a different kind of {group} giveaway

I think it was my idea.  That our mastermind group should do a great big giveaway together.  You know, because everyone else in the blogosphere was doing it.

And the leader of our mastermind group had one question: why?

To create unity within our group, I said.  To give back to our readers.  And to share our platforms with each other and the small businesses who were sponsoring the giveaways.

Oh we had fun planning it.  Some of us contacted favorite companies.  Others handmade beautiful prizes.  We called it “Our Favorite Things” giveaway.

But then it came down to the nuts and bolts of how folks should enter.  And Houston, we had a problem.

99.9% of the giveaways we’d seen (and were copying, as it were) had one big Rafflecopter, with billions of Facebook pages to like for entry into a contest to win a big bunch of loot, only one or two items of which were even remotely interesting to the same person.  (I exaggerate, but in order to state my point.)

There are 20 of us in our mastermind group, 12 of whom were participating in the giveaway.  That made for a slight variety in prizes (we’re different, so we have different favorite things).  How would we know who wanted what when they won?  Should we have a page full of Rafflecopter widgets, 1 for each available prize?  Should we have one great big Rafflecopter with 25 prizes and half a gazillion Facebook pages to like (for the sponsors and the bloggers, of course)?

Our blogs are all so different (in our mastermind group, we find there’s strength in our diversity).  And suddenly, asking my readers to go down the line and like every single one of these other blog’s pages for entry seemed a bit strange.  We do plenty of strategizing about Facebook in our mastermind group.  We know that “empty” likes do nothing to help our Facebook edgerank, and “dead” fans drag our page down rather than building it up (at least in Facebook’s great algorithm).

And then, of course, there was this post, about iPad giveaways, that clinched the deal.  We all love to enter them, but really, do we care a thing about all those pages we’re liking for entry?

So two weeks before the giveaway was to commence, we changed our game plan.  We decided that instead of doing what everyone else was doing, we’d mimic what one of our members had seen done once before.  It became a blog-hoppin’ kind of giveaway.

We each hosted our own giveaway on our own blog, using our own Rafflecopter widget or comment system for entry to our own giveaway. Our post went live at the same time on the same day, linking to everyone else’s giveaway post and using the group graphic.

This better served our readers enabling them to enter only for the items they were interested in, letting them like/follow the people they wanted to without adding things to their feed they won’t care about. It also served each other more by generating traffic to each other’s blogs and providing genuine likes/follows rather than ones that will take away from our “interaction/engagement” ranking.

“A bunch of us have each chosen a few of our favorite things to giveaway on our blogs, and we’re all linking to each other, like a giant, progressive ‘dinner’ of giveaway goodness. I’ll share ‘directions’ to their ‘homes’ and goodies in a minute, but first, my gifts to you…”

-Trina Holden in “A Giveaway of a Few {make that 25!} of My Favorite Things!“

Our fearless leader Trina created the beautiful giveaway graphics.  Her husband Jeremy gathered everyone’s permalinks and coded it all so everyone could copy and paste the giveaway code and have the graphics and bullet list of links magically appear in their post.  All they had to do was add their own descriptions and their own giveaway entry and prize details, and we were set. (Using different wording in each post is crucial for SEO, as Amy Lynn Andrews points out in her post “The Power of Collaboration.”)

“I’m super excited that this giveaway is just one of a giant blog-hopping giveaway in which you not only get a chance to enter more than 25 giveaways but you get to visit the blogs of some of my beloved friends from my blogging mastermind group in the process.”

-Chantel Brankshire in “Giveaways from People I Love“

And what fun it was! It was a special way to be able to share some of my readership with a few of the women whom I blog so closely alongside. And it was a neat opportunity to say thanks to my readers, giving them not just whatever the latest giveaway options were from my sponsors, but choosing individual products I loved and wanted them to love, too. In fact, we had so much fun that we did it again on a smaller scale a few months later.

Have you ever hosted or been part of a group giveaway?

I’d love to hear how you did it!

Thanks for sharing,
Gretchen Louise

Planning a group giveaway? Here are some details you need to specify:

• Use permalinks or WordPress style shortlinks to link to each other’s posts, not links that will change when you rename or publish your posts.
• Decide on the exact date and time zone the posts will go up so that one person’s post doesn’t go up earlier containing not-yet-live links. (Rafflecopter may need to start at midnight the night before if your posts will all go live at 8 a.m. EST.)
• Specify the exact date and time the giveaways end so your readers aren’t confused (if you want them to go through Monday night, set Rafflecopter to end 12 a.m. EST Tuesday).
• Requiring a “like” or anything else on Facebook as a giveaway entry is against their policies (you’re not even supposed to notify winners via Facebook!) — make sure everyone is aware of that when writing their posts.   Rafflecopter’s Facebook-approved wording is “automatic entry for Facebook fans…”
• Click here for more links and resources on blogging giveaways.