How to Survive Blog Awards

You know what I'm talking about.

"Entries for [charity/organisation]'s blogger of the year are now open! Nominate your favourite here!"

I've seen them for mental health bloggers, beauty bloggers, fashion bloggers, Mummy bloggers and just about every other type of blogger there is. If you haven't seen one of these types of awards, then I'm guessing you're not on Twitter!

Every so often on Twitter, someone will tweet about an award, usually with the lines 'Nominate your favourite here! Am I your favourite?! [wink face]'. Alternatively, if somebody does get nominated, then every single one of their tweets is 'OMG! I've been nominated for [charity] blog award! You can vote for me here, if you like! [smiley face]'

I don't think I'm the only one who gets ever so slightly annoyed with these sorts of awards. I'm sorry, but they are not awards for the best blogger, they are awards for the most popular blogger. I've seen various blogger awards where someone has won with a mediocre blog, which is full of spelling and grammatical mistakes. I'm not just talking about someone who mixes up your and you're, I'm talking about blogs witch reed leyk this and ur not sure if the righter has fallin asleep on teh keebored!!!!!!!!

Then further down the list, there are the bloggers who aren't as popular. However, these blogs can be absolutely amazing. There are few or no spelling and grammar mistakes, and any mistakes are usually minor grammatical errors or the result of an overly keen autocorrect. The blogs are full of incredible articles, stories or artwork, but they end up coming really far down the list. They come so far down it, that they don't celebrate their achievement, feeling embarrassed at ranking so low when the 'talent' above them was so poor.

Don't get me wrong though. There are times when the winner does have a worthy blog. I have seen winners with amazing blogs and seen those who are far down the list with mediocre blogs. It does feel like justice when that happens. So if you're a blogger who sees these sorts of popularity contests awards and are as fed up with them as me, here's what to do.

If you absolutely don't want to be nominated, make sure you put this on your blog, Twitter page and every other website you are on. If you're not bothered whether or not you're nominated, do nothing. Absolutely nothing! Don't tweet about it, blog about it, share any links to it and avoid all conversations about the award. If you do want to be nominated, then tweet, blog, share links and tell everyone you do want to be nominated! However, I tend to avoid these sorts of things so please don't ask me to nominate/vote.

I have got into the spirit of awards in the past, but after being nominated for one a while back, I realised how horrible it was to actually wait and see if you had enough nominations to get to the voting stage. I found my emotions heading straight back to the way they were in high school. I was unpopular in high school. A geek. A loser. Even though I was good at sports, I was always picked last in teams. The most shameful thing in our school was to be picked on by kids in the year below you. I was picked on by kids who were three years below me. I find it horrible to be back to popularity contests as an adult, and I avoid them like the plague.

So if you come across an award like this where nominations and votes are counted and the most popular one wins, I beg you, DO NOT NOMINATE ME! However, if it's one where writing talent and not popularity is judged and you desperately want to nominate me, please let me know before you do anything and tell me about the award!

I was honoured at being nominated for that 'popularity' award a while back, but at the same time, I found it stressful. If you are one who feels the need to make nominations in certain awards, please understand that I will not be offended if you do not vote for me!

Note: These are just my personal views. If you are one who loves these sorts of awards and asks for nominations, I don't think any less of you. I just personally hate those sorts of awards and tend to avoid Twitter when someone I know has been nominated. Please don't get offended by what I have written.