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As in the past, the list of 20 finalists has some returning reader favorites and some new titles for our judges to consider.
The Judges
Our judges include Ann Handley (chief content officer for MarketingProfs, author of the book Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content and co-author of the best-selling Content Rules), Darren Rowse (founder of ProBlogger.net and author of ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income) and Neal Schaffer (founder of Maximize Social Business and author of three books including Maximize Your Social).
Read on to find out if your favorite social media blog is a finalist.
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How We’ll Pick the Winners
1. Initial qualification: A blog must have a strong social media focus, must have been nominated multiple times by multiple individuals and must be regularly updated. If someone nominated more than one blog, only the first nomination was counted.
2. Final winner selection:
- Quality of posts: Our judges will examine and score the quality of posts on each blog. Educational and discussion-spurring posts are more valuable than self-promoting posts. This is the most important criterion.
- Frequency of posts: Blogs that feature multiple posts per week will score higher. This is a sign of the blogger’s commitment to blogging.
- Reader involvement: Blogs that have regular comments from readers are another sign of a healthy blog. In addition, the numbers of nominations for a specific blog play a part in this.
- Blog ranking: The number of other blogs that link to the nominated blog shows the value of the content. We’ll use accepted third-party blog ranking systems for this portion of the score.
Congratulations to the finalists! We’ll announce the winners here soon!
What do you think about these blogs? Leave your comments below.
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