Brit Blog Awards 2007: why no business blogging category?

Posted by: Krishna De | Posted on: February 22nd, 2007 | 4 Comments | Posted in: Business blogging, Ireland, Marketing offline

Today saw the launch of the Brit Blog Awards 2007 supported by Ask.com and Metro.co.uk.

Similar to the Irish Blog Awards, the Brit Blog Awards have been set up to recognise the best in British blogging and nominations come from the public.

The awards will cover the following categories:

• Technology blogs
• Sport blogs
• Fashion blogs
• Politics blogs
• Arts and Entertainment blogs
• Travel blogs
• Youth blogs (bloggers under 18 years of age)
• Weird and Wonderful blogs

Nominations are invited before the 22 March 2007 for the Brit Blog Awards and the judging panel will include one expert or person involved with the category and a representative from Metro.co.uk and Ask.com.

The blogs will be assessed against the following criteria:

• Standard of writing – the blog will be judged on the quality of the writing
• Design – interesting layout, easy and clear to read
• Regularly updated – at least twice a week
• Influence – does this blog set a trend or influence the news?
• Number of links – how many other blogs is this site affiliated with?

It is tremendous that there is now an awards for the best British blogs. However unlike the Irish Blog Awards they are seemingly less inclusive.

For example:

• according to the rules for the Brit Blog Awards 2007, you must be resident in the UK to enter – so any Brits who blog and are based outside the UK are not eligible to enter
• and surpisingly there is no awards for best business blog or blogs in the not for profit or voluntary sector.

Blogging is an incredible and cost effective tool both for organisations to building buzz about your brand and to engage stakeholders from clients, business partners, employees and the community.

Particularly in the case of small businesses or voluntary organisations with limited marketing budgets, business blogging enables companies to express their brand on the web without the investment and expense usually required for a professional website.

So let’s hope that the Brit Blog Awards 2008 will have a category to recognise tremendous British business blogs and blogs in the voluntary sector.

In the meantime, I’m glad I’m in Ireland where there is an extensive range of categories in the Irish Blog Awards and it didn’t matter that I don’t hold an Irish passport to be considered as a nominee.

You can see nominees from the Irish Blog Awards featured on the Seoige and O’Shea show here thanks to Redmum.