The OpenWater Blog

Do You Know the 5 Golden Rules of Engagement for Awards?

Engagement is a big buzzword for organizations, particularly when it comes to their members or customers and, of course, their awards programs. It’s something that’s constantly being increased, measured, encouraged, and worked for.

And as we all know, it’s extremely important for your awards program as well. After all, without engagement your organization wouldn’t be.

Think about this: your organization is made up of members and customers, and if they aren’t active within your organization, you don’t have much of a community at all (and you certainly don’t have a community that will want to participate in your program).

This means that engagement is the key element that keeps your organization (and awards program) alive and well. So when your awards season is underway it’s important keep your potential entrants interested and active throughout the entire awards process.

Easier said than done? That’s why we’ve compiled five golden rules to follow to help keep engagement high throughout your program.

The 5 Golden Rules of Engagement

1. Make Sure Your Awards Are Something Members Care About – One way to keep engagement running strong is to focus your program on a topic that your members care deeply about. This means that if your organization is focused on music, specifically classical music, you want your awards program to reflect this.
2. Maintain a High Level of Transparency Throughout the Awards – By providing ample information on your awards website, including who your judges are, their judging criteria, and a timeline of events, you can maintain a high level of transparency that establishes trust with members who are hesitant to get involved. You might even want to have an outside party audit your awards process to demonstrate fairness to those who might not otherwise enter a submission.
3. Tie the Awards Into Your General Marketing Strategy – Marketing is a core element of your awards program, especially when you want your program to stay fresh in the minds of all your members. You can market through social media to generate consistent excitement while also subtly reminding entrants of how much time they have left to participate.
4. Minimize the Barrier to Entry – Engagement dies where the barrier to entry begins. Sometimes, programs have a complicated or unnecessarily lengthy entry process that causes some applicants to abandon their submissions or possibly never get started. In these cases, you might want to consider adopting an online system that tracks entries and simplifies the process for any member that wants to submit an entry.
5. Make the Awards Public – People enter your awards program to be recognized for their hard work. As such, making your awards public, showing off winners through your marketing, throwing a noteworthy awards gala, and honoring your winners within your industry is vital.

Engagement is a simple concept with a high level of significance for your program. As a result, it’s vital to adopt the five golden rules of engagement to ensure that when you want to increase submissions and maintain members long after your awards program ends, you can do just that.

Miriam Hancock

Miriam Hancock
Miriam is the Marketing Coordinator for OpenWater. When she isn't writing and designing content she paints and cooks for her own personal blog.

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