It's a Date!

One question we get asked a lot, particularly so over the last six to eight months is, “What’s happening with award dates and are awards still being run?”

Yes, awards are still very much running and yes, award dates are bouncing around all over the place! Why? Well for many award organisers they’re juggle running awards with when / if they can actually have a physical live awards ceremony versus holding a virtual awards ceremony. That all said, most have now decided to go with the flow and if a live awards ceremony is possible, fantastic, and if it isn’t they’ll go ahead with the virtual version and work even harder connecting their finalists together whilst shouting about their successes across the media including social media, of course.

So what to do? For us it’s full steam ahead but with a very close eye on award opening and deadline dates. We know there’s a lot of movement around dates so we just keep an extra close eye out for our clients and the awards that we know are of interest to them.

Our top three tips for navigating a fast changing awards landscape in 2021 are as follows;

1. Draft yourself out an Awards Plan with the dates know about right now. Keep your awards selection relevant to the goal(s) you want to achieve by entering (and winning!) awards and carefully select your categories
2. Express interest in the awards you’re interested in as soon as you can. For many award organisers this is via a short and simple form on their website. For those who don’t have this facility yet or who are still showing last year’s information, email the organisers and make contact ASAP! You will then be on their list and they’ll be in touch with you as soon as they have more information to share… including dates / changes to deadline dates etcetera!

• A great advantage to doing this is that you will often also be able to start interacting with others in their community which means profile building opportunities!! Take advantage of them, respectfully of course, wherever you can

1. Update your draft Awards Plan as dates change ensuring that you’re still writing your draft award nominations at least two weeks out from any known (or suspected) award deadlines. This means you’ll have plenty of time to make amends, chase missing information, update your client testimonials or have a good friend / business buddy / mentor proof read your entry. If an awards organiser moves their deadline date back it is annoying but you will still be ahead of the game time-wise so use that time carefully to ensure you hone your award entry and submit something truly special

… and don’t forget we’re running our FREE Five Day Awards Challenge on our Facebook Group which you can access here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theawardspeople

Packed full of top tips and hints as well as a daily challenge to help you move forward with your award ambitions, one lucky participant will run are all new Awards Blueprint 6 week online course for FREE for just taking part in our Awards Challenge! Valued at ￡1,675 that’s as good a reason as any to enter!! See you there?! x