Let’s talk about the elephant in of the room – our Kickstarter campaign flopped hard. Does this mean that a live ceremony in 2011 is out of the question? No way! (Although that $15K would have been nice — a huge and heartfelt thanks to all those who pledged their financial support.) We’ve been fortunate to be able to keep the Awards going every year on a shoestring budget with no sponsors or outside financial help. However, without that support, it becomes difficult to grow and do new things with the Awards, like have a ceremony, or do a live stream, or offer prizes for every category. A big thanks to our media partner BlogWorld & New Media Expo – if you’re out in Vegas in October, look for our logo there. Also, thanks to Jonnice Slaughter of Chatterbox Publicity for her press work and helping secure a prize partner. Speaking of prize partners, thanks to Fourblend, Blogging While Brown, and The Kenny Burns Show. Seriously, big thanks to them — companies that get what we’re doing and help support what we do are amazing. And hopefully next year, we’ll have more to add to their ranks.

With regards to sponsorship, we do have a sponsorship coordinator that has been actively pursuing leads for months now, and the process for finding sponsors continues. Hopefully we’ll have great news to announce by the end of the year. We have even added a PayPal donate button to every page; 100% of the proceeds will go directly to the development of the Black Weblog Awards. If you have a service or product that you would like to get in front of the Black Weblog Awards audience, contact Brandon Sheats at brandon [at] blackweblogawards dot com.

NOMINATIONS & VOTING

This year has been the smoothest year thus far in terms of nominations and voting, and the higher turnout numbers reflect that as well. We had to make a somewhat last minute switch to Wufoo for our voting, which you may recall we also used back in 2006. There are some limitations to the system, but overall, it was nothing major that affected the cadence of the Awards. We didn’t have the social media integration that we had last year since we had to change our voting system, but hopefully, we’ll be able to bring that back in 2011.

There was also the usual fuss about the winners – the popular vote winners and the judges’ vote winners. We’ve been flirting with the idea of cutting out the popular vote and switching to just a judging panel, but some things would have to fine-tuned in order to make that happen. However, the popular vote could also use a bit of tweaking as well. Our original plan, if we were to have a live show — was to have a more stringent judging panel, take nominations from the public, and perhaps have some sort of “people’s choice” award. Will we do that for next year? It really depends on if we have the resources to put on a live show. Right now though, voting and nominations are good. If you didn’t get in your votes or nominations this year, then you need to subscribe to our email newsletter so you get the latest news on when we begin in 2011. Don’t ask us now, because all we’ll say is “sometime in 2011″. More than likely though, nominations will begin in June 2011, end near the end of July 2011, and you’ll have the whole month of August 2011 to vote for the finalists. When you look at other blog awards, we probably have the longest nomination and voting periods to accommodate as many people as possible. Remember when you only had two weeks to nominate then two weeks to vote?

CATEGORIES

This year, we had 36 categories. Was it enough? Based on Twitter and Facebook responses, no. We got lots of suggestions, such as splitting up the Best Fashion or Beauty Blog category into two separate categories, having a category just for men, one just for women, one for book reviewers, one for book authors, one for online magazines…and those are just the ones I can recall off the top of my head. At this rate, we’ll hit 40 categories for next year, but that’s only if we don’t eliminate any categories. As we mentioned in a previous post, some of our categories this year were not very popular with the voting public; however, keeping them showcases the diversity of the Black blogosphere. Trust me, if we cut out the categories which didn’t get a lot of support, we’d only have 4-5 categories left! Here’s another thing to mark on your calendars: we always ask for new category suggestions in March. All your suggestions will be looked at then, so anything sent before then will just be put on the shelf until later (whether through email, Facebook, or Twitter).

THE FUTURE

We stepped up our game this year on the social media end in large part to our amazing intern Stefanie. The extra help really let us use our time more wisely to site improvements (notice all the new user-supplied content?), forging partnerships, and seeking out sponsors. As you can see, we’re trying to grow, and we need your help and support to make that happen. The fact that we are still keeping this going all these years is a real testament to the work we’re doing and the community we’re representing and showcasing.

Thanks to all of this year’s winners, to our judges, to our media and prize partners, and to the voting public for keeping the Black Weblog Awards going strong!

For the rest of the month, we will conduct our vote audit, and we will announce the finalists on August 1.

Popular blogs are popular. We introduced the judging panel and the Black Weblog Awards Hall of Fame to counteract this. The Hall of Fame particularly does this by taking blogs which have won over the years to be “retired” for a particular category.

