reason not to try throwing more giveaways on your blog.

Most bloggers are obsessed about driving traffic to their websites. You can have the best content in the world, but if you are not getting any traffic to it, you are probably not going to get any recognition for it either. It’s always nice to be found by a Guy Kawasaki or get a tweet from Bill Gates, but let’s face it. That does not happen every day. Now there is an easy way to drive traffic to your blog that is not getting the attention it deserves — giveaways.

A lot of bloggers know their basics. They know competitions work well. They know giveaways work well. But they don’t make the right decisions when it comes to giving things away to their readers. I have seen so many bloggers who giveaway worthless things and expect their traffic to skyrocket. In reality, you should giveaway things that turns people on. Literally! I would be more excited about a Netbook or a Macbook Air than a junk book that nobody cares about. The monetary value is not everything here, but it could be very important. If you want to go viral, you want to giveaway something that a lot of folks care about owning.

Giveaways provide you with a unique opportunity to push your other web properties. Let’s say you have a Facebook and a Twitter account. You can ask folks to become your friend on Facebook and follow you on Twitter to get a chance at winning your competition. You should also ask your readers to re-tweet your blog post. That is a very powerful link building tool.

Giving away things on your blog is the probably the best way to raise awareness about your blog and keep people coming back for more. Now, blog giveaways are not something that you try and put aside after one or two try. Successful blogs constantly have competitions and giveaways. If your blog is popular enough, you can ask companies to sponsor your giveaways. In that case, why wouldn’t you want to give things away?

Stay tuned for Part II where I talk about how to put up a successful blog giveaway.