Authors can use giveaways for multiple reasons. I share with you three ways that you, as an author, can use giveaways in this post.
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#1 Way Authors Can Use Giveaways and Contests: Build Buzz
The first way is to build buzz.
You can use a giveaway to simply build buzz – you can use it to build your email list, you could use it to grow your Facebook fans, or Twitter followers, or whatever platform you’re focusing on.
I recommend that you use it to build your email list – property you own. Facebook and Twitter is space you “rent’ and it could get closed down at any time.
Giveaways are something fun, something that doesn’t feel spammy like, “buy my book!” It’s like, “hey, I have this cool prize and I’d love to give it to you, here’s how to enter,” you want to make it as easy as possible.
You can simply do a giveaway on your Facebook page.
You can have them do different things, and something that’s really cool for authors is to have those who buy your book take a selfie with the book, or a picture of the book anywhere. It could be a picture of the book on the beach, you can get really creative with these photo contests and have a cool prize.
You could do the photo contest on Instagram or Pinterest depending on your niche. There are so many different ideas, and use a special hashtag that is for your book. It is so fun!
These types of giveaways and contests can go viral, but it has to be set up right.
So, I recommend that you do some brainstorming.
I love doing a brain dump, and I recommend doing that. Get a blank piece of paper, go to your whiteboard, on your mind map, or wherever you like to brainstorm and make sure you have a good solid strategy in place of how you want to do this.
- What kind of hashtag are you going to use?
- Which platform are you going to focus on?
- What kind of prize are you going to give?
All these things help it to build buzz about you, about your brand, and about your book – especially if you’re getting pictures of you book, or pictures of people with you book; but you can do all kinds of contests.
#2 Way Authors Can Use Giveaways and Contests: Sell More Books
The second way that authors can use contests are to sell books. You could actually have a contest where anyone who buys your book during a certain amount of time gets entered into a contest for a really cool prize.
If you want to try this type of contest, look at all the options and find a way.
I did a big book launch for one of my books, and I approached a bunch of different similar types of businesses that offer different software, or different things, and a bunch of places donated prizes.
You can definitely find a way to get a prize.
#3 Way Authors Can Use Giveaways and Contests: Engage Your Customers
The third way is to engage your customers, or if you have a membership site you can use it to engage your members.
I have a membership site, AuthorAudienceAcademy.com, and I just got this idea recently in a Facebook group. Someone said that they run these contests in their membership, and I thought, “oh, that’s a fun idea!” I brainstormed with CJ (we were brainstorming yesterday in the gym, side by side on treadmills, how fun is that?) and we decided, “let’s do a contest for Author Audience Academy members.”
Every month I have a different challenge, it’s either a live group coaching session or it’s a seven-day, incremental challenge.
This month it is the Kindle to Print challenge, so we thought it would be fun to do a special contest. I just announced it to my members and said, “we decided we want to give away a $50 Amazon gift card to one person who finishes this challenge.” It’s to help motivate my members to take action.
It’s proven that when you’re able to, whether it’s free content like your opt-in, or it’s your book, or it’s a product, and if you’ve been following me you know I recommend you have some products on the back end to sell as well.
Membership sites are amazing.
But if you have some sort of content that your customer or your reader is consuming, if they consume it and implement it and get results, they’re more than likely to sing your praises, to stay around longer. So, the more my members implement and get results, the more likely they are going to want to stay in the membership, right?
We’re doing this contest for anyone that finishes within 30 days. Then, they will post a selfie of them holding their new print book, their book baby. They are giving birth to a print book. I’m going to promote them on my blog with all their pictures and links to their books. Then, I’m going to randomly choose a winner for that $50 gift certificate.
Fun!
I encourage you to really start thinking like, what is one way I can use giveaways to grow my business?
1) To get buzz
2) To sell more books
3) To engage my customers and members
Contests are amazing.
A couple of tools that you can use.
I’ve used rafflecopter.com. Rafflecopter is a free tool, and it does have a paid services.
You can also use KingSumo.com, it’s a plugin for WordPress sites, and you can also just do it from your Facebook page, or Pinterest, or wherever you want to do the contest.
Amazon now offers you the ability to do a giveaway for any product on Amazon. So you can go to that book page or product page and set up a giveaway.
You will need to think about the result that you want out of a giveaway and figure out the best way to do it as what I recommend doing is funneling them into your email list first. That way you can continue to build a relationship with them.
Take Action Tip
The take action tip is think about what you can do with contests and giveaways in your business, for your books.
Wherever your tribe is, wherever your lifers are, you can use contests and giveaways to engage them, get them to implement what you’re teaching so they get results, and then they stick around.
How have you used contests and giveaways? If so, share your experience in the comments below.
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