Damien Mulley, the prominent blogger and social media consultant who last week revealed he plans to step away from the Blog Awards he ran for six years, will next week reveal his plans for a Social Media Awards that will take place in Dublin on 26 May.
Last week, Mulley told Siliconrepublic.com that he felt the Blog Awards had achieved its aim of making blogging more mainstream in Ireland and he mentioned a mysterious Project X he planned to work on.
Well, that Project X happens to be the Irish Social Media Awards, which will happen on 26 May at Dublin’s Mansion House. The awards will have 20 categories, including a Grand Prix. The categories will be revealed next week along with a headline sponsor.
Mulley told Siliconrepublic.com that the Irish Web Awards, which happen every October, continue to highlight good web practice and because nominations are free and it’s down to a public vote, this ensures a 16-year-old web designer can compete on equal terms with a big agency in the city.
He also revealed scores attributed to winning sites at the Web Awards last year will be published online in the coming weeks.
Genesis of the Irish Social Media Awards
Mulley explained that the Social Media Awards, which he’s working on with 2FM DJ Rick O’Shea, will be designed to highlight best practice and the importance of social media.
He said that despite the hype around social media, it is important to cut through the crap and show what’s worth lauding. “Anyone can buy Facebook fans or Twitter followers, everyone has an account in these places but creating communities and real fans of your work takes more than that.”
The genesis of the idea for the Social Media Awards was the nature of entries he was receiving for both the Blog and Web Awards. “New categories emerged in the Web Awards and we received at least 85 submissions for the Facebook category, as well as in the Blog Awards we got over 70 entries for business blogging.
“The idea is the same – an individual or small company doing a grassroots Facebook campaign has every chance of beating a large corporation that has invested thousands in its Facebook or Twitter campaign. Like the Web and Blog Awards, the public will be involved in judging the winners,” Mulley said.
