I was looking for a way to boost the number of entries in my American Girl Doll giveaway, so I emailed a popular giveaway blogger who gets hundreds of entries on every giveaway and asked her for suggestions. She asked if she could give me some feedback. I said of course she could!
She told me that the main entry requirement for the giveaway was too complicated. That it sounded like entries needed to be an impassioned plea and that I would pick the “best” entry as the winner. That was totally my fault for not explaining it correctly.
American Girl is encouraging girls to be active in their communities, to help others. What I SHOULD have said in the main entry requirement is “tell me who you’ll give this doll to if you win, and whether they do anything to help their community, such as helping with food drives, giving unwanted clothes and toys to Goodwill, etc.”
I use a plugin called “And the Winner Is” to choose the giveaway winner, it searches through the comments on the post and pulls one at random. If it’s a bonus entry, I go into the post and verify that the person left the required main entry, if they did, I close comments and email the winner.
One last thing – even if you don’t want to enter to win an American Girl doll, please take a minute and go to Shine On Now to donate virtual stars to the program. All you have to do is type in a child’s name and a parent email address, then click to drag a star into an outline. You can do that up to 100 times a day, and when 1 million stars have been donated, American Girl will give $1 Million to four childrens’ charities.
Both my giveaway and the Shine On Now program end this Saturday, July 31st.
