Run A Competition On Your Website With Gleam

Running a CompetitionHave you ever tried to run a competition from your blog? If it’s not something you’ve considered before, you’ve been missing an opportunity to create an interesting connection with your community. Competitions are a great way to promote your website or product and can also be a great way to grow your social media followers and interactions.

In the past, running competitions involved a significant amount of administration. Once the competition had finished the site owner would be required to go through every entry manually, decide the winner(s) then give out the reward.

The site owner now has another option. Spending hours going through hundreds of entries is now a thing of the past. The administration requirements for these events has dropped dramatically recently.

Gleam is a service that removes a significant administration overhead, while giving you a vast number of options to use. Let’s take a look at it.

What is Gleam?

Gleam allows you to run competitions, give out rewards and gather information about the people who enter your events. This is all managed from one simple dashboard.

The service allows for multiple methods of entry through various service integrations. This can be your own site, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and countless others. This flexibility allows your competition entrants to choose how they participate.

With a focus on user engagement, Gleam supplies detailed analytics and post competition surveys to discover how effective your competition was in achieving your goal. That goal can be social interaction, follower growth, or any number of other options.

This post competition analysis is the foundation of making future giveaways better or driving more value for advertisers.

Creating An Account With Gleam

Setting up an account on Gleam is a simple process. The initial account is created using a free plan that means you can sign up without handing over any credit card details.

Clicking on the Sign Up option on the home page will take you to an account creation window that requires five pieces of information. To get started you simple need to enter your name, email address, supply a password and then add your site name and URL.

The free plan has most of the features you would need, however the Pro ($39 AUD per month) and Business ($149 AUD per month) plans offer more functionality including MailChimp and Google Analytics integration.

Once you have added this information you are taken into the Gleam dashboard where you can begin creating your competitions and rewards.

Gleam Service Integrations

How To EnterThe service integration options available for competition entries is where Gleam really comes into its own.

Not content with the simple comment on a blog post, follow on Twitter, or Like on Facebook options that seem to be the most prevalent online, Gleam allow you to use many other services with your competition.

The services available to you with the free plan include:

I think you’ll agree the options available to you are quite staggering.

Integration options increase further using the Pro or Business plan. Depending on which premium plan you use they can include email subscription for competition entry and MailChimp, Google Analytics and Constant Contact to the management and reporting methods.

Create Your First Competition

New CompetitionCompetitions are a core aspect of the Gleam service. Once you have created your account and set it up, running your first competition is easy.

Select the Competitions option on the left hand menu which will take you to the Competition management area. Once there, click on the large green New Competition button to begin creating your first competition for your website.

This page allows you to name your competition, set the start and end date of the competition and add any terms and conditions that will apply to it.

The next step is deciding how people enter the competition. Gleam comes with an unbelievable number of options and service integrations with the free plan as we detailed earier. Each service in turn gives you multiple methods of entry as we touched upon earlier.

Once the methods of entry have been selected you then need to define the prize for the competition. This information includes the name of the prize, the quantity of prizes available and should you need it, a description of the prize.

Creating Rewards

New RewardThe process for creating rewards is almost identical to creating competitions. However, rather than adding simple information about the prize you can win, you are able to define the reward type.

The reward types available to you are:

This allows you to send your entrants to an additional resource to pick up their reward, or merely give them a coupon that allows them money off a product or whatever you choose it to be valid for.

Using The Competition or Reward On Your Blog

Now that you have created your competition, you need to implement it on your blog. The most common method for doing this is to simply embed your Gleam competition within a blog post or page using an embed code.

After you set up the competition you are given a unique embed code for it to use it on your blog. Take this code and then create a new post or page on your WordPress site. On this new post or page editor simply change to the HTML view and paste the embed code into the content window. You can then add any further information you like as you would with any normal post or page. It’s really that simple.

A further option is available to you if you have the Business Plan. With this plan you can then create competitions as a unique landing page on your website controlled from the Gleam Dashboard.

This is especially useful if you run regular competitions. You can simply create a URL such as yourdomain.com/competition and then automatically populate it with your latest competition within an iFrame on the page. This method gives your community a constant location for any competitions you decide to run.

Conclusion

If you’ve ever thought about running a competition on your blog but were discouraged because of the amount of work required to do it manually, Gleam may be exactly what you are looking for.

The service takes a difficult and administratively intensive process and makes it simple and user friendly, all while giving you more options than you could ever hope to need.

Have you run a competition from your blog? Whether it was done manually or with a service like Gleam, we’d love to hear what you thought of the process in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Lergik

Tom Ewer

Tom Ewer is the founder of WordCandy.co. He has been a huge fan of WordPress since he first laid eyes on it, and has been writing educational and informative content for WordPress users since 2011. When he's not working, you're likely to find him outdoors somewhere – as far away from a screen as possible!

13 Comments

  1. Michelle

    I have used both Gleam and Rafflecopter. I love the look of Gleam – looks more inviting, colorful and professional. However, after the contest is over, they HIDE THE EMAILS AND NAMES FROM YOU. YOU HAVE TO PAY THEM AT LEAST $39 TO GET IT. You’re able to download a useless csv list with hidden values.

    If that was made clear up front, I would have never used them.

    Raffecopter isn’t as nice an interface, but their free version allows you to download a csv file with the entrants names and emails for FREE.

  2. Kathy

    Hey Tom,
    You wrote this article 6 months ago… I’m curious which tool you would recommend today: Gleam or Rafflecopter? I ran my last giveaway with Rafflecopter and was happy with the process overall.

    Do you feel Gleam is as easy to setup and run as Rafflecopter is?

    Thanks!

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Hey Kathy,

      I would say this: if you’re happy with Rafflecopter, keep using it! Each tools has its pros and cons, and I don’t think it’s necessarily worth switching if you’ve found something that works for you.

      Cheers,

      Tom

  3. Manojr Tiwari

    Nice tool, thanks to writing about it. I really like to give it a try.
    Currently I’m running contest manually.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      My pleasure!

  4. Daniel Jack

    Its really nice idea to compete with own. I really appreciate your work and just going to use it. Thanks.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      No problem Daniel 🙂

  5. Renee Klein

    looks as a nice tool, we are using RaffleCopter now (free version) for giveaways, and I was wondering what the difference is between RaffleCopter and Gleam, any benefit?

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      Hey Renee,

      We’re a big fan of RaffleCopter too but we always like to look into alternative options 🙂

      I think they’re both great products — my suggestion would be to give Gleam a test drive and see if you prefer it.

      Cheers,

      Tom

  6. Stuart

    Thanks for the writeup Tom, happy to answer any questions that users have here or via email 🙂

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      My pleasure Stuart! 🙂

  7. Vukasin

    Gleam look like a great tool. I should definitely try it.
    Thank you for this Tom.
    I’m waiting on your October edition of the top 10 plugins.

    1. Tom Ewer

      Author

      No problem Vukasin 🙂

      It’s already out! See here: https://managewp.com/free-wordpress-plugins-october-2013/.

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