SA blog awards - Tips, Tricks & Unspoken rules

Our annual popularity contest is upon us! This year it seems the guys organizing is going to be much more strict with an entirely new set of rules. The rules are clear and easy to understand (even for a layman). Here is a couple of Tips, Tricks & “Unspoken” Rules to keep in mind:

Ask to get nominated. - As proven by Shaun Okes, if thou ask thou shalt receive… If your blog’s got half decent traffic, odds are fairly well stacked in your favor that it might just make it to the voting round! The My Digital Life guys looks like they’re all geared to have their main blog in the “Weblog of the year” category and at least 3 user blogs in every category. Competition is sure going to be excruciatingly tough in ‘08.

Once in the voting process ask for votes. - Again, as above. If you really want it as bad as you know you want it, get yourself 1000 email accounts and vote for yourself 1000 times. Frankly, if you want it that bad, you probably deserve it.

I’m trying very hard not to give Sessa a butt-cramp, but hell, conversations… Be visible. Now. See, once the voting list is out there, everyone starts to read 8 times as many blogs as before. No really. People take the time not to vote blindly. They actually read every blog before casting their votes. Just to be safe though, make sure people are “aware” of your “presence”. In other words, become a comment troll. See, if people sort of see and remember your blog and if you are in a category amongst fairly unknown blogs to the voter, people will vote for you simply because they’ve “seen” you somewhere so you’ve GOT to be good.

Rule: Please, FOR PETE’S SAKE, do NOT bitch about the logo again. It is such a bloody pain in the butt for everyone and even though you might think you can do better, keep it for yourself. Wait… maybe the organizers can organize a special category this year! They could have a “I can design better than everyone else and get my croniez to vote my design to stardom only to be vetoed eventually anyway because clearly I cheated as my design is crap and got the most votes” category.

Now I’m wondering, is Ideate going to be excluded this year as Mr Cherry himself is a contributor over there? If so, it would be a damn crying shame! By the looks of it Dave already excused himself as he was involved in some way, which is damn unfair as he is doing a damn fine job over on his blog. I’d prefer he does it more often, but hey, I’m the last one to say that. Actually, Sessa is the last one to say that. I might be second last. Here’s a thought for Fred, Shane and the boys. Just until after this thing, hide all Jon’s posts.

As far as the category for “Most Controversial Blog” goes, are you kidding me?! The organizers might as well wrap that one up NOW and split it three ways between Guy, Bolton and Richard. Done deal. No contest. Then again, splitting it 3 ways is not exactly the point of the entire exercise, right? Maybe we’ll have a contest over after all…

PS: Don’t forget to nominate Stormhoek this year! Please! We cannot afford to bite the hand that pours… AGAIN!

Right, geek out geeks!
PPS: Not done in Photoshop. B with her new Nokia

11 Comments to "SA blog awards - Tips, Tricks & Unspoken rules"

• Andrew Smith said: On 01/29/2008 at 7:51 am

  Hi Stii.

  Good comments about the logo. Let’s spend our efforts bitching about Eskom instead!

  Shane and myself are also involved in the awards, so unfortunately Ideate is out of the running. We’re assuming that the awards team will rotate every year, so we should be back in 2009.

  Cheers
  Andrew

• Pages tagged "odds" said: On 01/29/2008 at 8:42 am

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• Darren said: On 01/29/2008 at 10:18 am

  Hi Stii

  Nice little run-down, and now no-one can say they didn’t know…
  Just one question - is this your [very] subtle way of asking to be nominated, or is that still going to follow

  Hope you are all well down there! Like your new fb pic - one of the best I’ve seen so far.

  Take care,

• Richard Catto said: On 01/29/2008 at 10:38 am

  Stii, I’d recommend people vote Cape Town news as the most controversial blog for the following reasons:

  I get the most traffic
  I am the most prolific
  I get the most comments
  I have the best design
  Bolton’s blog is dead - so he is eliminated, imo
  Guy’s blog has an ugly design
  Guy gets boring really quickly

  So to conclude, please vote for me in the Mr Blog 2008 Bikini Open!

• Nic said: On 01/29/2008 at 1:21 pm

  Richard - Living the dream hey, living the dream. You traffic insinuation is interesting though!!

• Richard Catto said: On 01/29/2008 at 3:11 pm

  Ja, and I get the traffic without BOOBS, proving Bolton wrong on all counts.

  Besides, how does one give an award to an anonymous blogger?

  If there is a cash award along with the prize, I’ll be happy to collect in person.

  Btw, this blog could do with a subscribe to comments feature.

• JBagley said: On 01/29/2008 at 3:27 pm

  Ooo.. those digital life people are gona be in the running for sure, as they have quite a community, however, I cannot recall any really decent material coming out of there.

  So Stii, where do you want to be nominated?

• Stii said: On 01/29/2008 at 8:13 pm

  @Richard: Sidebar under the Meta heading. Doubt it would be cash though, maybe a t-shirt. We’ll see!

  @Jason: It would certainly be interesting! I wonder how that would play out with the MDL guys!

• JBagley said: On 01/30/2008 at 5:20 am

  Stii, I was actually thinking, that why would a blogger, that is serious enough about it to try and win an award, be writing on a blogging platform like My Digital Life. Yes, I’m guessing that the same argument could be said for Wordpress.com or Blogspot blogs, but there is a difference between the two.

  The thing is, they could easily muster up a few hundred / thousand votes because of the way their “community” is structured. You immediately would vote for a fellow blogger at MDL, just becuase you also blog there, but for us fish in the big sea, we have had to create our own readership and community in order to even get nominated, never mind try and canvas for votes.

  It will be very interesting to see.

• Dave said: On 01/30/2008 at 10:39 am

  Shot for the mention dude! I think I can still vote though…. (will have to ask Mr Cherry)… in which case: Go Stii.za.neti!!!!

• South African said: On 01/30/2008 at 6:43 pm

  Taking nothing away from Guy or Richard, I’ll be controversial and say that Fayzal is the most controversial blogger http://blogspace.mweb.co.za/Users/fayzal

Spit it out!

Filed in: Blogging, South Africa by: Stii