Traditional

• Best External Publication (Print or Online): Are you publishing a print or online magazine or newsletter for your organization or client — one that captures attention, builds brand loyalty and grabs the readers from the start? We want to see it. We'll look at the quality of content, design and engagement with readers.
• Best Op-Ed Piece: Opinion pieces have been in the PR toolbox for as long as anyone can remember. They establish credibility for your clients and/or company, and they are powerful weapons in your branding arsenal. Pick your best pieces and send them to us.
• Best PR Presentation to Financial Analysts: Delivering a presentation to a financial audience is a craft in itself. Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of General Electric in the 1980s and 1990s, used to spend months perfecting his PR department’s presentation to Wall Street financial analysts. Have you had to prepare a similar presentation? We would like to take a look!
• Best PR White Paper: There are any number of ways you can score in this category. We’re not necessarily looking for eloquence, or elegance, or even unusual logical skills. Just a clean, informative white paper and you’ll be on your way to scoring high marks in this category.
• Best Product Launch: Tell us how your PR department or client blew away customers and the media with a new product launch. Describe the tactics and strategy and show us the outcome.
• Best Publicity Campaign: A publicity stunt can be worth a thousand words. It may directly or indirectly generate profits for your client, or it may just highlight your message. Either way, we'd like to see your stunt and find out what ideas inspired its creation.
• Best Speech: They seem so old-school, but a good speech is still the powerful PR tool it's always been. We know speechwriting, so we'll be looking at how you grab and keep the audience, your use of quotes, anecdotes and statistics. This is a category we encourage everyone to enter.
• Best Traditional News Release: Have you written a great press release, one that you're particularly proud of? We'd like to see it. Our panel of judges will look at everything: subject lines, headlines and body copy. Did you get the news upfront? Does your press release give your target audience everything they need to evaluate your story about your product?

Digital/Social Media

• Best Blog: It seems like blogging has been around forever. And there's a reason: Blogs remain one of the best avenues for engaging customers, prospects and delivering news. Send us links to blogs you've created for your company or client. Tell us how they’ve engaged readers and helped the organization grow and thrive.
• Best Electronic Newsletter: It's no secret that old-fashioned email newsletters are among the best marketing and PR tools—yes, even in the age of Facebook, Twitter and new, shiny social media. We want to see the newsletter you created for your company or client. When you write your synopsis (see our general instructions for entries below), tell us how it performed. Again, presentation and great content leads the list of qualities we'll judge.
• Best Email Pitch: As PR moves away from the traditional paper press release, reporters’ email inboxes are getting bombarded. Did your company create an email pitch that garnered an unusually large amount of attention? Was the copy concise and creative? Did you add a personalized touch? What made your email pitch magical?
• Best Mobile Strategy and/or Campaign: Mobile access to your organization's content is exploding. Show us your mobile strategy and campaigns, or those of your clients. We're looking for ease of use, clever and engaging ideas and applications and—oh yes— results!
• Best Online News Room: Twitter reached > 4000 Tweets per second at the beginning and end of President Obama's speech on May 1, 2011. Is social media the first outlet you turn to in the wake of breaking news? Show us how your company has changed the way it views the dissemination of information in the age of Tweets, blogs, Facebook statuses and Check-Ins. How has your content for your client changed in the transition from a traditional news room to an online news room?
• Best Podcast: Have you created a podcast for your client or company—one that entertains, informs and raises the visibility of the organization? We want to hear it.
• Best PR Video: Did you recognize that your product pitches weren’t getting the attention you wanted? Did you also recognize that a video is the perfect medium for a pitch—it’s visually stimulating, short and, if done with flair, sets you apart from your competitors. Did you keep your audience in mind when you sent out these video pitches—perhaps even personalizing them?
• Best Use of SEO: There are few things more important to an organization or client than Search Engine Optimization. Show us how you moved your website or microsite up page rankings through a sustained SEO campaign. What was the 'before' and what was the 'after'.
• Best Viral Campaign/Word of Mouth: The creators of most viral videos have no intention of their skyrocketing to astronomical amounts of exposure. Whether you created a client video knowing it had potential to see seven digits’ worth of views, or created one hoping to get a few hundred bites, we want to see it.
• Best Website Launch: Have you launched a new website for a client or your organization that has you bursting with pride? Send us the link and support your case for its blow-your-socks-off greatness. We'll be looking at design and presentation, content, of course, and simple, clear navigation.
• Best Facebook Page: 800 million users make Facebook is a critical part of nearly every organization or client's content and marketing strategy. Again, lay out your content and PR/marketing strategy and show us the results. We want to see it all.
• Best LinkedIn Campaign: It may get lost in the shadows of Facebook and Twitter, but LinkedIn is every bit as powerful a branding, reputation and content tool. Thousands of PR pros have used LinkedIn groups to create branded communities around their client's or company's market niche. What have you done for your client or company? Tell us in your synopsis. Don't hold anything back.
• Best Social Media Campaign: Here's your opportunity to show us a digital campaign you've created for your organization or client. We'll be looking at everything—content, social media integration, and results. What were your goals and how did you measure them? Put it all in the tightly written synopsis when you submit your entry.
• Best Social Media News Release: Innovative companies and agencies are increasingly relying on social media news releases containing links to podcasts, websites, videos and social media like Twitter and Facebook. Show us your best effort, and tell us the results.
• Best Use of Social Media in a Crisis: Putting out a fire is tough. While a social media fire is not as dangerous, you can’t exactly call 9-1-1. Did you transform your adrenaline into some sense of rationale and manage a crisis plan? Did you create an emergency Twitter account for your corporate client? Or perhaps a YouTube video to address your customers and the public? We want to see your work!
• Best YouTube Channel: Smart PR pros have created YouTube channels that teem with news, feature stories and video campaigns. As always, tell us your strategy and provide us with the link. Our judges will take it from there.
• Best Listening and Media Monitoring Program: Listening to your stakeholders—or your client's stakeholders—is at the heart of PR today. Social media now offers a megaphone to everyone with a Facebook page, Twitter feed or blog. Show us what you've done to put a listening program in place. What was your strategy? And how do you evaluate the results and react to them? How did your campaign make a significant difference for your organization or client?
• Best PR Research: The rise of the social Web has been an unmixed blessing for PR in one regard. It has forced a renewed emphasis on measurement and evaluation. And it has re-defined that third support of superior PR: Research. PR research is no longer limited to focus groups and cutting clippings and counting mentions from the three dozen U.S. big-city dailies. How has your company or client refined its PR research to measure the qualitative effect of your PR? We want to know!
• Best Use of Twitter: Twitter is an amazing tool for PR pros and their clients or companies. Twitter can help you build a following for your client or organization, handle a crisis or even deliver news. We'll look at your strategy and the content of your feed. Be sure to tell us how you've measured the results.

