The world of social media and digital communication is changing faster than ever. How do you stay ahead of the pack? We’re in search of the best and brightest minds in the industry
PR Daily’s 2019 Digital Marketing and Social Media Awards will recognize forward-thinking work that capitalized on fleeting trends to create brand loyalists. We want to shine a light on the campaigns and projects that brought your organization or client attention on multiple platforms.
Submit the work that put your creative prowess on the map and prove that you’re an expert in the field.
Check out categories covering such topics as digital and social media activity, use of digital and social media, campaigns, use of specific social media platforms and, of course, our grand prize categories.
See a full list of categories and eligibility requirements, and read how to enter below.
Eligibility Requirements
These awards are open to in-house, agency and independent communication practitioners in the private, corporate, nonprofit and government sectors. Enter your work, the work of your organization or submit entries on behalf of your client.
Companies from around the world are welcome to enter as long as the entry is submitted in English.
Contact Brendan Gannon to find the perfect category for your campaign or project. You can call 312-960-4407 or email brendang@ragan.com
This year’s program is open to any work executed between Jan. 2, 2018, and April 5, 2019, inclusive.
Recognition
Each category winner will receive:
- A featured write-up in a Special Edition of Ragan.com
- An elegant trophy
- One complimentary registration to any Ragan event, webcast, or conference within 12 months of winning
The winners of the Grand Prize categories also will receive a one-year membership to Ragan Training —a premium online training library featuring hundreds of hours of the very best content from Ragan events. Find out more about the site here: https://ragantraining.com/
CATEGORIES
DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITY
Blog
Share how your blog became a vital part of your public relations strategy. How have you made sure that your content is aligned with your brand and features the most relevant information? Is the content sourced from experts? Do the visual elements surprise your audience? Include site traffic or other metrics and links to at least three blog posts you’ve created for your organization or client.
Contest or Game
You created an online contest or game to promote your brand. What social or digital channels did you use to promote it? What prize did the winner receive? Include metrics which highlight the number of participants or contestants. How did that increase brand loyalty or awareness?
Digital Product or Service Launch
Share your strategy for launching your product or service online. What platforms did you employ? What was your marketing plan? What were your goals and expectations and how did they match up with the results?
Live Chat, Stream or Online Hangout
Tell us how you engaged an unpredictable audience. Did you start a Twitter chat or a Facebook or Instagram Live stream? Was a different medium the secret to your success? Did you generate conversations in response to a crisis or were you crowdsourcing ideas from your audience? Show us those threads and streams. We want to see real, engaging conversations. One-time chats and regular discussions are both eligible.
Microsite or Custom Website
We’re looking for the cleanest, most valuable websites out there. Was your website created with a single purpose or does it serve as a hub that represents your entire organization? How does it beat your competition’s websites in design, organization, user experience and value? What features did you add to give it a unique, premium look and feel? Tell us the results you produced.
Podcast
You inspired an audience to listen up. Your podcast tells your brand’s story and publicizes your organization. What does your podcast teach or share? Tell us about your expectations and how they matched up with your listener count. How do you engage and motivate your listeners on multiple platforms? Share your strategy for generating a continuous conversation.
*NEW!* Social Listening and Real-Time Response
In order to understand your audience, you have to listen to it. Tell us about your social listening strategy and how you’ve been able to use that information to engage in real-time conversations with your audience. Is social listening a part of your online customer care strategy? Did it help you during a crisis? What tools do you use? Share examples and feedback that prove this strategy is working.
Video
How did you use video to enhance your PR? Tell us your vision for video as well as your execution. Did you share it on Instagram, on YouTube, in emails or at a live event? Were you seeking increased brand awareness or did you want to inspire action? Give us the details on how it increased engagement on your site or social platforms.
Visual Design
Why was visual design the right medium for the story you wanted to tell? Tell us about your goals and how your design met them. We want to see your best infographics, slide decks, photos, data visualization, web, mobile and social media content design. What were the results?
USE OF DIGITAL PR & SOCIAL MEDIA FOR …
Brand Awareness
Explain how you used social media platforms or digital PR to create a community of loyal customers. How did you turn followers into advocates for your brand? Tell us your goals, strategy and results. We want to see your flawless creative execution and the data to back it up.
Cause Advocacy
Tell us about a cause that was underrepresented in the media. How did you use digital communication to advocate for an important social issue? How did you get your employees enthusiastically on board? Did it help you raise money or awareness, or inspire others to get involved?
Community Engagement
You built relationships and discovered local tastemakers, influencers and leaders. How did you engage a community of people and help them develop an affinity for your organization? Tell us how you engaged a network of people using social and digital media. Please include posts, examples of interactions and statistics from your measurement.
