Every year since we have participated in the SA Blog Awards over the past four years or so, the Award organisation has become worse, reaching the lowest of low a few weeks ago. The South African Blog Awards are now so poorly organised that there is no interest in them, and that few bloggers would care to enter them in future, despite feedback provided.
The South African Blog Awards 2012 were announced just as businesses has closed down for the Festive Season holiday, and the voting period ran for a short 10 days, from 19 – 28 December. Every blogger knows that businesspersons read blogs at the office, and that their traffic drops to record lows over weekends, and during holidays. A large part of the loyal blog readers would have been on holiday during the South African Blog Award 2012 voting period. Interesting is that the website for the Awards is so scant on information that one does not know who organised the awards, or who the judges were per category. In the past the Awards were organised by sport presenter JP Naude, who does not blog himself, and adman Chris Rawlinson. The SA Blog Awards website is a poor reflection of the quality of blogs the competition is meant to judge and evaluate. There was barely any Tweeting to encourage blog readers to vote for their favourite blogs. The design of the Voting button was said by some to look like a design from the ‘Fifties! There was a typing error on the Home page, unforgivable for a blogger! Overall, the South African Blog Awards 2012 appeared to be a last minute rushed non-event!
We congratulate the winners and runners-up of the 2012 SA Blog Awards, most blogs being unknown:
We trust that the organisers of the SA Blog Awards will take more trouble with the 2013 Awards later this year! The 2012 Blog Awards organisation, judging period, and results have not been a worthy reflection of the status of blogging in South Africa.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
20
3070
27k
20
All so uninteresting – the awards, the blogs … Here’s the thing: Just like really beautiful women don’t enter beauty competitions, really good blogs don’t enter silly award competitions no-one cares about!
I am not sure that I agree Kelly.
We are all still quite new at blogging, and often the feedback is negative (therefore unpublished), because people like to bash the writer via the Comments facility – had a death wish one yesterday!
We don’t know who is reading and what they get out of reading our blogs. We can measure the number of readers via Google Analytics, and that is the only concrete feedback there is.
Chris
How does one get to hear when the Awards nominations open. I only heard of the competition for 2013 when back at my desk in after hols.
That’s a good question Rose.
It was the most un-Awards awards I have ever seen, and they have not even responded to this blogpost, whoever ‘they’ are! A poor reflection on bloggers, who deserve better.
We received an e-mail from them just as businesses closed around 18 December, and I was lucky to just catch my designers to add the voting badge on the blog. The voting lasted all of 10 days, in a period when no one was at work (we know that blogs are read in the office, from Google Analytics!).
An absolute non-event, and poorly supported on Twitter. Follow them at @SABlogAwards for this year’s awards.
Chris