Annual Report

• Best Annual Report (Print): What could be more important to your company or your client than the annual report? If done intelligently, it can reveal the very heart and soul of an organization while imparting key information to stakeholders, employees and analysts. Of course, if you're publishing a print edition, we'll need to see it. So this is one category you'll want to send to us via snail mail. Be sure to check our mailing instructions below. Our sister website, Ragan.com, is crammed full of annual report experts who'll look at everything from graphical presentation to content.
• Best Annual Report (Online): Many companies are trimming budgets and relying instead on electronic annual reports. We want to see them, too. And this is the perfect category for submitting through our easy online portal.

Branding and Marketing

• Best Branding Campaign: Social media has made the whole world of markets one big word-of-mouth exercise. That’s why branding has gotten so much more attention over the last three years. Did you have an especially clever inspiration for your company’s product or services? Let us see it, please! Whether you built a brand from scratch, or created a new brand, we’re more than interested. We want to jump on your bandwagon.
• Best Cause-Related Marketing: Show us how you've promoted a single cause using clever and engaging PR. This could include a video, an event, a website or microsite, or an online or print communication.
• Best Content Marketing/ Brand Journalism: Entrepreneur.com named content marketing and brand journalism the #1 trend in B2B public relations and marketing today. Show us your best work for a client or your company that uses news and information to boost brand reputation and engender loyalty among your customers or prospects. These devices range from online newsletters to video channels and print publications.
• Best Event Marketing: As you know, an event can be extremely well-put together, but flop because of bungled publicity. That's where your superior effort comes in. Did you use social media, as well as traditional communications? Please share!

