Is it a good idea to participate in review / giveaway bloggers

[giftbasket4kids]

Hi,

I sell Gift Baskets for children and the best customers are Moms. Is it a good idea to participate in review / giveaway mom bloggers? The way it works I give the blogger a product to review. They write their true experience with the Gift Basket and they link to my site Then we do a few product giveaway to moms / (bloggers subscriber) once a month. Then moms will review the winning products. To participate in drawing moms will visit my site, follow my tweeter. Like or dislike me on Facebook……. For each action they do they will get one extra chance on drawing. In here I will get few links to different page of the site.

Are these links are good links?  I am not paying cash to buy the link. But I give them product to review and they get to keep it. Simply Sassy Media at  http://simplysassymedia.com/ is a good example. they manage and connect me to a lot of the blogger sites.

[giftbasket4kids]

it has been three weeks. I posed the same question on Google webmaster forum I got two answers only.

1-      “Go for it”

2-      Paid for links is paid for link by product or by cash!! Google will not like that!

I think it will give me good band exposure. And I should go for it for the good reason you mentioned. But I am very concern with Google link guidelines. Should I make the link no-follow?

Thank you all so much for your input.

[Unity]

In addition to Oleg's comments I just thought I'd mention that in my experience mom bloggers (mainly based in the USA) are a tight network and communicate amongst each other daily. So my advice is offer the same deal across the majority of blogs and be selective when offering one blogger additional products for review etc.

[ClaireH-184886]

As someone who runs a magazine site www.in2town.co.uk and someone who has worked on both sides of the coin which includes in a public relations company and working as a writer for a glossy magazine, i would say you are doing a good job with your marketing by working with sites for reviews.

By offering review products, you are getting the attention of magazine sites and if they accept your product to review and like it and give you a good write up with a link then you will gain customers.

We receive loads of emails each day asking us to review products, we even had one on friday who offered us money to review the product but we are very choosy on what we review.

I would also suggest that you look for a site where you can offer them a prize, and here is me putting my pr hat on. I would suggest you look for a site where you can run a competition such as a deserving mum etc as this would give you lots of exposure.

If you need any advice then pm me, but look out for special dates and try and get websites to take on your product as a prize as well as getting other sites to review your product.

The more sites that review your product and give you a good review, you will be able to say that your product has been in that publication on your site

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Yup, you're good. Sending free sample products to bloggers is a great way to gain exposure and build links.

I would develop a strong strategy that incorporate social media, SEO and content creation in order to maximize your campaign. A free giveaway through Facebook/Twitter can get you loads of direct traffic while building you links. Make sure there is a clear call to action at every step of the process and it is all integrated.