Gold rush – the secrets of writing a winning awards submission

Podcasts are going from strength to strength. There are currently more than 900,000 of them to choose from and more than 7 million people in the UK listen to them every week.

Picking up an award can have far-reaching benefits no matter how big or small an organisation might be. Winning, or even being a finalist, can increase credibility, offer improved networking opportunities, generate positive media coverage, boost staff morale and help attract new talent. But before you get to put on your glad rags and attend the ceremony there is the daunting awards submission stage to get through.

e use the word ‘daunting’ because the entry process can seem time-consuming with no guarantee of a return.

So how can you ensure your awards submissions stand out and capture the judges’ interest?

Here are eight tips to help you ensure your award entry is a success:

Captivate the judges

If the award is worth winning, the judges will probably have hundreds of entries to read through.

So your submission needs to stand-out. This means you need a strong opening to draw them in and encourage them to keep reading.

The key is to get to the really strong part of your entry early on and not leave it until the end of your submission.

Some journalistic principles also apply here to ensure interest and focus is maintained. Ensure sentences are no longer than 30 words and start each sentence as a new paragraph so that judges don’t face daunting passages of text.

Also, think about what makes something ‘newsworthy’ to a journalist and apply the same principle. For example, what makes your entry unusual? Is it because what you have achieved is a first, or the biggest, or the smallest? This will help you find that all-important ‘wow’ factor.

Storytelling

People love stories. They want to read and hear stories.

And your awards submission will be much more memorable if it includes a story.

Like all good stories, your tale will need a hero (you or your organisation) and a villain (the problem you have solved) and if it has an innocent victim (your customers) then it will be even stronger.

And it should have a beginning, middle, and end.

Get straight into your story in the submission - don’t feel compelled to introduce it by saying something like ‘here’s a story which shows that…’ or through a sub-heading called ‘our story’.

Put people in your story

People love stories that involve people, and including them directly in your award submission will help it stand-out.

Quotes from colleagues, customers, and stakeholders about the impact of what you have achieved will help bring the crucial human element into the entry.

Substantiate claims

It could be tempting to fill your submission with bold claims about your success.

But, unless you can back these up with facts, figures, and examples then they are just claims and ultimately are pretty meaningless.

Judges will be looking for evidence to ensure that claims are more than just rhetoric.

Show don’t tell

Do you always ‘put customers first’? Is your business ‘client-centred’, ‘visionary’ or ‘innovative’?

These tired adjectives are not only overused but they are also all rather hollow.

A much more effective approach in awards submissions is to show how you do these things, rather than telling us that you do them.

Show how you are putting your customers first and how you are being innovative. Examples, case studies, stories, quotes and testimonials will all help here.

Avoid the jargon

You may understand the technical language and acronyms used in your organisation and industry but there is a good chance it will not mean anything to the judges.

And that could cause them to lose interest.

Stick to everyday language that everyone can understand. Think about how you would explain what you have achieved to a friend or a colleague.

Paint a picture

A picture is a worth a thousand words, as the saying goes, and that idiom is particularly true when it comes to awards submissions where there are often word limit constraints.

Images, tables and, infographics can bring entries to life and help make the complex easily understandable.

Proof

You’ve told your organisation’s story. You’ve got facts and figures to support your points and some strong quotes from customers and colleagues.

What a shame it would be then if all that work was undermined by typos, spelling mistakes, and punctuation errors.

The simple fact is that these mistakes make award submissions memorable for the wrong reasons and can ruin otherwise strong entries. Details matter.

We love helping our clients with their award submissions. Our journalist-led approach ensures all our content is interesting, engaging and informative so you gain brand awareness and engagement whether it is social media content, award submissions or a whitepaper.

At Thirty Seven, we offer content and design services to ensure your campaigns reach the right audiences at the right times. Our journalist led approach ensures your content is interesting, engaging and informative so you gain brand awareness and engagement whether it is social media content or a whitepaper.

ideo content is the perfect way to achieve this. Using videos to interact with your customer shows them the person behind the product, and demonstrates how it could benefit them in real life. After all, the modern customer is busy. And with more content available online than ever, it’s important that your content stands out from the crowd and captures their interest.

Of course, different content will work for different people. You need to narrow down your audience and figure out exactly what they’re going to be interested in watching. This means profiling your existing customers and talking to people who chose to buy from you, as well as those that chose not to buy from you. Content formats like surveys or social media polls can be really useful for this sort of research.

There are so many types of video content to consider. Here are 5 of our personal favourites for you to consider adding to your content strategy.