Community Relations/Special Campaigns

• Best Community Relations Campaign: Did you take a particular community service initiative under your wing? We want to see everything you produced: newspaper and magazine ads, posters, white papers, op-eds, letters to the editor, radio and TV advertising, direct mailings—all of it.
• Best Corporate Social Responsibility: Customers want to know your company is socially responsible. What have you done to spread this message and improve your organization or client's reputation?
• Best Public Service Announcement: We all know what a PSA is. We're looking for the most creative and successful social media, television, radio or online campaign.
• Best Fitness/Health Campaign: Subway and its spokesman, Jared Fogle, changed the way Americans viewed health and fitness campaigns. Did you engage in a campaign to bring awareness to a health or fitness issue? No matter how small or large-scale, we would like to see it!
• Best Green Initiative: This is one corporate fad that’s not going away, because it’s too closely associated with momentous changes in the earth’s air and sea. And it’s a fact that U. S. corporations set the example for the rest of the world. That one fact makes this category pivotal, and endlessly interesting. We want to hear in detail what your company has done to green itself, its workers and its community.

Crisis Management

• Best Crisis Management: “What does not kill us makes us stronger.” Is that true of your company or organization? Have you met and defeated a threat you had no control over and managed to strengthen yourself in the process? If so, show us and tell us. How well did you and your leaders improvise under extreme, unprecedented pressure?

Categories suggested by PR Daily readers:

• PR Rookie of the Year (Corporate): Restricted to PR reps in the industry for two years or less. Submissions can come from colleagues or managers. Use the synopsis to make your case. Be sure to include stories and achievements to win over the judges.
• PR Rookie of the Year (Agency): Same instructions as above. Use this category to recognize the most talented rookie on your staff.
• Best use of QR codes in a PR/marketing campaign: How did you put this easy and widely used technology to use in your organization or client's campaign? Give us the strategy, the details and the results.
• Best Executed Social Media Contest: Contests are all the rage on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites. Submit your best contest campaign and prove to us that it succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. Did it result in more 'Likes' on Facebook? Did it increase traffic to a client or your organization's website? Did it raise awareness about your company or product? What was your strategy and show us how you achieved it.
• Best Facebook Welcome Page: We're looking for clever uses of your Facebook Welcome page. Don't confuse this category with a Facebook Wall. The welcome page is the Default Landing Tab that you set for all the “non-likers” who come to your page. If someone Likes your page already, they will go to your wall. We're looking for knock-your-socks off Welcome pages that are so engaging that casual visitors just have to 'Like' you.
• Best Client of the Year: This is one of our favorites. PR agencies have great clients and — let's face it— the 'client from Hell.' Use your synopsis to show us why your favorite client deserves this award. The winner will be a client who shows realistic expectations (doesn't repeatedly ask you, 'when will I be on the Tonight Show?'); contributes great ideas to the PR campaign; helps the agency execute ideas efficiently and cleverly. The reader who suggested this category summed it up this way: "The relationship between individual people, not just the agency’s relation to the corporation they are working with, is key to communications success. Wouldn't it be great for those individuals who put so much faith in their agency teams (and go to bat for them within their own internal structures!) to get some recognition as individuals?"
• Best Infographic: We almost forgot about this category until a PR Daily reader suggested it. And we're glad she did. The award goes to the infographic that is so clearly and cleverly designed that it delivers its news quickly and is shared instantly on social and traditional media. Send us a link and tell us the outcome.
• Best Tweet of the Year: It's only 140 characters, but the right tweet can produce amazing outcomes. It can drive traffic to your organization or client's website, it can raise awareness about a campaign and send it viral, and it can alert the media to a major story you're pitching. Send us a tweet along with your synopsis showing us the results.
• Lifetime Achievement Award: Enter a colleague at your organization or agency who has demonstrated a long career of excellence in PR. Use your synopsis to persuade us of his or her amazing capabilities, management style and innovative leadership.
• Best 'Traditional Still Works' PR Campaign: We're inundated these days by social media tactics and strategies. But what about good, old-fashioned traditional PR? Submit an entry about a successful campaign that did not start or hinge on social media. Successful entries will pivot on the use of traditional, integrated public relations. The campaign could include news releases, events, television, press conferences and publicity stunts.
• Best Foursquare Campaign: Have you launched a vigorous foursquare presence for your company or client? Show us in your synopsis how it played out. What was your strategy and implementation? And, most important, what were the results?
• Best Corporate PR Team: It's a great feeling when your in-house PR team fires on all cylinders. The winning entry will show how the team worked together to pull off amazing campaigns, responded to crises and managed the Herculean task of delivering content to Twitter, Facebook and traditional media. Use your synopsis to prove to the judges that you have the best team in the industry.

Grand Prize

• Grand Prize PR Campaign of the Year: This is the big one. Submit your most successful campaign of 2011. Our judges will look at everything from your mission and goals, your strategy and tactics — and, of course the results. Winners in this grand prize category will be awarded 10 free registrations to any Ragan Communications conference in 2012 and 2013.