Content Marketing and Brand Journalism
How did you develop a content strategy that expressed your organization’s expertise? Did you develop an online newsroom with up-to-the-minute updates and fresh takes on industry news? Tell us how you transferred this new stream of interesting stories to social media. Include examples and metrics.
Crisis Communication or Reputation Management
Communicating effectively during a crisis is essential. How did you use social media or other digital platforms to share an honest and transparent message? Why was this effective and what were the results?
Event Promotion
Share your secrets for promoting an event that everyone wants to attend. How did you build buzz and brand awareness using social media, video or contests to excite attendees? We want to know your event hashtag, attendee numbers and post-event results.
Employee Engagement and Recruitment
How did you use digital PR and social media to give your internal culture a makeover? Tell us how social media increased collaboration, encouraged new business ideas or bolstered recruitment efforts. Did your internal site redesign increase cooperation? Did your video or social media shine a light on what makes your organization’s culture unique? How did you use digital PR and social media to promote open positions to the best talent? We want to know how you engaged, retained and recruited employees.
CAMPAIGNS
*NEW!* Data-Driven PR Campaign
We want to see PR campaigns that are supported by data. Does your organization conduct its own research? How did you spin those numbers into a newsworthy story? Maybe your organization is qualified to chime in about a newly released research report from another organization. Tell us how you turned numbers into news and raised awareness about your organization.
Email Marketing Campaign
How did you re-imagine your email marketing strategy to get dramatic results? Did you promote a product, event or brand? What made it successful? We want to see a powerful, memorable, well-designed email that got the job done far beyond your expectations. Show us how you triumphed with the most common form of digital communication.
Health Care Marketing Campaign
How did you illustrate the talent and tirelessness of the health care marketing pros in your organization? Did you publish stories about research being done at your facility? Did you raise awareness about community health issues? Tell us how you used digital media to engage prospective patients and brand your health care organization’s practice in a field or discipline of medicine as one of the most trusted in your area.
Influencer Campaign
How did you work with digital influencers to increase brand awareness within your target audience? Tell us your strategy for finding the right tastemakers to represent your brand. What content did you collaborate on and what were the results?
Digital Marketing Campaign
We’re seeking marketing campaigns with strong digital elements. How did you make your brand or product’s presence known in the over-saturated online world? Send us the results of your killer online marketing campaign. The goals of your campaign should be clearly stated, and measures of success must be included.
Media Relations Campaign
Tell us how you collaborated with journalists and storytellers to get your brand’s message out there. Did you work with influencers, subject matter experts or academics to reach a larger audience? What publications were you able to place stories in? How did you make an extra push to establish relationships with journalists? Start with the goals of your campaign and tell us how you achieved them.
Multichannel Campaign
We want to see campaigns that performed well across several platforms. Why was your project best suited for more than one channel? Tell us your plan and explain which mediums made the most sense for your work. How did you alter your message for different platforms? How did you reach a broader audience?
PR Campaign
How did you use digital PR to inform audiences about your product or service? What were your campaign goals? Did it solve a problem or launch a new product? Tell us about your intended audience, creative vision, strategy, execution and results.
Social Media Campaign
You wanted to engage a specific audience, so you found them where they spend most of their time—on social media. Who did you target and what platforms do they use? Was this a multichannel campaign? Did you use video, text or photos to entice your desired audience? Tell us your plan, show us your content and give us data to back up your success.
Specialty Campaign
Did you launch a campaign aimed at a specific consumer group last year? How did your custom-made message strike a chord in that audience? Who did you reach—French bulldog owners in the Pacific Northwest? Yoga instructors? People named Cheryl? Tell us how you reached your ideal consumers, and how you tailored a message just for them.
Viral Campaign
How did your inspired concept go viral and get noticed by the entire organization, Web or world? Tell us how your digital campaign caught fire. If you really did go viral, either internally, nationally or globally, we want to know every detail of your viral secret.
USE OF…
How did you make use of the world’s largest social network for your client or organization? Tell us your strategy for using Facebook to share your message and create an engaged community. Tell us about the strongest elements of your Facebook page and how you use Facebook to promote products, services and your organization as a whole. How does your Facebook page enhance your PR and marketing strategy? Entries for this category do not need to focus on a specific campaign.
Your organization’s Instagram account speaks volumes about your brand’s aesthetic and who its customers are. How did you make yours stand out? Did you use Instagram to display and sell products, share an inside look at day-to-day operations or share user-generated content? What was your special Instagram strategy and what kind of results have you seen? We want to know how you used this popular visual platform to connect with your consumers.
