Tips and best practices for hosting a giveaway or giveaway event:
Hosting a giveaway
Collect entries through Rafflecopter or PunchTab.
Rafflecopter (and PunchTab) has been such a game changer that a large number of people will now only enter giveaways using Rafflecopter. Make sure to use proper grammar, spelling and capitalization on your Rafflecopter form. Set your Rafflecopter live a few days before it actually goes live and physically go through all of your entries on the form, just as your entrants will, to make sure they are all working before the giveaway goes live.
If you use comments to collect entries. Turn your CAPTCHA off. Out of the people who will still enter non-Rafflecopter giveaways, you’ll lose their interest very quickly if they have to do a CAPTCHA for every single entry.
Make the location eligibility (USA only, USA & Canada, Worldwide, etc) and the end date crystal clear. Put this in your post just before the Rafflecopter. Make it easy to find. Don’t bury it in an introductory paragraph. Tell visitors the end date that is the last full day to enter the giveaway, not the date that the Rafflecopter will close at 12:01am.
Hosting an event
First, create an event information page on your blog. People like to read about the event and decide if they want to join before they are sent over to your sign up form.
Use your event info page to explain how your event will work, how much it costs, what the prizes will be and what you’re requesting of event participants (required posts? hosting the Rafflecopter?). Use your own words. Don’t copy someone elses event wording but it’s a good idea to review the event information posts of successful event hosts to make sure you aren’t missing something important.
You’ll also want to create an event sign-up form and an event document on Google Docs (or use an alternate sign up method like Gravity Forms where you can incorporate PayPal payments into the registration process). In the event document, provide additional details about your event such as Facebook group links, social media sharing sample posts and the HTML for the event post and Rafflecopter script. This document will be for event participants only, not the general public.
[...] [...]