Effects of a blog award

Something got me thinking this Monday.

Some weeks ago Swedish digital communications agency Daytona announced a blog award with the following three categories:

• Marketing (Marknadsföring)
• Media (Media)
• Trends & Web Services (Trender och webbtjänster)

As previously mentioned, this blog was nominated in the marketing category, which I think has been very inspiring.

On Monday, the voting started, with the twist that people can follow the results real time. Of course this spurred a lot of activity among most nominated bloggers, with some serious fishing for votes; “vote for me”-blog posts, microblogging messages, facebook pleas in the status updates and on and on.

This also really got me thinking. These awards must be great for increasing attention and awareness for Daytona. It would be very interesting to see some stats on number of visitors these days, compared to normal.

And, compared to a stunt made by Belgian agency So Nice with their youchosewefire.be – where the agency’s clients could pick who of the employees should be fired, I think Daytona has gotten the attention and awareness in a lot more positive way. Whether this effect is intentional or not doesn’t really matter to me. I hope these awards will help lift these categories higher, since there hasn’t been an award for these in Sweden before.

The more I think about it, the smarter I think it is.

First of all, who do they reach with this award? Well, once again, the three categories for the awards are: Marketing, Media and Trends & Web services.

People writing about these topics are of course some of the most interesting ones for Daytona to reach out to, as potential employer or potential supplier for example. In addition, this is of course a good way to get tips about blogs to keep an eye on for a digital communications agency to stay updated.

Second, open voting strongly incentivises people to go fishing for votes. And how do they do it? Well, we have seen posting on blogs, microblogging and facebook updates etc. This spreads the message about the awards further, and of course increases awareness for Daytona.

And who do these incentivised posts reach? Well, a lot of people with an interest in what the bloggers write about, that is, within marketing, media, trends and web services! Maybe some marketing managers who might be looking for a digital communications agency? Who knows.

Currently, 1839 votes have been cast, and these people are probably to a very large extent within the exact right target groups for Daytona, in both ways mentioned above.

Once the voting draws to a close, I guess there might be increased activity among the top-tier blogs – the ones who have a chance to win. These are, presumably, the most influential ones, with a larger audience, which will then be exposed to the message repeatedly. Daytona might be able to grab a “top of mind”-positon.

I have previously written about context and virality. In this case, the context is perfect. The bloggers write about the topic in which they have been nominated. Their readers are also very interested, so potential for viral spread within this environment is pretty high. However, being so contextual, it will have a hard time to spread much outside this environment, except maybe for close friends and family. But then it is for other reasons than the content itself.

In what other ways do you think this has been great for Daytona, or maybe why it hasn’t? Intentional or not, it seems to me that Daytona has a good grip on how to connect in the new media landscape.

Two interesting things are that voting (especially in the marketing category, with more nominated blogs) resembles a power-law distribution a lot. And also, I expect we will see an even stronger preferential attachment to the blogs with more votes, over time. I can immediately think of two reasons why. Let me hear yours!

Feel free to comment on any- and everything!

You are now just one click away from picking your favourite blog in one, two or all categories.

For English speakers: Pre-selected is “Ingen åsikt” which means “No opinion”. Once you have voted (click “Rösta”), make sure you click the link in the email you get to confirm the vote. And do provide a correct email address.

Thanks to Anton, who thinks this blog is worth a vote! =) I don’t have any real hopes of winning, after just four months of blogging in on this blog, but it would of course be nice with a vote. Anton is also the gentleman who nominated my blog back in December. If you don’t know what to pick in Trends & Web Services, I can recommend his blog. In the same category as my blog, I can recommend for example JMW, where I work and also blog, but probably a bit too seldom. And in the Media category, I recommend Media Culpa which by the way is also in English.

Phew, that was long…