Guest Post - Reviewing/Giveaway for Beginners Part III

This is Part III of Emmi's guest post about Reviewing/Giveaways for Beginners from Mommy's "Free" Time!  I hope you have enjoyed and learned a lot from part I and II.   She has really banged out valuable information!  Today she is sharing part III, ENJOY!

This week I want to talk about review/giveaway policies or your media kit. There is no “one” way to do a review or giveaway. If you look out there at the millions of blogs you’ll see that everyone has their own style and they do what works best for them. I suggest you take a look around, get some ideas, and then create your own policy. However, and I must stress this, be sure to have some sort of written policy on how you will conduct your reviews/giveaways. I must admit that I am personally a little slack on this. I have a written policy that I send to companies I work with but I have yet to include it on my blog. Guess I really should work on that! =)


What goes into a media kit? A media kit should list how you conduct your reviews and giveaways. It should also explain what your blog focuses on and what products you will or will not review. My blog is more of a general family blog so I will review almost anything…however I like to concentrate on items for mommies, kids and I’m also leaning more towards eco-friendly products and ideas.
Now that’s just a general overview. Let’s get specific.

Reviews: What do you want to review? Simply state what you like to review and maybe put what you wouldn’t review. I have a family blog so I don’t want to review adult products. It just doesn’t fit with my theme.
What do you expect from the company? I expect the company to send me a product to review. Sometimes I ask for a specific product, sometimes I let the company choose. This is completely up to you. Some companies will simply send you information, (press releases, images, discounts, product info) and expect you to write a review from this. This is perfectly normal and okay if this is something you would like to do. However, personally, I feel that if I am going to suggest a product to my readers it darn well better be a product I’ve tried myself. What if I say a product is awesome and does something and then a reader buys it and finds that I was totally off on my description? I would feel terrible! It just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me!

What do you do when you get the product? WELL, you use it of course. If it’s a book, you read it. If it’s a toy, let the kids play with it. If it’s food, eat it. Don’t just look at the product and the info and write your review. Anybody can look up product information from a website. What we really want to see is your experience with the product. Also, give yourself time to experience the product. I let companies know that it may be anywhere from a week up until a month before I post my review. I want to have ample time to really get to know the product inside and out. Some companies agree with this, others have timelines. I suggest that you just stay flexible and respectful of the company and your own time.
 
Giveaways: Now there are 5 million ways to conduct a giveaway. Most bloggers like to use the comment section of the post as an area for people to enter. I like to use google documents. I use google docs for two reasons. You can safely enter your email address without worrying about spam and because I can’t figure out how to number my comments! (I’m terrible with HTML!)

Basics of a giveaway: State what you are giving away. I don’t know how many times I have seen blogs that do a review, have a giveaway and fail to tell you what you can win. State it and state it clearly. You want to make it easy for people so that they will enter.  State when the giveaway begins and ends. Dates will suffice here. You can even use times if you want to. Just be sure to stick with them! State who the giveaway is open to. If you’re American you’ll notice a lot of giveaways are for the US only if you are working with a US based company. Please be sure to let your readers know this! State how many winners you will have, how they will be chosen and how they will be contacted. I usually state the number of winners, tell that I use Random.org to choose the winner, and that they will be contacted by email. I also suggest stating a time limit for how long the person has to contact you before another winner is chosen.

Entries: I usually have one mandatory entry. I like to make it something that relates back to the company. After all you are doing this to help promote them and their products so you want your readers to really take notice. (Be sure to be careful with what you can have as a mandatory entry. I know Facebook has rules against having a person “like” a page as a mandatory entry). I also have Additional Entries. These can range from following your page, subscribing to your blog, doing something special for the company you are working with to just about anything. It’s free reign. You can have one extra entry or 80. The sky is the limit! And yes I did see a blog giveaway with 80 possible entries!!!

Ok I could go on and on about giveaways but I think I’ve rambled enough for today. Next, and very soon I will go into more details about how to pick a winner and how to verify entries. As always, if you have any questions contact me at mommyfreetime at gmail dot com!  Stay Tunned.....