I imagined MozCon would be a lot like my childhood summer camp experience. I’d sit awkwardly in a room of other awkward people passing around a beach ball stating my name and where I was from. I’d eat horrible cafeteria food and find solace in the only other wallflower at the evening social. And I was ok with that, because it’s Moz. I knew I would come home with some golden nuggets, and the torture of an adult summer camp would be worth it.
The peer editing process can be awkward. Throughout the years I’ve asked many friends to edit my content pieces, and on several occasions I’ve disregarded their suggestions entirely. They weren’t bad, they just weren’t my style. “I would never say that. I would never say that like that.” If I’m going to put my name on something I want it to represent my style, my brand.
Every brand needs a style guide. You have to define your voice and keep it consistent—especially if you have multiple writers tackling your content. Here at Rafflecopter, we have four people who write for our blog. That’s four opinions on the Oxford comma, four ways to format a blog post, and four opinions on whether I should be using 4 instead of four.
A style guide seems rigid and maybe even a little “corporate”, but it will improve your brand’s image and save your writers from the eternal struggle of deciding between an em dash and a semicolon. Let’s talk style, grammar, and how many spaces should be after a period.
Reflecting on the success of your giveaways is important to your long-term strategy. Asking the right questions will help you finesse your process and figure out what works with your audience.
Was the participation low because your prize was lame? Could you have improved the design of the widget to make it more attractive? What did you do to promote the giveaway?
Creating a giveaway with Rafflecopter is easy-breezy, but it’s a robust marketing tool that should be given proper thought. And as with any marketing tool, testing is essential to the process. Below are five components that can be tested from one giveaway to the next.
Not long ago I received my first four star chat rating in customer support. You see, that’s four out five available stars, which is eighty percent satisfaction, which is basically a ‘meh’ in Rafflecopter’s customer support world.
“If you had one shot or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?”
A guy with sometimes questionable rap lyrics said that, but he got it right. In the world of ecommerce, you have one shot to win a customer and a thousand opportunities to lose them. Once your giveaway ends, the real work begins.