If you don’t have the right tools, organizing an online award show voting might seem – rightly – like quite a challenge unless of course, you’re an experienced event organizer. However, as a total beginner, where do you start? How do you put the competition together? What tools will you need? Who will vote and how? And where will you find your the nominees? These and dozens of other questions might be running through your head as you try to picture your online awards. If you’re looking to recognize achievements and big personalities then you’re in the right place. Today, we take you through some useful tips and tricks. We also share examples of how other brands virtually presented the nominees and let the public have their vote with an online voting contest.
7 Keys to Choose an Award Show Voting Tool
Don’t start planning your award voting without reading these tips. They will help you determine which tool you need and how to approach the campaign.
Key 1: Provide Each Candidate With a Unique Link to Share and Gather Votes
A unique link for each candidate helps promote their entry and maximizes the contest’s visibility. To achieve this, it should be a requirement that each candidate has an exclusive link, and the means to easily obtain it and share it. Additionally, their supporters should also be able to share this link effortlessly.
It’s crucial that shared content be engaging. Most social networks, like Facebook, Instagram, or X, as well as messaging apps like WhatsApp or Telegram, display a preview of the link. This preview should include key information about the candidate, such as the photo or video to vote for, along with basic information. This will motivate their contacts to click on the link, taking them directly to the candidate’s entry, and vote for it.
It’s also advisable for the contest administrator to have tools to easily send the nominees their unique links and automate actions, such as encouraging voters to share the entry they voted for. Thus, generating the viral effect every administrator aims for.
You can test how this sharing system works with this DEMO of a photo contest with voting.
Key 2: Voters must identify themselves and register in the Award Show Voting
While it would be ideal for users to vote anonymously, this is not a viable option for serious online voting awards, as the main challenge is minimizing fraud. In the online world, where there is no control over who will vote, dishonest practices are common. The first line of defense is identifying voters through a registration process.
Registration can be as simple as asking for the user’s name and email, along with their consent to the privacy policy. You can also request additional information, such as a phone number or age, and make registration easier by offering social login options via Facebook or Google.
Additionally, it is always a good idea to reward users for their vote, for example, by holding a prize draw among all participants who have registered to your award show voting.
Having the voter’s email address and consent allows sending an automated email after voting to thank them for their participation, remind them of the unique link for the candidate they voted for, and encourage them to ask for more votes, thus generating a viral effect.
Key 3: Fraud control is a must in an award show voting tool
Fraud control is the most important aspect of any online voting contest. If there is a significant prize, it’s likely that some users will attempt fraudulent actions that wouldn’t be possible in an offline environment. Online voting can raise suspicions due to the existence of vote-buying websites, vote-exchange forums, creation of invalid email accounts, bots, etc.
Fortunately, there are mechanisms against fraudulent actions. This is why a registration form is so important, as it allows to apply fraud control techniques, such as email verification, blocking temporary emails, detecting suspicious IPs, controlling device frequency, and identifying patterns of vote-buying or vote-exchanging online, among others.
Additionally, a voting system should include analysis tools and alerts during the voting period to proactively address potential threats. A useful tip is to include a clause in the contest’s legal terms that allows the administrator to remove votes or candidates deemed fraudulent.
Learn more about the Easypromos’ fraud control system.
Key 4: Hide vote counters and rankings in your online award show voting
An effective technique to minimize fraud is to hide the vote counter or ranking. If candidates cannot compare themselves to others, they won’t know how much effort is needed to secure more votes, which reduces the temptation to engage in fraudulent practices. A good idea is to keep the vote counters visible and hide them in the last three days of the voting period.
Another option to minimize fraud is not to select the final winner through popular vote, but rather to have the popular votes determine the top three finalists, with a jury selecting the winner.
Key 5: Enabling daily voting frequency securely is key
Allowing users to vote once a day is an effective strategy to increase visibility for the contest. This daily voting frequency motivates users to return to the contest, generating more visits, more shared links, and therefore, more virality and visibility.
