Recent Give Away Experiences and Floodstreet Review.

This last Holiday season I participated in 3 giveaways. I participated in hopes of promotional advantages, free(ish) advertising and with the desire to show support for my community of artists. Normally I would not be involved with 3 giveaways at the same time, but the holiday season is a great time to get exposure and I wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity.

My normal protocal about giveaways are that I space them once every three months.

The first giveaway I participated in was for a blogger named Eliza K.
http://elizakprints.blogspot.com/
I exchanged a pair of Sterling Silver and Fluorite Earrings for advertising space on her blog, which is well trafficked. I saw some Eliza K traffic filter onto my etsy site. She was very organized and courteous. No one purchased anything from her crowd, but exposure is a good thing. Eliza used Rafflecopter as her method of selecting her winner. http://www.rafflecopter.com/

The second giveaway I participated in was for my new collective, White Tail Collective. This was via Facebook.

The third giveaway was my own giveaway for Sarah Creates also via Facebook. White Tail Collective and I both used an app called Floodstreet. https://www.facebook.com/FloodStreet?fref=ts

I am not sure if you have heard on the Facebook streets that creating your own giveaway from your business page is actually against the Facebook law. So Apps like Floodstreet have been made to facilitate giveaways.

The Pros:
My "likes" increased from 100 something to 509 in two weeks time. People were also really grateful and posted on my Floodstreet page kind words about my artistry and excited exclamations in regards to the potential of receiving such a prize. I gained a lot of exposure. My stats went up, people were posting on my page and talking about Sarah Creates.

White Tail Collective giveaway was also successful, earning over 150 likes in one week.

The Cons:
The App's set up and page is really glitchy. The first time I tried to give something away through Floodstreet, it set me up with an incorrect date and time. My giveaway lasted for one minute on the last day of the month. Once the date is set, it is set. There was nothing I could do about it. No one answers the emails on their Facebook page. There are threads and threads of people asking questions with no responses. Also when you write a description of your giveaway prize, Floodstreet wants you to advertise for it like a used cars salesman would auction off a cheap car. I, of course, did my best to sound like a high priestess artist, but it was challenging.
Perhaps the biggest problem for me was...where are my target customers? Wait, where did my target customers go? I sell high end jewelry, one of a kind pieces. I would rather have a list of 50 good customers who come back to purchase my art, tell their friends about me, and post on Facebook out of excitement when they purchase a new piece rather than 500 people who just wanted to get a cool pair of earrings for free with no desire to verbally support (post) or purchase in the future. At one point this made me question the whole giveaway experience.

In the end I am especially glad that I did the Sarah Creates giveaway. I have made some new genuine fans and that is worth every effort that I gave for that giveaway. Really truly. I want to have another giveaway, but I would like to be more strategic about it next time. I think that rafflecopter is definitely worth looking into.

Thank you for listening.
Sarah