boost blog traffic

In the business world, an event is a public gathering for the purpose of networking and/or marketing. Holding events on your blog or website can help give your traffic a substantial boost. By holding different events, you bring more life and interaction to your blog which in turn will bring more traffic.

Contests and giveaways are effective events to stir up some interest and excitement. If you are not sure which type of event to consider, below are ten ideas to help you to get started.

1. Charity Week – Offer to pay a percentage of all orders to charity. Have your visitors post information about their favorite charities and donate to them. Present prizes, discounts, gift cards, etc., for your visitors. Hold auctions with your products to raise money for various charities. Ask people to help you raise money by making others aware of your charity event. NOTE: Please be sincere in your efforts to raise money for charity. Do not just use it as a marketing ploy!

2. Meet & Greet Event – Hold a meet and greet event for other bloggers. Invite bloggers to come to your event to meet, network, and brainstorm with fellow bloggers. You could have a couple of games for prizes such as trivia or other quick and easy games. Have a question and answer forum to offer advice, experience and expertise. Present guest speakers to share their knowledge and expertise as well.

3. Comment Contest – Let your readers know that if they post a comment, (with substance, not just thank you for the info or anything on that order) they will have a chance at winning a prize. You can do a random drawing for the prize or you could have a secret word (which directly relates to your content) and anyone who uses that secret word in their comment gets a shot at the prize. Make it fun and use different tactics each time.

4. Holiday Events – For Halloween, hold a costume contest. Have people post pictures of themselves in their costumes and then have all posters vote for their favorites. The one with the most votes wins. For Christmas, you could have a “Find Santa” contest. Put a pic of Santa somewhere on your site and the first to find it wins. For Easter, you could have an Easter egg hunt. The possibilities are endless!

5. Guess the Location Contest – Post a picture of a semi-famous location (don’t make it too easy) and see who can guess it by vague clues given to them by you. Offer a new clue each day until someone discovers the location in the photo.

6. Photo Contest – Ask your visitors to post a photo they took along with their comment and let everyone vote on which one is best. People love to vote on things and to win prizes so it is a win-win contest!

7. Parade of Blogs – Does your community ever hold a Parade of Homes? You could do something similar with blogs. Contact other blog owners and see if they would be interested in participating. You again could let people vote on the blogs they liked best for certain categories such as products, content, user-friendliness, etc. This would be a great way for blog owners to learn how to make their blogs more successful as well as being a good opportunity for networking.

8. Group Discussions – Hold monthly group discussions similar to a book club only you could discuss ways to increase sales, traffic or build your business in general.

9. Trivia Parties – There aren’t too many people who don’t enjoy a good trivia challenge so why not hold periodical trivia parties.

10. Scavenger Hunt – Have a list of objects for people to find on the internet. Give them clues as to where they can find them. Each person has so much time to see how many of the objects they can find. Have them give you the url from the site where they found the object so you know it is the right one. Just doing a Google search for each object and going to any site is not allowed! Make it a specific object on a specific site.

Proper planning will be a big part of your event, so don’t try to schedule these events on the spur of the moment. Be precise and effective in your planning so all goes well.

I hope these ideas help to inspire you to organize your own successful event. Hold events and contests recurrently to help keep your blog active, alive and profitable!

My next article will highlight different ways you can promote your various events and entice more visitors to your blog.