*NEW!* Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories are an opportunity for your brand to show personality and share longer form content. How did you use Instagram Stories to enhance your social media presence this year? Did you create custom GIFs, use special templates or post videos to IGTV? Share your strategy and results.
Snapchat
You went on Snapchat to engage with your younger audiences in real time. Did your strategy include product demos, influencer takeovers or day-in-the-life employee profiles? How did your strategy help to increase brand awareness and followers on other accounts? Include screenshots of Snaps, saved videos and metrics.
Do you use Twitter to build a following for your client or organization, handle a crisis or deliver news? How do your tweets fit into your PR and marketing strategy? How do you use Twitter to interact with customers in real time? Entries for this category need not focus on a campaign. We want to see your most interactive, inviting Twitter accounts.
*NEW!* YouTube
Tell us how you used YouTube to connect with your audience. Did you post product marketing or demonstration videos? Did you create a video series that your audience came back for week after week? Tell us about the personalities that starred on your channel, and your overall strategy. Our program judge will evaluate your YouTube channel as a whole.
GRAND PRIZE
Digital PR Campaign of the Year
Your campaign demonstrated communications expertise, creativity and a distinct point of view. You created a digital campaign that delighted your audience and startled your competition. Tell us about it. Outline your goals, strategy, execution and results. The Campaign of the Year Award will honor the communicator, department or agency whose campaign caused a stir. Your concept must be groundbreaking and inventive.
Social Media Campaign of the Year
We want to know how you brought all the pieces together into your best social media campaign. The grand prize winner will go to an exceptional campaign that was stunningly executed on two or more platforms. Our judges will look for creativity, innovation, sound communication and, of course, data and metrics.
How To Enter
On the entry form, be sure to include a thorough synopsis explaining the purpose and scope of your project. We ask that the synopsis be at least 1,000 words (max: 1,250 words) and include the following sub-headings (when applicable):
- Goals
- Strategy and tactics
- Execution
- Evaluation: success, results or ROI
Be sure to follow the guidelines laid out in the category descriptions, as the judges will look for those elements when they select the winners.
You will be able to upload up to five additional documents to your submission. We encourage you to include press releases, design concepts, videos, analytics, testimonials and anything else you feel will give us a better sense of your project. Proprietary or internal information can also be attached and will not be shared with the public.
Supporting documents that can’t be uploaded to the system should be mailed to:
Brendan Gannon
Ragan Communications
10 S. LaSalle St., Suite 310
Chicago, IL 60603
Frequently Asked Questions
Why should you apply?
Our award programs help you measure the success of your work and prove the value of your contributions to your organization. You can set yourself apart in the industry as an expert, which will open doors throughout your career. As a winner, you’ll earn publicity for your brand across our websites and social media audiences, free training at a Ragan conference of your choice, a custom write-up about your campaign and a trophy.Who can enter?
Entries may be submitted by organizations worldwide. The only requirement is that entries be submitted in English. Most programs are open to in-house, agency and independent communication practitioners in the private, corporate, nonprofit and government sectors. Our Nonprofit PR Awards are reserved for nonprofit organizations.What does it take to be a winner?
Although each award program is unique, we look for top-quality work that shows clear, bold and creative ideas that benefit your business or client. Please provide metrics or media coverage that back up your claims, and share creative collateral such as videos, visual design or websites that were a part of your project. Please look at our past award winners to see what gets recognized and rewarded. We encourage you to submit the same campaign to multiple categories, if you feel they are relevant. Doing so increases your chances of winning.What are the entry requirements?
The entry form requires that you submit a synopsis explaining the purpose and scope of your project. The synopsis—1,000 to 1,250 words, please—should include the following sub-headings (when applicable):- Goals
- Strategy and tactics
- Execution
- Evaluation: success, results or ROI
Why are some deadlines extended?
We extend deadlines based on applicant needs and upcoming promotional opportunities.Who are the judges?
We currently work exclusively with an external judging partner. We are not looking for new judges for our programs at this time.When will I find out results?
We try to announce a list of finalists six to eight weeks after the close of the program. The announcement of the winners comes about three to four weeks after the announcement of the finalists. Each announcement will be made with a headline on our website, in our daily email newsletter and on our social media platforms. Emails notify entrants in advance of these announcements. As deadlines are extended, so are expected announcement dates.Additional Questions
Additional Questions
If you have any questions about the program or problems submitting your entry, please call Brendan Gannon at 312-960-4407 or email brendang@ragan.com.
Sponsorship Opportunities
Sponsorship Opportunities
If you are interested in sponsoring one of Ragan Communications’ award programs, please contact Hannah Lavelle at 312-960-4628 or email hannahl@ragan.com.
