Results and Mistakes From Kindle Fire Giveaway Contest

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Well the Kindle Fire Giveaway contest ended this morning at 12AM EST and I already chose and notified the two winners.  This was a successful contest and here were the total numbers broken down.

Kindle Fire Giveaway Contest by the numbers:

  • 2840 Valid Entries
  • 1106 Retweets
  • 291 Facebook likes
  • 400 Blog comments
  • 22 blog post entries written
  • 7 YouTube video entries created

Even more important was this contest brought more interaction between readers than I have ever seen on this blog before, Livefyre enabled real time conversation where when I would post an update the ones following the conversation would respond almost immediately and wish each other luck in some cases.  This contest really showcased the power of Livefyre for communication on a blog and made me really glad I was using it because I could keep my blog post up and keep reading and replying to readers without having to hit page refresh all the time like I would have with default WordPress commenting.

This was my first massive contest here and as a result I created some entry options for the first time without really thinking them out all the way.  As a result I made several mistakes that I will be correcting in future contests.  Here are the mistakes I made.

Mistake #1

I should never have made @dragonblogger part of the “tweet this contest” part, this spammed my Twitter with hundreds of @replies, I should have used a hashtag instead this way I could have capitalized on a trend perhaps or even grabbed a keyword to possibly catch more search traffic and notice.

Mistake #2

I waited too long to create a video for the contest, I should have done this on day 1 but instead waited almost a week and then did 3 before contest ended.  Video would have helped show off the energy and build excitement for the contest.

Mistake #3

When I had my entries create a YouTube video for the contest, I wasn’t thinking about longevity. I should have asked that they just create a video talking about DragonBlogger.com as a technology, entertainment blog this way the video would be meaningful even after contest ended.  Instead 7 video’s were created and they showcased the contest, but since the contest ended why would the user’s leave the video’s up?

Mistake #4?

Globalize the contest!  I had a lot of interest from U.K., Australia and India based bloggers/readers who were not eligible to enter.  My site gets 49% of it’s traffic from the U.S. and 51% Internationally, I excluded 51% of my audience from participating in the contest.  Now, this isn’t totally a mistake the Amazon will not ship the Kindle Fire to U.K, India or anywhere else and the very high cost of shipping such a gadget internationally means I would have had to get hundreds of more dollars in sponsorship to cover shipping or come out of pocket quite a bit.  Also I know there are some rules about what you can ship into other countries I also read there are laws in other countries about “random draw” contests in general and I didn’t want to deal with any of that.

Mistake #5

Originally I didn’t have my contest entry descriptions with enough detail to explain how to handle posting Blog post URL and YouTube video.  This caused some initial confusion which I corrected mid contest, but next time I know to make sure all details/instructions are spelled out as clearly as possible.

The other last item is that had I been running the newer version of Rafflecopter which didn’t come out until after this contest was already running, it would have made entry management and live countdown to contest end much better.  This wasn’t a mistake merely that Rafflecopter got COOLER after I already started the contest and they won’t let you switch widgets mid-contest.

Overall the contest was a RAGING success and I am already working on plans for my next contest for January 2012.  Maybe I will ring in the new year with another great giveaway!

-Dragon Blogger

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