Key 6: Categories and stages system
Many award show voting contests include multiple categories or stages, which helps extend the event over time and thus gain more visibility. Categories also allow for multiple winners. It is essential that the contest can independently manage each category to simplify administration. Each category should have its own start and end dates, voting system, and ranking. Additionally, the system should allow for easy management of its stages, showing previous results, such as in contests with semifinal and final rounds.
A great example is the following case study: a television contest where viewers vote for the most beautiful town in the region. The region is divided into provinces, and users vote weekly for the towns in their province, eventually selecting the best town from each province and, ultimately, the prettiest town in the entire region.
Key 7: Voting tool must showcase all the strengths of the candidates
In an awards contest, it’s crucial for candidates to present their best selves. As the organizer, you should provide all the tools to highlight the entries. Each entry should be able to include videos, photos, documents, social media links, and other elements that best showcase the candidates.
Main objectives of your award show voting action
Before creating your voting system, clearly define the objectives of your campaign:
- Increase brand visibility and recognition by organizing an awards competition as a PR initiative to capture media attention.
- Collaborate with sponsors to reach a broader audience.
- Strengthen brand values by rewarding members of an online community, company employees, or even students.
- Generate new leads and gather data by hosting a voting contest on a topic that interests your target audience.
Learn about these real award show voting examples
Once you have your main objective for this campaign clear, you can easily set up the voting tools on Easypromos. Let’s take a look at some examples of how these voting systems have been created.
Choosing the right application for your online awards is the key to success. You must think about all the advantages and disadvantages that different apps might bring. However, it all depends on the dynamics of the contests that you wish to launch:
- You already know the nominees – if you already have the list of potential winners, then all you need is a voting application. You can use the Easypromos Online Voting Contest to demonstrate and display all candidates and ask your online community to vote for their favorite nominee. Public Lands Alliance invited their audience to choose the best innovative product, publication, or public engagement program.
After entering the online awards contest page, the voters saw all nominees. All they had to do was vote for their favorite.
- You want the public to nominate their colleagues – if you’re still looking for possible winners ask your social media followers to nominate their family, friends, workmates, neighbors, or even themselves. Invite them to propose their candidacies through the Easypromos Photo Contest app. Once you have a list of nominees, run it by the public and let them choose the winner of your online awards.
Here’s an example of the 2024 Romanian Visual Awards. The competition rewards the best Romanian photographers in a variety of categories like landscape, wildlife, analog, etc. The ease of participation made the contest a resounding success with more than 1.300 participants and over 1.500 participating projects.
Did you know that the prevent fraud control system is reliable and anti-fraud? We developed an advanced system that prevents bad practices when it comes to voting contests.
Attract candidates and voters with attractive prizes and incentives
As you probably already know, the prize is the number one motivator for users to participate in a giveaway or promotion. The same rule applies when creating an online voting campaign. So, if you wish to reach a broad audience and attract as many participants and voters as possible, encouraging participation is key to the success of your campaign.
But what’s the best prize? It should appeal to your target audience and be relevant to your industry or business. Offering your products or discount coupons always works, but high-tech gadgets and unique experiences are also commonly given away.
Here’s an example from the brand Dos Anclas and their recipe video contest. To encourage user voting, they raffled off a bundle of their products.
Online voting to follow up an offline action
Another great example is this action by El Ingenio Shopping Center, which organized a casting to find three families to star in their upcoming fashion campaigns. Participating families had to visit the mall and take a photo at the campaign’s branded photocall. The shopping center then uploaded all the photos to a microsite, allowing the public to vote and choose the winning family. This dynamic is an excellent way to engage customers in key business decisions.
Are you ready to launch your own online awards contest? We hope we have helped and it’s all a bit more clear than before! But don’t worry if you still have some questions, you can always contact us via our Online Chat – our customer support team is always ready to help and assist.
