As you can see on the left (at least until I remove the widget), I’ve let Rafflecopter choose the winner of the Name That Holiday Tune contest. I’ve emailed the winner to see at which bookseller she would like to have $20 to spend!
My goal for the contest was to increase my followers in my social media where I share information about my books but also about other interests in my life. To get entries, people could like my Facebook author page, follow me on Twitter, or enter the Name that Holiday Tune answer. I love Christmas music so setting up that part of the contest was sort of fun. One Sunday night on the couch I made a list of what lyric I would use each day then I just had to cut and paste that change into the Rafflecopter interface before bed every night.
The giveaway could be accessed on my Facebook author page or on the blog. The Rafflecopter widget keeps the contest within Facebook’s rules and my simple contest was free! I spread the word about the contest on Facebook and Twitter.
When I first started the contest I had “liking” my author page on Facebook as a requirement but I didn’t seem to be getting a lot of entries so I changed that to just another way to enter. In total, I got nine likes for Facebook and five new Twitter followers. Several people came back to enter the daily lyric for many consecutive days so hopefully they had fun with the contest, read some of the posts on Facebook or my blog, and will remember me!
Obviously this did not generate the thousands of new fans I was hoping for. Rafflecopter does have a for-fee service ($60 per month!) that can help you to go viral but I was too cautious to jump in with this being my first contest. I’d be curious to hear if anyone has used that and experienced wild success.
I ran the contest for the entire month of December and I’m glad I did. The winner didn’t even start to enter until December 21 but she checked in every day for the rest of the month.
Overall, I can recommend Rafflecopter as a way to manage a contest. There is a bit of a learning curve but nothing overwhelming. You can change your contest at any time so don’t worry if it is not perfect the first day. Make sure to put the mobile-friendly link in your Facebook comments, otherwise your Giveaway widget is not visible to people using iPads or other mobile devices. Luckily a few people I know alerted me to that early in the contest.
I hope this is helpful to anyone considering a contest. I welcome feedback on what has worked for you in contests or any questions.
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