Nominees are a different story. They are chosen by the public and voted on by the public. So if the question is “why are the same blogs nominated every year”, then the bigger question is “why are you only nominating the same blogs”? The finalists are selected from the top 3-5 most nominated blogs, and the rest of the blogs just didn’t receive enough nominations to make it to the finalist round. It’s the classic long tail phenomenon. See the graph below.

So while there may have been blogs of better quality (which is totally subjective) that are not finalists, it still boils down to popularity for the popular vote. And that popularity is based on those voters who have nominated blogs. (The way we choose categories is also tangentially related to this; the more people vote in a particular category, the better chances are of it coming back next year. Check this post for more info.)

If your blog (or a blog you liked) wasn’t a finalist, ask these questions:

• Did the blog owner know they were nominated? Even though we’ve been doing this for six years, there’s still a lot of bloggers who have never heard of the BWAs. If you nominated a blog, do the blog owner a solid and e-mail them to let them know.
• Did the blog owner campaign hard enough for votes? Good content speaks for itself, but it can be hard to find and even harder to market depending on your methods.
• Did the blog owner want to win? We have had people boycott their nominations in the past.

I hope this helps clear up any ambiguity. Comments?

This post was suggested via Skribit. Have something you want us to discuss? Click the “Suggestions” box in the top right section of this page and let us know!

OPTION 1: Go to the Black Weblog Awards website (http://blackweblogawards.com) and click on the “Enter Today!” button at the top of every page.

OPTION 2: Go to the Black Weblog Awards website (http://blackweblogawards.com) and click on the “Enter Today!” link at the bottom of every page.

OPTION 3: If you’re on Facebook, go to our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/blackweblogawards) and click on the bit.ly link right under the profile picture on the page.

OPTION 4: If you’re on Facebook, go to our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/blackweblogawards) and click on the voting graphic in the left column on the page.

OPTION 5: If you are on Twitter, go to our Twitter profile (http://twitter.com/blkweblogawards) and click on the bit.ly link in our Bio.

OPTION 6: From any web browser, desktop or mobile, type in http://vote.blackweblogawards.com.

The verbiage and graphics for some of these options may change, but while the Black Weblog Awards are active (June 1 – August 31), these locations and URLs are still valid. Hopefully, this will clear up any confusion. Any future inquiries which match the title of this post will be given this link. Easy and simple.

For information contact:
Maurice Cherry, 404-425-9890
press@blackweblogawards.com

Atlanta, GA. June 1, 2010 — Today, the Black Weblog Awards begins their call for entries for the 2010 awards season. The awards were created by Atlanta new media company 3eighteen media, and recognize Black bloggers in 35 different categories. This year, based on popular demand, three new categories have been added: Best Blog Network, Best Film Blog, and Best Travel Blog.

“This year is going to be the largest Black Weblog Awards ever. With these new categories, we are branching out into more areas of content to showcase the diverse and rich areas of expertise of African-Americans in the blogosphere,” said Maurice Cherry, founder and chairman of the Black Weblog Awards. “We have grown leaps and bounds since starting in 2005, and this year is no exception; paying tribute to the level of knowledge out there in the community is our mission.”

Submissions will be accepted at www.blackweblogawards.com beginning today through July 25. Finalists will be announced on August 1, and voting for the finalists will take place until August 31. Winners will be announced on September 3.

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About The Black Weblog Awards

The Black Weblog Awards was founded in 2005 to give recognition to Black bloggers (and those of the African diaspora) which were largely overlooked by other Internet award events. The Black Weblog Awards is an international showcase with participants from over 90 countries and stands out as the most widespread Internet award event for Black bloggers. To date, the Black Weblog Awards has recognized nearly 180 blogs in over 30 categories, and has also been featured in several mainstream and online media outlets, including NPR. Winners of the Black Weblog Awards have also went on to appear in other media outlets, like MSNBC, the Huffington Post, BET, the Washington Post, and many others. For more information, visit blackweblogawards.com

About 3eighteen media

3eighteen media is a new media firm which provides web design, e-mail marketing and consulting services for small businesses, non-profit organizations, public relations firms, and start-up companies. 3eighteen media is also behind the Black Blogging Rockstars media portal at SXSW, and the Black Weblog Awards. For more information, visit 3eighteenmedia.com.