Behind the scenes

A video showing the inner workings of your business is a fantastic way to personalise your marketing and build a deeper level of trust with your consumer. If you’re promoting a product, show sneak peeks of how it’s made or a snippet of a brainstorming meeting. If your business offers a service, try filming a set-up before an event or consultation.

Obviously, you don’t have to show the whole thing, but giving your customers a glimpse behind the scenes can help them relate to your business on a more personal level and feel more interested in what you’re offering.

Some of the best behind the scenes video content comes from online brands. Fashion brands are particularly good at using this style on social media to keep their fans excited about upcoming products and collections.

A great example is the printing company Awesome Merchandise, who create personalised merchandise for businesses. They show behind the scenes shots of their machines embroidering and printing, and take a lot of photos off their staff working or on days out. These pieces of content help the customers feel like they’re in the factory or office with the team, and thus feel more connected.

Interviews

On the other end of the spectrum, an interview could be a great piece of content to film. This could be an interview with a team member, to find out more about the business and their day-to-day life. It could be an interview with a key influencer in your industry, perhaps talking about predictions for future trends or technological developments. You could interview customers, your boss or even strangers at a convention or networking event. There are a lot of possibilities with this idea - just figure out what you’d like to communicate, and work backwards from there.

Our sister company, Media First, often uses this video format to create customer testimonial videos such as this one. The benefit of using interviews in your content marketing is that it offers an engaging narrative for consumers, and can showcase different points of view.

Instructional videos

If you’re offering a product, a video detailing how to use it can be really beneficial for customers. Numbered videos can be really helpful e.g. ‘5 ways to use make the most of…’ or ’10 ways XX product can help your team’.

A key benefit of instructional videos is that it can also help to reduce the strain on customer services, sales and support teams. This style of video will often be created to answer a frequently asked question, and thus make the customer experience more pleasant overall.

A great example of this style of content would be makeup gurus, specifically on YouTube. Jeffree Star, a famous fashion influencer and businessman, creates makeup tutorials using his own products and techniques. The overall effect of this is that the customers gain more information about the product and engage more deeply with the brand itself.

Product launch

A great piece of content to create is a video promoting new products or events that your business is launching. A video could include sneak peeks/glimpses of the product, to generate hype around your brand. This could even tie in with other pieces of content, like competitions or give-aways to get more customers excited.

Alternatively, you could create an in-depth piece of content that highlights the key benefits of your new product, and gives the customer a reason to come back to your business.

This is often done really well by game development companies. When new video games are being released, companies often rely on social media hype to get the word out. They’ll post sneak peeks and snippets of game play, all leading up to an elaborate reveal of the game. A great example of this would be the most recent installation of the Super Smash Bros game from Nintendo.

Vlog

This one may be a less popular idea, depending on the industry you work in, but vlogging can be a great way to humanise your business and connect with your customers on a more personal level. A vlog is essentially a video blog. They’re incredibly personal, and are hugely popular on social media.

An example of the crazy hype that these pieces of content can create is the latest trend on YouTube called ‘mukbangs’. A mukbang is an eating show, with the creator simply having a meal and chatting to the audience. This might sound ridiculous if you’ve never seen these - who would sit and just watch someone eat for fun?

Surprisingly, tens of millions of people tune in to watch these on YouTube and Twitch. The appeal is the personal aspect, where the audience feels like they’re having a meal with a friend. Here's an example from a popular creator named Josh Peck.

Mukbangs can be used for marketing new products from fast food companies, like Taco Bell or McDonalds. They may not seem like the most obvious choice for a piece of content, but the cult following that they have online is immense.

Additionally, this type of content can be tailored well to fit most industries - for example ‘a day in the life of a digital marketing apprentice’ or ‘spending the day at a media training course’. They’re personal, fun and tie in well with the previously mentioned idea about a behind-the-scenes video.

Overall

Overall, it’s worth your time considering adding video into your content marketing strategy. It’s modern, engaging and also quite fun to produce. Customers love video content, and it can do incredibly well on social media.

And they don’t need to be long, either. When Thirty Seven launched a printed magazine earlier this year, we created a 15 second looped video to promote it that could be used on Twitter and LinkedIn- take a look at it here.

If you try out any of these ideas for a social media post, feel free to tag us - we’d love to see it.

Thirty Seven offers a huge range of content creation services, and we’d be happy to have a chat about any marketing projects that we could help your business with.

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Gold rush – the secrets of writing a winning awards submission

Content should be more than just marketing

Every company wants to be an authority in their sector - those that engage the media usually are