How to Run a Successful Blog Giveaway
Running a blog giveaway is one of the most effective ways to build your email list, boost brand awareness, and increase engagement.
If you’re looking for one of the easiest ways to drive traffic, grow your email list, and build brand awareness — blog giveaways are one of the most effective tactics available. Whether you're launching a new product, celebrating a milestone, or simply trying to engage your readers, running a giveaway is a low-cost way to create high-impact results. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to host a giveaway on your blog successfully, including prize ideas, promotion tips, and how to use Gleam’s giveaway tools to get started quickly.
Gleam is a marketing platform that allows you to easily host a giveaway on your blog or website. With over 100 supported entry methods and custom integrations for major social media platforms, Gleam is used by bloggers, brands, and creators around the world to boost engagement and grow their email subscriber base. You can embed Gleam giveaways into any blog post, publish them on a dedicated landing page, or display them across your entire site using the Gleam tab widget.
Giveaways and contests are effective because they create urgency, encourage user generated content, and build community. When you run the giveaway properly, you're not just collecting entries — you're collecting emails, boosting social reach, and converting new visitors into long-term readers. Many successful bloggers use giveaways to:
- Grow their email list
- Promote seasonal content
- Reward loyal followers
- Launch or test a new product or service
Our entire philosophy around the concept of actions. Actions can be anything you want, here’s an example of some of the common ones:
- Follow on Twitter
- Visit on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest
- Viral Sharing Something (Twitter, Facebook & Pinterest)
- Blog Comment
- Newsletter Signup
- Read or Visit a Specific Page
- Mention Something in a Blog Post
- Download
- Sign / Create Account
- Use a Coupon
Many of the competition platforms on the market revolve around “entries” whilst we still do this on the frontend, on the backend you get more visibility of the actual actions you generate.
Here’s an example:
You'll notice how you can weight the value of certain actions better by including them higher or giving them a higher entry worth.
One of the areas we’ve been working hard on is ensuring that our giveaways look clean & beautiful. So that anyone can create one, integrate it into their site & it will compliment the theme or style of their site. Here’s some of the formats that are available right now:
- Write a blog post announcing the giveaway. Clearly explain the rules, prize, and end date.
- Embed the Gleam widget in the post (or use a full-screen landing page if you prefer).
- Promote your giveaway on email, social media, and through partner blogs.
- Ask users to enter to win by completing actions like following you, sharing the giveaway, or signing up to your email list.
When the campaign ends, randomly choose your lucky winner using Gleam’s built-in drawing tool.
With Gleam, you have multiple flexible ways to present your giveaway:
Sometimes when giveaways are buried in a blog post they get missed by the majority of your readers. We allow you to run the giveaway across all your pages using our Gleam tab.
You can see it in action on the right.
If you don’t have a blog you can always create a page right here on Gleam for you competition, don’t worry we do our best to help you make it look amazing.
Great for recurring giveaways or evergreen offers
How your users actually enter your giveaway is extremely important, we now support over 100 different ways for a user to enter, drive traffic and build loyalty.
Check them out below:
- App Download
- Comment on a Blog Post
- Write a Blog Post
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Bonus
- Custom
- Discord Entry
- Join a Discord Server
- Attend an Eventbrite Event
- Attend an Eventbrite Venue
- Check-in to a Facebook Place
- Facebook Entry
- Select a Facebook Photo or Video
- Visit a Facebook Page
- Follow on Goodreads
- Import #hashtags
- Import Facebook Images
- Import Instagram #hashtags
- Import Twitter #hashtags
- Visit an Indiegogo Campaign
- Enter With Instagram
- Select an Instagram Photo or Video
- View an Instagram Photo
- Visit a Profile on Instagram
- Visit a Kickstarter Campaign
- Follow a Company on LinkedIn
- Share an Update on LinkedIn
- Enter With Pinterest
- Select a Board
- Select a Pin
- Visit a Pinterest Profile
- Follow on Product Hunt
- Vote on Product Hunt
- Promote a Campaign
- Question
- Choose Image
- Single Choice Question
- Multiple Choice Question
- Enter a Secret Code
- Follow on Snapchat
- Follow on Spotify
- Pre-Save on Spotify
- Save on Spotify
- Enter With Steam
- Play a Steam Game
- Join a Steam Group
- Follow a User on SoundCloud
- Like a Song on SoundCloud
- Listen to a Song on SoundCloud
- Repost a Song on SoundCloud
- Submit a Song from SoundCloud
- Submit Media
- Subscribe to an Email List
- Follow on Tumblr
- Like on Tumblr
- Reblog on Tumblr
- Reblog Campaign on Tumblr
- Enter With Twitch
- Follow a Channel on Twitch
- Bonus for Twitch Subscribers
- Twitter Entry
- Tweet With Hashtag
- Retweet
- Follow a User on Twitter
- Select a Photo or Video from Twitter
- Tweet on Twitter
- Complete a Typeform Survey
- Upload a File
- Watch a Vimeo Video
- Visit a Page
- Viral Share
- Watch a Wistia Video
- YouTube Entry
- Submit a YouTube Video
- Visit a YouTube Channel
To get the most out of your blog giveaway:
- Promote it on your blog’s homepage or sidebar
- Share it on your social media platforms
- Email your existing email list subscribers
- Partner with other bloggers for cross-promotion
As you run more competitions we allow users to opt-in to receive notifications about your Giveaways. Right now on average 34% of users opt-in, this means that every time you launch a new promotion those users will get an email right away – plus, since they’ve used the platform before they’ll only need to perform a few clicks to enter 🙂
- To run a successful giveaway, you need a prize that’s both desirable and relevant to your audience. This ensures high engagement and leads to quality entries.
- Smart prize ideas for bloggers:
- Gift cards (always flexible)
- Brand merchandise or kits
- Ebooks, premium content, or early access
- A featured post or shout-out for other bloggers
- When you choose a prize, always ask: will this attract the kind of people I want on my list?
Check out our documentation on setting up your own Competition or get started right away!
We've got a ton of contest, sweepstakes, & giveaway templates that are pre-made and customised to each industry. From E-commerce, live-streaming, to SaaS businesses, we've created a template suitable for each occasion:
Hosting a blog giveaway isn’t just a fun engagement tactic — it’s a serious growth tool. Done right, it helps you build trust, grow your audience, and hit your marketing goals faster. Use Gleam to run a social media-ready campaign, drive entries, and deliver a smooth experience from start to finish. Whether you're looking to drive traffic, gain email subscribers, or promote a new post, this is the tool to scale your blog’s reach in just a few clicks.
Embed a Gleam widget directly into your blog post or use a hosted landing page to run a giveaway that tracks entries and actions automatically.
Choose prizes that resonate with your audience, such as gift cards, ebooks, or branded merchandise, to ensure higher engagement and quality entries.
Giveaways incentivize users to subscribe to your email list in exchange for entries, leading to a significant increase in qualified subscribers.
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Stuart McKeown
Stuart McKeown is one of the Co-founders at Gleam. Aside from writing and helping businesses grow, he also enjoys sound design and drinking tea ☕️