Need a direct link? Try this: http://vote.blackweblogawards.com

We even have a short link for Twitter (this is listed on our profile): http://bit.ly/14U8Jk

You can also grab these links, as well some promotional banners at http://www.blackweblogawards.com/promote. Link them on your site and show your support.

Nominations end on July 25!

Make sure to check out the new categories for this year, read the rules, and spend some time checking out the past winners – your blog could be among this elite group!

NOMINATIONS & VOTING
This year, we switched up how we did the nominations and voting so we could allow for more time for the public to submit their blogs and more time for people to come to an informed decision on who to vote for. Did it help overall? Not really. Voting went smoothly using last year’s system of checking ballots by e-mail address and IP address, and we all but eliminated the issues with people not being able to vote if they’re on a public connection since people could nominate their own blog AND had a unique nomination URL for their blog. We were even able to integrate Twitter into the mix and allowed people who voted to tweet their vote once completed. Pretty sweet, huh? For next year though, we have come to a deliberate decision concerning how we will do nominations and voting, and it’s a necessary move for us (right now) so we can grow bigger and better. For the 2010 Black Weblog Awards (and perhaps beyond), we will move to a more curated system of blog selection for winners. This means that people will still be able to nominate blogs, but rather than having the public vote for all of the categories, we will have our panel of judges choose. In short, we are eliminating the Popular Vote. Well…sort of. We will have a “people’s choice” type of category where the public will vote for that winner, and it will not be chosen by the judges. You may be wondering why we are coming to this decision; well, check out the end of the post for more information. We have decided to hold off on this for now.

CATEGORIES
The categories, the categories…I think this year, we really hit the sweet spot in terms of the categories being representative of blogs out there. But like we do every year, we are going to look at the popularity of categories and weigh that with the public voting pattern in order to determine what to keep and what to add on for next year. In order to coincide with our future plans though, we are going to try and keep the number of categories to around 30-35. When we start the planning process next year and ask for public input, please let us know what categories you’d like to see!

THE FUTURE
Since the Awards have started in 2005, it’s been a completely bootstrapped operation. Money is paid out of our personal pockets to keep the hosting running, pay for prizes (well, in 2005, at least), market the Awards, and basically keep this thing going strong. For the longest time, it has been a one-man operation in terms of finances. We ask for donations and sponsorships every year, but have only received one financial donation during the tenure of the Awards (and that was for $100). Keeping the Awards alive on a shoestring budget every year is now starting to take its toll, particularly in this economic climate. Simply put, we can’t grow like we want because of the lack of resources and support. So for this year, we will be actively seeking out financial sponsors (we’ve brought on a sponsorship person) so we can take the Black Weblog Awards to the next level. We need to attract dollars to do the things we want to do, like have physical awards, an actual awards ceremony, and get big media coverage. In short, we have to step our game up. So that’s what we’re going to do! We have some exciting announcements coming up for next year, so stay tuned to the blog. Sign up for our e-mail newsletter as well so you can get the news as we receive it!

As always, we welcome all suggestions, so let your voice be heard! Change is in the air, and here at the Black Weblog Awards, it’s no different. Your input is important to us.

So again, thanks to the winners, thanks to our judges, thanks to our programmer Markus and Black Web 2.0, and thanks to you, the people, for helping to make the Black Weblog Awards even better for this year.

You can also catch us online at Twitter and Facebook (we have a fan page and a group) for more information or to talk about the Awards.

Here are a few of the changes with this new site:

- Better integrated blog: The blog has always been available, but it’s been tucked off in the navigation. And if we’re the Black Weblog Awards, why not go ahead and put our blog front and center? The Black Weblog Awards blog is now better integrated on the front page of the site so you can easily check out what’s going on with the Awards as well as other news. We plan to have guest authors from time to time from some of the leading voices in the Black blogosphere.

- New nominating/voting system: We finally decided to lift that “you can’t nominate yourself” restriction from the rules. Blog owners can now nominate themselves in any of our categories through our new process. They are given a unique nomination link they can use to get their readers to vote for them in their nominated categories up until July 24. Then, we’ll take the top five nominated blogs in each category and those will be the finalists. Beginning August 1, you’ll be able to vote for finalists in those categories, and finalist voting will wrap up on August 31. (Yep, you get the whole month to vote for the finalists.) Winners will be announced on September 4.

As we keep building and growing out the Black Weblog Awards, we’ll keep you informed of what’s going on via the blog, so stay tuned!