Enter Your Business Blog in the Blog Awards

Is your business an SME or a corporate business? Do you blog for your business? Are you aware of the Grafton Media Blog Awards Ireland event that is coming up soon?

There are two Best Business blog categories – one is Best Blog of an SME and is sponsored by Sage and the other is Best Corporate blog which is sponsored by Media Box.

Why should you nominate your blog for these awards?

• It’s one way for people to find your blog and your business
• Reaching the shortlist, longlist and/or the finals will certainly help with brand awareness and result in free publicity but so will having your blog published on the nominations list at the end of July.
• Free publicity can include local and national mentions in the press and radio.
• Having your work recognised and rewarded will give you such a buzz.
• It will help you connect with other bloggers and businesses.
• It helps you to assess your own blog and become focused on results and improvements.
• Learn from other bloggers too.
• There will be a great night out on 13th October!

So, don’t delay. It doesn’t matter whether you nominate your own blog or someone else does it for you but nominations close on 16th July so get to it – right here!

Blog Awards Ireland – The What, Who, Why, Where & How

If you write a blog, be it personal or business, I do hope you will enter it in the Blog Awards Ireland awards coming up in October.  The nominations are now open until 16th July, you can nominate your own blog or place this button in the sidebar to ask others to nominate you (see instructions here if you’re not sure how to do it) and after the 3 rounds of judging, the 2012 will culminate in a gala dinner awards evening in the Osprey on October 13th.

There are 30 categories to choose from and you can enter your blog in more than one category so do have a look through and decide on those that are best suited to your blog. Entry to the Blog Awards is free. Do have a look at the general judging criteria to guide you in improving your blog over the coming weeks and don’t forget about the ‘Best Blog Post’ category too which will be judged by public vote. The other 29 categories will all be judged by independent judges.

Competition for Tickets

Tickets for the event will soon be on sale but you don’t have to wait until then to give yourself a chance of snapping up a pair of tickets as we are having a competition for 2 tickets and a night’s accommodation at the Osprey.  Don’t forget to like the Facebook page too.

Why enter the awards?

From having being in the finals in previous blog awards and social media awards, I can vouch for it being a fantastic feeling to see your work recognised on a national level. So many of us put so much passion, enthusiasm, talent and hard work into our blogs that it is great to see that being recognised.  Being in the finals (and also being shortlisted) for an awards can generate significant local and national press coverage for your blog and for your business which is, of course, also free.

Why have a blog awards?

Beatrice, Amanda and I decided to organise the blog awards for 2012 last autumn. (The Irish Blog Awards ended last March after a very successful six years and they were not going to be continued). Being passionate about blogging and having organised local networking blogging meetings for almost 18 months, we felt that Blog Awards Ireland would be a challenge that we would enjoy and succeed with running well. You can read more about our reasons in this blog post too.

The nominations have only been open a week and so many people have entered already, put buttons on their blogs and written blog posts about the awards that it really feels that it is taking off.  We have so much planned – both in the run up to the awards and for the night itself – that we know it is going to be a fantastic event. Yes, there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes and there’s also a lot of fun too.

We hope that you will enjoy the run up to the blog awards too and that lots of people will join us on 13th October for a wonderful night.

Write on Track through to finals of 2012 Social Media Awards

We are thrilled to have made it through the shortlist to be in the finals of this year’s Social Media Awards, which takes place on 17th May, at the Mansion House, Dublin. 

As Lorna wrote recently:

When you work hard at something and take pride in it, it is wonderful to have it recognised.

If you haven’t already done so, take some time to read Lorna’s post on the benefits of applying for awards in terms of press coverage.

As I spoke about at our recent launch, aiming for an award is a great way to up your blogging game and gives you a goal to focus on. This is a good time to remind you of the upcoming Blog Awards Ireland, nominations for which will be starting next month. Check out this slideshare of my talk which guides you through the process of doing a SWOT analysis of your blog and steps you can take to ensure your blog is nominee ready for any upcoming awards.