Jan 27, 2014 / News

Nominate a Favorite Blogger (or Yourself!) for BlogHer’s Voices/Photos of the Year

Did you read or see something jaw-dropping on a blog this year, or publish something you’re particularly proud of? Why not nominate it as one of BlogHer’s 2014 Voices or Photos of the Year? BlogHer recognizes up to 100 bloggers, and will select twelve to read their work aloud during the BlogHer annual conference-slash-10th anniversary celebration.

Visit BlogHer for full details and an FAQ. Here are the basics:

blogher14Who: Any blogger you love — or yourself. For Photos of the Year, you can nominate any images published publicly on a social network, like Instagram. You’re also free (and encouraged) to nominate yourself. It’s not just for women, either: any blogger can be nominated, regardless of sex.

When: Nominations are open until February 28th.

What: Blog posts and photos should fall into one of the following categories:

For Voices of the Year: Op-Ed, Humor, Heart, or Exploration.

For Photos of the Year: Slice of Life, Faces/Friends/Family, Nature, and (or course) Selfies.

Not sure if a post qualifies? Check out a fuller description of each category, or take a look at last year’s honorees.

Where: Visit BlogHer to submit a nomination or to vote for the People’s Choice award. Honorees are selected by BlogHer’s august committee — scroll down this page to see who they are — but one post in each category will be voted People’s Choice by all of you.

Note that you must be logged in to BlogHer to submit a nominations. You can log in with your WordPress.com account if you’re not currently a member of BlogHer. There’s also no need to submit multiple nominations for the same blog (or to encourage all your readers to nominate you) — each entry will be reviewed by two members of the committee and will get the same consideration, no matter how many submissions it had.

What are you waiting for? Nominate someone today. We read your incredible writing challenge entries and see your stunning photo challenge submissions — we love to see them get the increased recognition they deserve.

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  1. Somehow I don’t like my chances of getting to read anything – I mean, in terms of that great Australian phrase “the tyranny of distance”. :-\ But it’s a lovely idea!

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    1. @M.R.
      Hey there,
      We know each other already so read what I posted below and the make a cogent case that convinces me that this game playing of who has the biggest army is “lovely”.
      P.S. Not to worry as I’ll still love you. lol 😀

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  3. Nominate: Who: Any blogger you love — or yourself.

    Really? Nominate yourself and get all your followers to outnumber the followers who are voting for other nominees., Then the most influential blogger with the biggest army of followers will win and that proves what, aside from the fact that the winner will be the best game player with the largest army of followers.?
    (Rolling my eyes skyward and shaking my head as I click out. )

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    1. I wasn’t intending to vote for myself!!! – I have a blogger who instantly comes to mind when the word ‘creativity’ pops up, timethief … and another with very few followers who posts the most MARVELLOUS music … and another … oh, never mind. I do see that it’s a bit of a number cruncher …

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      1. Oh, I get it! – “read their works” … Missed that. you know, I think I’ve advised you somewhere before of this habit of mine. Sighh …

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    2. Actually, the bloggers are selected by a committee of 15+ writers and bloggers — it’s not an open vote, except for a single “bloggers’ choice” honor, so follower count doesn’t play into it.

      It’s a lovely way for hidden gems to get some wider recognition. I’ve updated the post to clarify — we definitely don’t want worthy posts to go unsubmitted!

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      1. Hi there,
        The reason I quit blogging years ago was because I saw those with the biggest armies of followers they could press into service by voting up their blogs win blogging contests time after time. Thanks for cluing me in to the fact that the People’s Choice is the only one of that kind.

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      2. I think it is a lovely idea, Michelle, and have already nominated a blogger I admire – and have written a post. I cannot seem to get into BlogHer unfortunately, despite trying for over an hour. This upsetting because I do not think my nomination counts unless I do get signed up and in. Alienora

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    3. Ah TT, that’s the sort of comment I could/would have written had you not beaten me to it. Only this week I saw someone begging her readers to shoot over to Facebook or somewhere to vote for her in a photo competition. That sort of post is more likely to make me shoot over and vote for someone else.

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      1. I understand the frustration- with blogs you follow you want quality posts and “Vote for Me” posts don’t necessarily fall under this distinction. However, if you need to get the word out somehow that you’re actually entered into a competition of which votes are required, what’s better than reaching out to your blog followers? Most, likely these are the people who enjoy your work and support your progress.

        On another note, BlogHer sounds great and I can’t wait to see who wins- it’s awesome that their is a panel of folks who choose the majority of the prizes to ward against the whole competition being people’s choice based.

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      2. We all blog differently I guess. The Britishness in me could no sooner ask people to go and vote for me than I could fly to the moon. Although I see other Brits doing it! I’m not sure what the value is though, that’s really my point I suppose. So I get people who already read my blog to vote for me. I know they like it or they wouldn’t be reading it in the first place. Would I get extra readers out of it if I received extra publicity? All you have to do is look at a lot of Freshly Pressed blogs who get a hundred or more hits on that specific post, and then their readership invariably settles down to what it was before. I’m sure there are examples of blogs who suddenly increase their readership (by which I mean active comments) 1000% but the ones I looked at haven’t.

