How to organize an online contest or giveaway successfully

Organizing contests, drawings and other giveaways is an excellent way to get some attention on the Internet and to promote your products. This article is here to guide you throughout organizing your first contest.

Make things official with rules. Rules should cover who can enter the contest, what they need to do to win, what they will win, who gets the rights of the material they submit for the contest, a deadline and any kind of disclaimer you feel is necessary. Read through rules for other contests to get an idea of what you need to include or go to a specialized attorney to get the rules of your contest written by a professional. People will be more likely to trust you and participate in your contest if they can easily find and understand the rules. A contest without specific rules would open the door for a lot of complaints from people who think they should have won the prize.

Open your contest to other countries. People who take an interest in your products and want to join your contest will not get a good opinion of you if they cannot enter the contest because of their location. Opening your contest to other countries is a good way to find new markets and to make the competition more interesting. If you plan on using the material submitted for promotional purposes, it is in your best interest to attract talented people from all over the world.

Make entering your contest easy by allowing people to submit their entry on the internet or by mail. Create a new page on your site where people can enter their submission; test this page to make sure the submission form works perfectly. You could also accept submissions on Facebook by having people tag you in the pictures or videos they want to submit. Accept submissions by emails and provide a P.O. Box address so that people can send their submission by mail. Let the contestants know that the method of submission will not influence their chance of winning, as long as you get their submission before the deadline.

Add a quick summary of the rules on your website or social network profile. Get the attention of a potential contestant by explaining what kind of submission you want and what they can win in a few seconds only. Add pictures of the prizes, their value and write a short description of the submission you want. Make the deadline visible too. Add a link to the complete rules of the contest and to the entry page.

Get more people to join your contest by encouraging the contestants to share the contest with their friends. For instance, the last step of the submission process could be to share a link to your site on their Facebook profile. You should also encourage Facebook submission by letting contestants tag your page in the pictures or videos they post as a submission since all their friends will see this submission in their newsfeed. Perhaps you could give out an additional small prize for the contestant who referred the most people to your contest.

You should have a better idea of what you need to do to launch a successful contest on the internet. Learn more about other contests to get a better idea of how other businesses are doing it.