In August I decided on running a giveaway to see just how much I could increase my traffic, following, and interaction. In my giveaway I disclosed that the winner has the option of receiving a $25 Amazon gift card or $25 in the form of Paypal money. The giveaway started on August 8, 2016 and ended on August 30, 2016. So it lasted 22 days. I saw a decent spike in traffic, followers, and interaction.
First I'll discuss my traffic before hand.
Since I had not been actively posting on my blog with me being in the hospital and such, my traffic went down greatly.
In July, I had 919 page views and 852 unique page views.
In August, I had 3607 page views and 3256 unique page views. The page views increased by 2688 with the unique page views at 2404.
Facebook Page started with 49 likes ----> End of giveaway 145 likes (+96)
Twitter started with 402 followers -----> Ended with 625 likes (+223)
Instagram (412 followers) ------> 568 followers (+156)
Google Plus (434 followers) -------> 534 followers (+100)
Pinterest (260 followers) --------> 469 followers (+209)
The only social media network that I usually gain followers on is Google Plus because I am pretty active within communities. I can only assume that most of the growth within followers and likes is because of the giveaway. I also can assume that some people will unfollow or even un-like my pages.
The widget app I used to run my giveaway on was Viral Sweep. I absolutely love viral sweep because you can run the app for free and they have an easy setup to insert your social media information.
Now I would like to mention that Facebook has a policy explaining that you can not use likes for entries into giveaways and Viral Sweep complies with Facebook's rules. However, people still liked my Facebook page even with me disclosing that it would not be an entry into the giveaway which was great.
Websites that helped me receive the most traffic:
Overall, it took me about 3 hours to submit my giveaway to various giveaway websites and share the giveaway post on various social media networks. If I'm being completely honest, if I would have paid one of these giveaway websites to truly promote my giveaway...then I would have received substantial results. I may analyze these websites' stats and actually pay for promotion next time.
In my next giveaway, I will direct the item I'm giving away at specific topics in which I blog about on a regular basis. This way if people do not win, they will still want to visit my website in the future.
Don't forget to follow me for future analysis within blogging and social media.