        I actually joined BlogHer ages ago but never really kept up to it. I can’t really criticise them, as they highlighted one of my blog posts to my surprise. I didn’t think it was a particularly interesting post, it was how to make gazpacho as taught to me by my 70+ year-old Spanish neighbour. (She’s now in her 80s). I can think of at least five posts that I’ve written which I would say were good. Some attracted a lot of comments, others not so many. Which is why it is so, so, subjective, so therefore leaves me disinterested. Stop tempting me to enter 😀

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  7. Good luck to anyone who gets nominated. I think I’m gonna sit this one out, I don’t feel too awesome about nominating myself..just doesn’t sit right with me you know? I don’t think I’m THAT fabulous of a writer yet to win anyways. I’ll leave it up to the big wigs of blogging 😉

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    1. You cannot be selected if you do not submit anything; the best writers often think their stuff isn’t good enough. The worst thing BlogHer can say is “no.”

      As far as I’m concerned, nominating myself is not a problem. All nominations still have to get past a judging panel and compete on equal footing with everyone else. If the judges think it’s good, who cares if it was a self-nomination?

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      5. You cannot be selected if you do not submit anything; the best writers often think their stuff isn’t good enough. The worst thing BlogHer can say is “no.”

        This, a hundred times.

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  9. This is great. I hope one day I can be so influential that I could even be nominated. What an honor. Until then I am excited to learn about some other great bloggers.

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      1. I am definitely proud of my posts. But I dont feel right nominating myself. I feel that’s something I should earn. Not that it’s not ok to do so. If someone wants to nominate themselves then more power to them! 🙂

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  10. I would love to nominate someone, I already have a person in mind, but I really do not think nor can i force myself to fit her writing and themes into one of the mentioned topics. Heart is a wide spectrum for example. I can see love, I can see a heart disease article, I can see mother with a child – it seems too free, yet I feel as tho what you have in mind and what I have in mind don’t quite match, if I am being clear enough.
    The mentioned topics, thus, feel too close-minded for me. Why list topics? Make it topic-less and let people nominate the content they think is awesome, regardless of the fact is it trending or not or if a judge or whoever is only interested in that thing.
    This is only my opinion however, and I wish this event will bring great joy to the people participating in it.

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  11. Tricky. I would feel slightly squeamish nominating myself (in the red corner: self-doubt), but I am passionate about my subject (in the blue corner: hope). I’ll let the two fight it out, and we’ll see.

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  15. Just starting out at this and even being nominated would be a brilliant encouragement to continue. If anyone out there fancies nominating me that would be amazing. Otherwise I will just have to bite the bullet and nominate myself! 🙂

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  17. While it’s interesting to see decent blog posts, I would prefer more emphasis on the whole blog per se. This BlogHer nomination sounds pretty much like FP, a group of people decided what they like. It’s all very subjective and built around one post. I can’t think of any shattering posts the bloggers I regularly read have written, but I do like them in their entirety and to me that’s what makes a blog worth following, not the odd one-off post.

    This is not a moan, to all the critics above, this is a point of view. Which we are all entitled to, and quite honestly, if everyone agreed with everything I wrote, or didn’t add a different perspective, blogging would be very boring.

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    1. I agree with you on the post thing. It is so hard to decide on ONE thing because a beautiful cluster of wonderful things and posts is what makes me follow someone. The whole package if you like. And that is also what I like about my blog; the funny, the serious, the photos, the do it yourself things… 😀 Not one thing. It is a shame we can’t nominatee a blog, not a post. But, I guess it would be a real task to read properly all of them :/

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    2. @roughseasinthemed
      It takes a great deal of effort to develop a collection of high quality original content posts that cannot be found elsewhere ion the internet. So the idea of nominating a blog rather than nominating posts is slightly more appealing to me but not enough to bring me onside.

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      1. HQ original content is an interesting concept. That would probably rule out virtually all cookery blogs to start with, and probably a lot of the travel ones too. Most places have been visited, I know two people (one personally, one virtually) who have been to Antarctica, seems like the in place to go. What is there to say about politics that hasn’t been said before? Or history, that hasn’t been taken from, usually, a secondary source (rather than a primary one). And, what is there to say about blogging that hasn’t been said before, seeing as we both write about blogging (me only from time to time).

        We all have favourite blogs that we follow, and look for theirs first. For me, what makes a blog stand out is individual style, and consistency. One brilliant post, or even very good one, is no use when the rest of the blog is mediocre. I can think of a handful that I enjoy, for no particular reason except they are usually an interesting read. Is the content original? I would say yes, because they tend to be personal blogs rather than themed ones. Just an insight into someone else’s life, but how they provide that insight is what makes the difference.

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  18. I noticed that the category “Inspiration” from last year is missing this year. What category do we submit nominations to instead, if at all?

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  19. @everyone, we’re simply sharing an opportunity that BlogHer offers — one that we think does a great job of lifting up unheard voices, but that is totally optional and not organized by WordPress.com. You’re free to participate or not, as you see fit.

    Please keep comments civil and on-topic.

    @colormyworld, I don’t know how or why they’ve updated their criteria. You might want to leave a comment there to get some clarification.

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    1. If you click one of the direct links in this post, it’ll take you there — but note that you need to be logged in to BlogHer in order to access the submission materials.

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  21. This is great. I am nominating myself although there are many, many, many inspiring and cool bloggers around…

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  23. Hey,
    Just take a look at that amazing stuff some people can do! They inspired me so much! Amazing! Here is the link

    Warmest regards, Lindadulani

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