2011 Best Australian Blogs Competition

The Sydney Writers' Centre has launched a 2011 Best Australian Blogs competition. I quote:

You might be blogging to keep you focused on your writing dreams, or perhaps you're blogging to promote your business. You might hope your blog will lead to a book deal or maybe it's just a way to share your life and connect with others. Whatever your reason to blog, we want to celebrate all the wonderful writing that is happening in the blogosphere. You can enter your own blog or nominate someone else's blog.

There are four categories:

• Business: Blogs associated with a business or organisation. These may be written by the business owner, staff member or other representative of the business.
• Commentary: Blogs that analyse or comment on a particular industry or topic. These can be anything from political blogs, fashion blogs, media analysis and so on.
• Lifestyle: Blogs about food, parenthood, personal, travel/expat blogs.
• Words: Blogs that focus on writing, reading, literature or books.

There is also a peoples' choice award.

Blogs will be judged on:

• 70% Quality of writing: "We'll be looking at the ease of reading, clarity of expression, relevance, and the quality of topics and observations. Yes, we will be mainly focusing on your writing (we are the Sydney Writers' Centre after all)."
• 20% Presentation and usability: "This includes the attractiveness of your blog, ease of navigation and usability, effective linking to other blogs and resources."
• 10% Engagement and social media integration: "We'll look at the conversations in the comment section, guest bloggers and the use of social media to promote your blog. For example the use of Facebook/Twitter/Linkedin."

The key dates are:

• Nominations by 5pm on Friday 15 April 2011
• Finalists announced Thursday 21 April 2011
• Winners announced Friday 6 May 2011

I checked, and those with more than one blog can nominate more than one. You just have to fill out a separate application form for each blog.

Will I nominate? Probably, but I'm not sure. There are some very good blogs around, and I find it remarkably difficult to maintain a consistent and interesting standard.

Those who are interested can find more details here.